Bots generated 51% of all internet traffic in 2024, according to Imperva’s latest Bad Bot Report, marking the first year machines have accounted for a larger share of web activity than people. The finding highlights how automated systems, from simple scrapers to AI-powered agents, are increasingly shaping how the web is used and measured.
The report suggests that the growth is being driven not only by traditional bots that crawl websites, but also by a newer category Imperva describes as agentic traffic. These AI systems can browse and collect information in a more human-like way, but at far greater speed and scale. In one example cited in the source material, a shopping agent could scan thousands of product pages in the time it would take a person to visit only a handful of sites.
That kind of automation is helping push bot activity higher across the internet. Cloudflare’s traffic monitoring, as referenced in the source material, has shown bot traffic in the mid-50% range, with some periods climbing to 62%. The figures point to a web environment where automated requests are no longer a side issue, but a dominant part of internet traffic patterns.
The report also points to striking geographic differences. Gibraltar reportedly sees more than 90% of HTTP requests coming from bots, while Singapore and Iran are both above 75%. The source material notes that these figures do not mean those countries are home to unusually high numbers of robot users. Instead, they likely reflect the presence of data centers, hosting providers, VPNs, and proxy services that can make automated traffic appear to come from those locations.
For publishers, advertisers, and site owners, the rise in bot traffic has practical consequences. Web analytics can become distorted when automated requests are counted alongside human visits. That makes it harder to know how many real readers, customers, or viewers a site is reaching. Advertisers may also end up paying for impressions that are served to bots rather than people.
Imperva said malicious bots account for 37% of all web traffic. The company also reported that 44% of sophisticated attacks now target APIs, the behind-the-scenes systems that support modern websites and mobile apps. That detail underscores that bot activity is not only inflating traffic numbers, but also presenting security risks for companies that rely on connected digital services.
The report raises another concern about how information flows online. More than 10% of AI summaries now cite AI-generated content instead of human-created sources, according to the source material. That creates a feedback loop in which machines increasingly rely on material produced by other machines, potentially repeating mistakes or amplifying misleading information.
The rise of bot traffic does not mean people have left the internet. Human users are still streaming, scrolling, shopping, and searching online. But the underlying infrastructure is increasingly automated, with AI systems doing much of the work of gathering, comparing, and summarizing information.
For businesses and platforms, that shift may require a closer look at how traffic is counted, where it comes from, and what kind of activity is actually valuable. The latest figures suggest that the internet’s audience is no longer mostly human, even if most of the visible activity still is.