With the advancement of technology, human beings have been able to execute a lot of tasks easily, more accurately and in less time. That being said, automation is one such technology that has led to the simplification of a lot of repetitive tasks. This is where bots come into the discussion. Bots are based on the technology of automation and right now, there are numerous types of bots available in the market. While bots were earlier known to be used only by cybercriminals, in today’s time, bots have found widespread applications in a number of fields. Even though bots are still pretty new in the technology industry, but still, it is mind-boggling to know about so many different types of bots available in current times.
Although, we have made the job easier for you through a complete classification of the top 7 types of bots available in the market right now.
7 Major Types of Bots
In this section of the article, we have discussed the 7 major types of bots in complete detail. These bots are classified based on their functions and applications as well as the value they offer to end users. Check them out.
1. Scraper Bots
Scraper Bots are bots programmed to read data from websites on the Internet. Their primary purpose is to save the content offline. This also happens when you archive a website and the crawlers go through your site to save the data on the website. The saved data can be reused. This data may contain names, prices, and product details and other types of content.
2. Spider Bots or Web Crawlers
One of the most common types of bots in the market, spider bots are basically Internet bots. These bots are programmed to browse pages across the internet. They also have capabilities to download pages, and also index the content in these pages. Such indexing helps retrieve the data when searched. These bots consume resources when visiting site pages.
Although this activity may be illegal for sites that have copyrighted information on it, such websites can add robots.txt file in the site to disallow crawlers visiting the site. Search engine crawlers are the best example of spider bots.
3. Spam Bots
Just as the name suggests, spam bots are built to collect email addresses from spam mail lists. Such bots are programmed to collect email addresses from other sources like social media websites, and websites of other organizations on the Internet. After the collection of a certain amount of email addresses, programmers use it for sending spam mails and other malicious activities.
4. Social Media Bots
Social Media Bots are a specially programmed variety of bots that can send messages on social media. They function through automation and can support ideas and also interact with users as their followers. Such bots are used for a number of applications including marketing on social media, for example, Twitter bots and Instagram bots.
Along with that, malicious acts like creating fake accounts to increase the number of followers are also done with such bots. Statistics suggest that around 9 to 15% of all Twitter accounts are actually social bots.
5. Download Bots
Download Bots are programmed to download software or mobile applications in an automated manner. Such bots are generally used to enhance the download statistics on sites. Sites can get a huge number of downloads on known app stores with the help of such bots and boost their rankings on the chart.
6. Chat Bots
Most business websites come with a bot which acts as a chatbot now. These bots are programmed with the primary intention of interacting with customers and also for follow up purposes. Phantom Bots could be the best example of this. While some people find them annoying, they make tasks much easier through automation.
According to the 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report by Drift, chatbots grew as brand communication channels by over 92% since 2019. Not just that, 24.9% of buyers reported that they use chatbots to interact with businesses in 2020.
7. Just For Fun Bots
Bots are not just meant for serious work. Some bots are programmed simply for entertainment purposes. Just For Fun Bots like Discord bots are programmed for entertainment purposes. An example of such bots are the ones that play games against the computer or the ones that make art. Some bots can trade too, like crypto bots.
Final Thoughts
That brings us to the end of this article. Summing it up, it can be mentioned that these 7 types of bots are the most common ones in the market. They are also the most-used ones with a range of applications across a variety of fields and for multiple purposes.
By knowing about these bots, you can make a better choice when opting for a bot for a certain process or operation. These instruments of automation are definitely utilitarian and extremely profitable when used wisely and appropriately.
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