Different Types of Website Bots and Crawlers: How To Identify, Manage and Handle Them Strategically

You probably spend hours optimizing pages for the humans you want to reach, yet a silent swarm of non-human visitors is already combing through every line of code.

On many sites, these automated guests rival, and sometimes exceed, genuine user sessions. When this happens, overwhelming bot activity can significantly slow down your site. Real users are left staring at a 503 error, scratching their heads and wondering what 503 even means. 

The natural response is to block bot activity. They’re creating problems, so it’s time to kick them out. The problem is that not all bots are the same — and when we’re all aiming to be cited in AI search answers, blocking bots can have serious consequences on visibility.

“Bot management isn’t just a technical checklist, it’s a strategic lever for marketing and IT teams alike,” says Deryk King, AVP of Engineering at Brafton. “If you don’t know which bots are hitting your site and why, you’re flying blind on SEO, analytics and AI visibility.”

Bad actors can easily spoof trusted user-agent strings, which means simple allowlists aren’t enough to keep troublemakers out. That’s why the first step toward smarter bot handling is understanding exactly which crawlers are knocking on your digital door.

Understanding Which Bots Are Visiting Your Website

Before you decide whether to welcome or restrict a crawler, you need to know why it’s there. Classifying traffic by purpose helps you avoid over-blocking bots that drive visibility while tightening controls on those that create risks for your site.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of bots:

1. Search and Discovery Crawlers

Search engine bots like Googlebot and Bingbot crawl and index your pages so users can find you. If they can’t reach a page, it’s essentially invisible. That’s what robots.txt files are for — they indicate which URLs search crawlers can access. Having this guidance helps to manage the load these bots put on your servers.

You generally want to allow these bots while monitoring their crawl rate for server strain. However, keep in mind that some bots, like ChatGPT-User, fetch pages at a user’s request, which means they may bypass the rules set in your robots.txt. Since these user-initiated fetches can reach disallowed URLs, it’s important to understand which requests fall into this gray zone.

2. Marketing, Monitoring and Social Preview Bots

Beyond search indices, crawlers like AhrefsBot or Screaming Frog audit SEO health, monitor uptime and generate social previews. These bots are useful for marketers but can become bandwidth hogs if not managed. Evaluate their frequency, refine allowed paths and throttle or schedule visits as needed to balance insights with resource use.

3. AI Training and AI Grounding Crawlers

AI has introduced a new breed of crawler, each with a distinct purpose:

• Training crawlers harvest content to improve language models. Examples include GPTBot (OpenAI), GoogleOther, Amazonbot and Common Crawl. These are high-volume and can impact bandwidth and expose proprietary content.
  • Blocking them protects your data but removes it from future model training sets.
• Grounding/search crawlers fetch live pages for real-time AI answers and citations. Examples include OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), PerplexityBot and Claude-Web.
  • Allowing them can boost brand exposure and referral traffic.

OpenAI’s guidance allows you to permit OAI-SearchBot while blocking GPTBot, giving you more control over how bots use your content. Other platforms, like Anthropic and Perplexity, have similar distinctions.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet that outlines the impact allowing, throttling and blocking each has on various types of crawlers:

Evaluating Which Bots To Allow, Limit or Block

Treating every crawler the same can create risk and lead to missed opportunities. A smarter approach weighs each bot’s identity, behavior and business value.

„Marketers sometimes jump straight to the nuclear option, blocking entire user-agent families, only to watch their search traffic or AI citations evaporate,“ says King. „Start with the least disruptive lever and tighten only where data shows abuse.”

It’s helpful to know some of the warning signs of suspicious bots. Some of the most common include:

• Abnormally high speed.
• Repetitive actions.
• Consistent 24/7 activity.
• Misleading identifiers.

User-Agent headers alone aren’t enough for identification, because bad bots can fake them. Instead, using reverse/forward DNS lookups and IP validation before granting access can help identify a bot’s true purpose. Big players, like OpenAI and Perplexity, also publish their IP ranges, which serve as helpful references.

„If a crawler won’t prove who it is, it hasn’t earned privileged access,“ King explains.

Configuring Access Controls Without Creating Visibility Gaps

A layered defense is the best defense. Robots.txt, IP rules and web application firewalls (WAFs) each solve different problems. But no matter what your defense setup looks like, you should always monitor these systems to identify anomalies and build a greater understanding of the bots accessing your site.

Here are a few tips for implementing a layered defense against malicious bots while allowing beneficial ones in:

Use Robots.txt for Crawl Guidance

Robots.txt communicates with well-behaved bots, steering them away from low-value pages and reducing unnecessary load.

Implement Enforcement Controls

If robots.txt isn’t enough — and there’s a good chance it’s not — use firewalls, rate-limiting, CAPTCHA or honeypots to filter unwanted traffic. Be careful and go slow with these, though; overly aggressive blocks can cut off legitimate search features or partners.

Monitor and Adjust Over Time

No rule set should be static. Log analysis reveals which bots visit, how often and whether they align with your policies. Keep an eye out for new spoofing attempts, and adjust controls when it makes sense.

Handling AI Crawlers With More Precision

Search bots have always played a role in SEO, but it’s now more important than ever to understand and handle them appropriately. Decisions about allowing or blocking them impact both model training and AI citations.

Avoid Blanket Blocks

Blanket “Disallow: /*” directives aimed at AI can backfire. Different crawlers interpret robots.txt differently, and disallowed URLs can still be indexed if linked externally. Review each bot individually, verify IP ranges and document your rationale as you go. This helps you iterate in a meaningful way.

Legal and Policy Considerations

Crawler decisions may also carry legal weight: Copyright, data-use agreements and confidentiality all matter. Schedule regular reviews with marketing, SEO, legal and engineering stakeholders to ensure technical rules align with business goals.

Business Tradeoff Framework

Keeping all stakeholders on the same page regarding bot management helps clarify each decision. Here’s a 4-stage framework to determine how best to manage each bot accessing your site:

1. Define the bot’s purpose: Is it for training, AI-generated answers or something else?
2. Assess value vs. cost: Weigh expected traffic and exposure against bandwidth and compliance risks.
3. Set enforcement thresholds: Establish limits and automate allow, throttle or block decisions as needed.
4. Monitor and iterate: As bots are allowed or blocked from your site, monitor server loads, AI visibility and other metrics to understand the impact of your choices. Make changes as needed to support your overall goals for site functionality, visibility and speed.

Turning Bot Management Into a Smarter Website Strategy

AI search has established itself as a core pillar of brand visibility. As such, even the best policies must adapt and evolve to support long-term business goals.

Some unpredictable bot traffic is inevitable, but monitoring activity and implementing flexible governance helps brands stay in control.

Treat bots as distinct business partners — some welcome, some restricted, some blocked — to transform a shadowy source of traffic into a managed, measurable part of your strategy.