Statcounter eliminates bot visits from their web analytics

10 February 2026

Jonathan Morton, at Statcounter:

We have seen a significant rise in bot traffic to websites in recent months. These bots are adopting new methods to avoid detection and when they flood your stats with fake visits, they can make it very difficult to get an accurate view of the real visitors on your website.

I’ve been using Statcounter for web analytics at disassociated since 2007.

While such services have never been completely accurate, and people are increasingly blocking trackers, I still like to have a look at what happens here traffic-wise each morning. It’s been refreshing these last few days to view visit activity less the sometimes relentless bot surges.

Bots, which are usually seeking content to train AI agents, are something I tolerate. I’m no fan, but I’m not sure I can really block them effectively.

What’s annoyed me though is the way they skew visitor numbers. If their activity were invisible, which I think the majority are (according to the raw server data I have access to), I wouldn’t so much mind.

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