Are bots busting your budget?
Not all web traffic is created equal. While those great numbers you’re seeing may give your day a boost, it’s important to consider the possibility that some of those visitors aren’t exactly human. The bots are everywhere, and that probably includes your site.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a full 33% of traffic generated by online advertising comes from bots. A recent article from Driving Sales featured the Orbee’s Automotive Website Traffic Quality Report, which distils the problem specifically for dealers. Their research concluded that nearly 42% of dealership traffic is from bots.
And while some species of bots have their benefits, such as crawling your site to index your content to produce more accurate search results, others aren’t quite so friendly. Their goal may be to submit false forms, scrape your content, or even cause harm to your human visitors’ computers.
When it comes to generating traffic that can actually buy things, some vendors are better than others. To determine the quality of the traffic your vendors are providing, consider quizzing them a bit. Orbee’s recommends these questions:
- What measures do you have in place to detect bot traffic?
- What percentage of total traffic do you mark as bot traffic?
- What is your refund policy regarding bot traffic?
And, to ensure you’re receiving what you’re paying for, Orbee’s has these three suggestions:
- Trust, but verify. Demand data that proves the quality of the traffic you’re receiving.
- Make decisions based on data, using the wide range of tools available.
- Understand that digital marketing can only do so much. Any rise or fall in sales in any given month can be due to multiple factors – not just site traffic quality.
Our whitepaper provides a helpful overview of the world of bots, including how LotLinx weeds out bot traffic to ensure you’re only paying for real shoppers. And, you can learn more about how we protect you from bad bots here.
In a world where it’s vital to prove that every marketing dollar is well spent, ensuring you’re paying for traffic that may actually want to buy a car is vital. Keeping close tabs on your site activity, and staying on top of vendors and their policies, are two effective ways to do so.