Bots Do Whatever You Pay For

Time for an update on what bots can do. Bots are software programs that help with automating tasks. As with any technology or tool, they can be used for both good and evil. Search engine crawlers are bots that load web pages to index the content so the page shows up in search results. Other bots help automate the writing of news stories; for example about weather, stock quotes, and other news. Bots also help with cybersecurity — link checking bots open every email and click every link to check for malicious code, phishing or malware before forwarding the email on to the human recipient. And Google AdsBot checks every landing page of every ad to make sure it is live and the content matches the topic of the ad that clicks through to it.