Add Easy Hack to Filter Out Bot-generated Score Changes | Community
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A
Anonymous
June 3, 2015
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Add Easy Hack to Filter Out Bot-generated Score Changes

  • June 3, 2015
  • 8 replies
  • 8654 views

A common (and serious) defect in lead scoring campaigns is when bots (not people) automatically click every link in an email. Whether it be for security, spam filters, etc., this happens frequently and makes lead scoring a moot point when people are getting credit for several link clicks they, in fact, did not make.

Why couldn't marketo engineer something that recognizes when multiple links are opened within a second of each other? When this is recognized, cancel out the score change, interesting moment, and any metric triggered.

It's pretty much impossible for a human to open 4 links in one second. And even if some freak does do this, we'd rather have this one outlier not counted instead of hundreds of leads with grossly inflated lead scores due to bots.

This is just one idea on how, but really any fix to cancel out bot-generated activity is what we need.

    8 replies

    A
    Anonymous
    June 4, 2015

    Another (trickier) way around this would be to include an "invisible" link in the email. One that humans can't see. White on white, that kind of thing.

    When that link is clicked, quarantine the lead as potentially suspicious. You could even set it up to automatically delete it.

    Emily_Poulton1
    Emily_Poulton1
    Level 3
    June 25, 2015

    Yes we are seeing this problem as the LP views are 300k when we only send to 10k and the number of conversions is not calculated because it is too low compared to the views.

    Note from premier support engineer:

    Not all pages are crawled the same way. Some pages can receive more attention from bots and crawlers and this likely explains the spike in page serves for these particular landing page. It's difficult to say exactly where that is coming from as that all happens outside of Marketo, we're just counting the number of times the page is served.

    This is something other clients have noticed. We've recommended the use of smart lists or the use of the web page activity report instead for more relevant data.

    This would require a significant product change. It is not on the roadmap on this time. However, I recommend making a post in the Ideas section of the marketing nation to bring this suggestion to the attention of our product managers.



    A
    Anonymous
    January 18, 2018

    I have this same issue. I am going to create a trigger campaign that with "mIn number of times" constraint. However, I agree that Marketo should build that in according to the first comment.

    Any comment from Marketo on this?

    Josh_Hill13
    Josh_Hill13
    Level 10
    February 22, 2018

    While you can currently attempt to find such leads or give the spam bot a fake page to click to and then block such leads that day....the real fix must be on the Marketo side where Clickstream is evaluated before posting to the record. Marketo wouldn't want to "roll back" changes like the OP suggests. Instead, the pre-processor must look at the clickstream and see if

    1. a honeypot was clicked

    2. too many clicks within 1 minute period

    3. other identifiers that indicate non humans are involved.

    then negate the logging of those activities.

      StephStudebaker
      StephStudebaker
      Level 2
      October 2, 2019

      These all appear to be great suggestions. Do we know if these have been implemented yet? 

      K
      kh-lschutte
      February 7, 2020
      No text available
      Sreekanth_Reddy
      Adobe Employee
      Sreekanth_ReddyAdobe Employee
      Adobe Employee
      March 5, 2021

      Thanks for raising this idea, we fully understand the impact of bot clicks. Good news is we are working towards a solution to identify and filter out the bot clicks generated from emails. We are expecting to release the first phase of the solution in 2021!

      Sreekanth_Reddy
      Adobe Employee
      Sreekanth_ReddyAdobe Employee
      Adobe Employee
      June 2, 2021

      Hi Guys,

       

      we have launched the first version of the feature in the current release. Please find few links that can provide more details.


      https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo/using/product-docs/administration/email-setup/filtering-email-bot-activity.html?lang=en
      https://nation.marketo.com/t5/product-blogs/email-bot-activity-feature-faqs/ba-p/313524

      T
      Tkling
      Level 2
      January 23, 2025

      Any updates on further developments with this, or possibly an extension to the IAB list? Even with the bot activity identification settings implemented (I even extended the match with proximity pattern duration between activities to 3 seconds), I'm still seeing a significant amount of bot activity - for instance, 13 people at the same company clicking a link in the email at the same time.

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