What is the latest technology you have heard of this year? There is a lot!
Yes, it is a challenging question with a difficult answer as the rise in digital technologies is increasing every day. With the advancements of this era, there is an invention at every step. The internet is flooding with plenty of terminologies you may have never heard before.
In this case, the bot is a term known to almost everyone on the web. However, many are still unknown to the difference between a good bot and a bad bot.
What Are Bots?
Bots are everywhere! Most often, the terms ‘bots’ and ‘robots’ showcase an image of ‘The Terminator’ and its characters. Nonetheless, these humanoids are not the ones discussed here.
The simplest definition of bots is an increasingly efficient form of Artificial Intelligence and automation combined to form software. A bot is responsible for automating basic tasks on the web like updating your daily calendar, revising your shopping list, answering questions, data management, and website monitoring.
With the increase in the use of bots regularly, it is necessary to understand the difference between a good bot and a bad bot.
What Are Good Bots And Bad Bots?
There is nothing definite like a good bot and a bad bot. It is the basic use of robots with good and bad intentions. Most probably, internet bots can be used for a lot of tasks, either positive or negative, leading to good or bad bots, respectively.
As good bots are advancing to add betterment for users, bad bots are also raising a level higher to operate to the detriment of users.
What Are Good Bots?
Good bots are advantageous for websites as well as users. When you browse the internet in search of a website or a phrase related to the site or its amenities, you come with various related results. The search page is filled with different information that can be helpful to you in one way or the other.
It is possible due to the search engine bots, also known as crawler bots, for example, Googlebot. These are significantly used by famous companies and operate in accordance with the rules created by any webmaster.
Other than the search engine bots, some popularly known good bots on the internet are website monitor bots, social media bots, partner bots, aggregator bots, and much more.
What Are Bad Bots?
Bad bots are internet robots programmed for performing malicious jobs. These operate evasively by cybercriminals, hackers, fraudsters, and other parties involved in illegal activities. Competitor sites majorly utilize them for attacking and impacting your webpage in several ways.
Third-party sites may send bad bots for stealing information and content from your website. These internet robots can attack your product reviews, service data, latest details, important news, and more. By using such bots, webmasters slow down the speed and ranking of other websites.
Also, bad bots can hack your content details and publish it elsewhere on the internet. It can lead to plagiarism errors, difficulty in search engine ranking, and similar conditions. There is a large series of criminal events that bad robots can perform without much effort.
The Difference Between a Good Bot and a Bad Bot
While good bots perform positively for web users, bad bots can do many wrong actions on the internet. By finding the necessary information, you can differentiate between a good bad and a bad bot.
Good Bots
Data Bots
These are good bots that one can use for providing real-time updates regarding weather, news, sports, stock market, and much more. As per the latest technology trends of today, you can consider the Amazon Echo, Apple Siri, Microsoft Cortana, and Google Home as data bots.
Copyright Bots
Most often, copyright bots are the good robots used by webmasters for searching content stealers. It finds out the content that is copied, misused, or plagiarized, for example, pictures, data, and similar work uploaded on a site without the owner’s permission. Also, it plays a significant role in catching such information thieves and protecting your webpage.
Spider Bots
As discussed above, spider bots are a good type of internet robots. These are search engine bots that handle all the crawling of a website and its content. By using these crawler bots, search engines analyze the content of the webpage to determine its final ranking. The Googlebot, in this case, estimates which site needs to be crawled and helps in producing query results on the search page.
Bad Bots
Scraper Bots
These are the opposite of copyright bots. While copyright ones protect a website’s content from plagiarism, scraper bots steal information. By using these robots, website owners scrap a competitor’s details and print them elsewhere on the internet without permission. It lowers the search engine ranking and originality of content. Most often, sites are unknown to this invasion of bots.
Download Bots
Some of the most popular bad bots include download bots. These are internet robots that automatically attach themselves to popular high-tech websites and mislead visitors. In addition to increasing the number of clicks, these bots transfer users to malicious sites rather than the requested webpage.
Spam Bots
People are aware of the term spam bots for a long time. Spamming is a big issue on the web, and it happens majorly due to these malicious robots. These are responsible for flooding the internet with spam content and illegitimate links. Moreover, these bots also steal user information like email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and other personal details filled out in forms.
The Rise of Internet Bots
With every passing day, advancing technologies are leading to the betterment of bots. Both types of robots are increasingly playing their roles on the internet. Now, if you have known the difference between a good bot and a bad bot, beware of them.
It is necessary to learn about these bots for keeping away from their effects or using them for good. There are many good bots and bad bots available on the web.
Author bio:
Steve Martin is a digital marketer who works for Affiliate Marketing sites – online coupon codes providing platform. A writer by day and a reader by night, he is striving to make the most of the new opportunities that come in his way and excels in everything he does
