Block bot web traffic

This article helps you:

Understand how bot traffic can affect ingested data from third party sites
Learn how to create a block filter to exclude bot web traffic

If you're tracking events on public, unauthenticated websites, your metrics may be affected by bot web traffic from crawlers, scrapers, and other similar tools. Amplitude Data allows you use a block filter to prevent that data from being ingested at all.

How bot blocking works

Bot traffic is blocked based on User-Agent, as identified by the IAB/ABC International Spiders and Bots List. This applies by default to data sent via the legacy JavaScript SDK or the TypeScript Browser SDK (version 1.10.0 and later). You can also provide the user_agent field directly on events sent via the HTTP API or Batch API. Be careful when doing this, as the value must represent a valid browser or the event will be dropped.

Any data filtered out by a block filter cannot be recovered because it is never ingested in the first place.

To create a block filter for bot web traffic, follow these steps:

Make sure you’re on main, as filters are not accessible from any other branch.
In the left-hand sidebar, click Filters, then select the Block Filters tab.
Click + Create Block Filter to open the Filter Configuration fly-out panel.
Select Bot Traffic from the Block drop-down.

5. When you’re ready, click Block Data to initiate the block filter.

Block bot web traffic

How bot blocking works

Create a block filter for bot web traffic