AI Bots: Knowing Good vs. Bad

The rise of AI bots — from search engines to chatbots, content scrapers, and language model crawlers — is reshaping how websites are accessed and indexed. This makes management through solutions like a Web Application Firewall (WAF) more critical than ever, not just for security but also for safeguarding business value.

With your strategic WAF approach in mind, this quick read takes a look at how to distinguish between "good" and "bad" AI bots, and makes some recommendations on how a WAF can play a pivotal role.

The New Era: From SEO Bots to AI Bots

• Traditional bots: Classic search engines (Googlebot, Bingbot), uptime monitors, and well-meaning aggregators.
• AI bots: Language model crawlers (OpenAI's GPTBot, Google's BardBot), data-mining bots, competitive analysis tools, and "shadow" AI agents crawling to train future models.

Why Is It Crucial to Manage Bots?

• Reputation: "Bad" bots can scrape and republish your content or use it to train models that compete with you.
• SEO: Bots pretending to be search engines might harm indexing or spoof analytics.
• Performance & Security: Uncontrolled bot traffic consumes bandwidth, increases server costs, and could look for vulnerabilities.
• Opportunity: "Good" bots may boost discoverability, connect you to new audiences, or provide accurate inclusion in reputable AI tools.

Good vs. Bad AI Bots: How to Decide

Here are some recommended indicators of a good AI Bot:

• Transparent Identification: Uses a clearly declared User-Agent string (e.g., "GPTBot/1.0").
• Respects robots.txt: Checks and follows your robots.txt directives.
• Official Documentation: Provides a website/documentation explaining its purpose (e.g., [OpenAI’s GPTBot documentation] (https://platform.openai.com/docs/gptbot)).
• Intended Use Helps Your Business: Indexes your organization for reputable AI assistants, customer tools, or business directories.
• Minimal Impact on Performance: Crawls at a reasonable rate, doesn’t hammer your site.
• Provides Opt-Out Mechanisms: Allows you to prevent scraping via robots.txt or form submission.

Indicators of a Bad AI Bot

Here are some recommended indicators of potentially bad AI Bots:

• Obfuscated Identity: Fakes or rotates User-Agents, mimics browsers or known bots.
• Ignores robots.txt: Accesses forbidden areas.
• No Contact Information: No website or documentation, or spoofed references.
• Harms Your Business: Steals and republishes your content, enables competitors, extracts pricing or intellectual property, or is linked to abuse.
• High Resource Usage: Sends too many requests, causing slowdowns or outages.
• Bypasses Controls: Avoids CAPTCHAs, blocks, or employs sophisticated evasion.

How Can a WAF Help?

A powerful Web Application Firewall like Acquia Edge enables:

• Detection: Identifies and logs bot behaviors. Advanced WAFs use machine learning to spot anomalies.
• Classification: Differentiates between types of bots via User-Agent, IP reputation, behavior, geolocation, and other powerful facets.
• Blocking/Educating/Rate Limiting: Block malicious bots, educate unknown bots via custom error messages, or throttle resource usage.
• Integration with robots.txt: Ensures only legitimate bots that respect policies are allowed.
• Reporting: Lets you monitor "new" bots, so you can continually update your rules and adapt.

How to Assess If an AI Bot is Good For Your Business Website

Here are some recommendations to keep an eye on the bots that frequent your sites.

• Check the Bot's Identity: Does the User-Agent clearly declare its purpose and point to documentation?
• Understand Their Use Case: Will you benefit by being included in this AI's index or dataset? Or is your proprietary content at risk?
• Contact the Owner: If unsure, reach out to the bot’s maintainers (if possible).
• Monitor Impact: Use site analytics and server logs to see how the bot affects your performance and content.
• Test Blocking: Temporarily deny access and judge if your SEO, traffic, or business suffers.

Key Takeaways

A WAF is now an essential business tool — not just for stopping known attacks, but for making strategic decisions about which AI bots can access your site. By leveraging a WAF, you can:

• Allow good bots that boost search, reputation, or business utility,
• Block or challenge bad bots that could undermine your business,
• Continuously adapt as the AI landscape evolves.

Ultimately, the question is no longer just "Is this a bot?" but "Is this bot good for my business?" — and your WAF is your trusted gatekeeper. Now is the time to review your bot management strategy—before your site becomes just another data feed for someone else's AI. Talk to your AM, CSM, or TAM about your WAF strategy today.