An Internet[3] bot, often simply referred to as a bot, is a software application that carries out automated tasks over the internet. These tasks typically involve repetitive actions that mimic human activity and are performed much faster than a human could. Bots are commonly used for web crawling, engaging in conversations (chatbots), networking (social bots), or automated trading. However, bots can also be used for malicious activities such as spamming[4], click fraud, or unauthorized content scraping. They have a significant impact across various sectors, including advertising[1], ticket sales[5], politics, and social media[2]. Despite their usefulness, bots often raise concerns about their potential to distort online discussions and negatively influence users. Anti-bot techniques like CAPTCHA have been developed to counteract malicious bots.
An Internet bot, web robot, robot or simply bot (an abbreviation of robot), is a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) on the Internet, usually with the intent to imitate human activity, such as messaging, on a large scale. An Internet bot plays the client role in a client–server model whereas the server role is usually played by web servers. Internet bots are able to perform simple and repetitive tasks much faster than a person could ever do. The most extensive use of bots is for web crawling, in which an automated script fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers. More than half of all web traffic is generated by bots.
Efforts by web servers to restrict bots vary. Some servers have a robots.txt
file that contains the rules governing bot behavior on that server. Any bot that does not follow the rules could, in theory, be denied access to or removed from the affected website. If the posted text file has no associated program/software/app, then adhering to the rules is entirely voluntary. There would be no way to enforce the rules or to ensure that a bot's creator or implementer reads or acknowledges the robots.txt file. Some bots are "good", e.g. search engine spiders, while others are used to launch malicious attacks on political campaigns, for example.