Just how many recorded visits from a website come from an actual human being surfing on their PC or mobile device? It may be less than you think. According to a new study from the cloud-based website security service Incapsula, just 49 percent of all website visits are from real people. The other 51 percent come from several different types of automated visitors.
That number includes the typical search engine traffic which Incapsula says comprises 20 percent of all web traffic. However, the company claims that the other 31 percent are out to attack websites by various means. The study claims that five percent of all website traffic comes from direct hacking tools that are trying to install malware programs, attempting to lift credit card numbers or simply trying to crash the site.
Another five percent of web traffic comes from "scrapers" that try to lift and copy content from websites. The study claims that two percent of web traffic is comprised of comment spamming programs that try to enter into litter user comments and forums with messages such as ads. Finally 19 percent of web traffic is some kind of spyware, such as trying to check up on a site for changes to alert competing sites.
The company said they came up with the numbers by sampling 1,000 websites that are customers of Incapsula, each with an average of between 50,000 and 100,000 monthly visitors.
Image via Incapsula
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