The Reality of Web Traffic
At BigScoots, we monitor millions of requests across our network. On a typical day, a website receives about 70% human traffic and 30% bot traffic.
It is important to remember that not all bots are bad. Verified bots from Google and Bing are essential—they crawl your site so you can show up in search results. However, there is a growing surge of "bad actors": bots designed to scrape your content, brute-force your login pages, or overwhelm your server with massive amounts of junk traffic.
To solve this, we built the BigScoots Bad Bot Fighter — a proprietary defense system designed from the ground up for customers using our Cloudflare Enterprise-based Boost service.
How It Works: Behind the Scenes
When you enable Bad Bot Fighter, it acts as an intelligent gatekeeper for your website. Instead of just blocking everyone, it performs a sophisticated multi-step check on every incoming visitor:
Fingerprinting: The system analyzes the "digital fingerprint" and behavior of the request.
AI Analysis: This data is fed into a machine-learning engine to determine if the visitor is a human or a bot.
The "Good Bot" Filter: If a bot is detected, our system immediately checks it against a list of verified "Good Bots" (like Google). If it's a helpful bot, it's allowed through without delay.
Custom Logic: Even if a bot isn't "verified" by major engines, our internal decision-making system checks if it’s a tool you specifically need for your business operations.
The Managed Challenge
If a visitor fails these checks and is flagged as a "Bad Bot," they are met with a Managed Challenge page. While a human can easily pass this, a bot cannot. This effectively kills the malicious request before it ever touches your server, saving your CPU and memory for real customers.
Every mitigated request is logged, allowing our team to analyze patterns and ensure your site remains both fast and secure.
Why Enable It?
The Bad Bot Fighter is a game-changing layer of security. It ensures your server resources are spent on real users and helpful search engines, not malicious scripts.
Ready to secure your site?
We highly encourage all Boost customers to enable Bad Bot Fighter. It is already protecting the majority of our clients, and we’ve made the setup seamless.
If you find that a specific tool or service you use is being blocked after enabling this feature, simply reach out to our support team. We are available 24/7 to fine-tune your protection and ensure your "good" traffic always has a clear path.