Cloudflare Report: Global Internet Traffic Grew 19% in 2025, but Much of It Came From Bots

When you look over a website's traffic numbers and think "Wow, there are so many visitors!" How many actual people do you really think click through? It’s something we all feel and see from time to time. According to a new report from Cloudflare, the growth of global Internet traffic was approximately 19% in 2025 but there were more bots than actual humans.

More Traffic Doesn't Mean Real Visitors​

A large increase in traffic may make you think you have got an enormous increase in the number of visitors. But according to Cloudflare, a majority of traffic now is created by automated bots. They crawl through and monitor your site, collect data, and assist in making searching for information more effective for Search Engines.

Some things you may have noticed:

• Bot-based AI represents a significant amount of Internet Requests.
• Googlebot (the crawler designed to index web pages on Google) alone created millions of traffic requests.
• Simple Bots (not even AI) create significantly more Page Views than do actual humans.

This doesn't seem to make sense, does it? It is like inviting robots to a party, the room may look like it’s full. But in reality, there will not be a single conversation taking place.

The Impact Of Bot Traffic On Website Owners​

Bot traffic has serious consequences for website owners. The falsely inflated traffic numbers can confuse website owners as well as:

• Deplete the server's resources.
• Increase the cost of the host.
• Make understanding actual user behavior more difficult.

I have experienced this firsthand. The website appears to be busy, but the number of sales/sign-ups remains unchanged. Have you ever wondered why? Bots are frequently to blame.

Fortunately for those who use a content delivery network like CloudFlare, there have been numerous positive improvements. The vast majority of all websites utilize encryption and have implemented greater security protection. This leads to greater protection for real human internet users, as well as the ability to prevent malicious bots from accessing their website.