Bots are Growing in Numbers and this Could Change the Traffic on Open Web

If bots grow on the web, it can change the online human experience on the web. Different reports show that almost 50% of the internet traffic doesn't come from humans. Nowadays Agentic bots are growing in numbers. They can open the doors for separate APIs or websites and could bring changes in the marketing playing field.

65% of bots on the web are malicious, but good bots are also growing in numbers and are the only ones useful. AI crawlers are also growing by 18% while search engines have slowed down by 10%. The activity of GoogleBot was majorly reduced. On the other hand, there was a 1.4% increase in Google’s AI crawler and the most activity was recorded by GPT Bot with 3.8% increase.

Google’s AI crawler saw a growth of 62% and estimates show that it will become the most active bot on the web. Right now, AI bots are collecting data, building search indexes for LLM answers and collecting real-time data for prompts. Currently all the big AI developers are working on agents that browse the web and take actions for users like Google’s Jarvis, Claude and OpenAI.

The outcome of these AI agents can be growth in bots traffic on the web, using APIs to get information and operating on their platforms. Due to the mix of all this, bot traffic on the web is going to increase a lot. ChatGPT search is already working as an AI agent and will shift focus on users to focus on agents.

Even though bots are taking over the web, it is impossible that humans will stop browsing on the web. Humans still need to verify AI statements so they go to different platforms to seek answers. In 2023, 70% of the world's population has access to the internet and looking at the current pace of internet connectivity, the whole world will be able to access the internet by 2030. Despite this widespread internet access, human traffic on the web is decreasing from the past three years. This is mostly due to humans shifting to social media platforms.

So, if good bots will increase on the web, what does it mean for SEO and marketing? Bots or AI agents can do everything for you according to your preferences. The skill that will remain constant in the future will be SEO, especially technical SEO. Open web with agents will also provide better offers of ad targeting because they’ll know what humans need and prefer.

Web design may not be that important in the future but feed design will become more important. As agents will make all the advertising choices for customers in the future, marketers will need to spend more time on relationship building and campaigns that can influence customers.

H/T: Kevin Indig

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World