20%-50% of Car Dealer Website Traffic May Not Be Human
by automotiveinternetmedia | March 24, 2025 | Website Traffic, Automotive Industry

In the digital age, car dealerships face unique challenges. One of these is the issue of non-human web traffic. Studies suggest that 20%-50% of car dealer website traffic may not be human. This includes bots, crawlers, and fraudulent clicks, which can distort analytics data. Digital ad fraud is a significant concern. It can lead to wasted advertising budgets and ineffective campaigns.
Automotive Internet Media has analyzed non-human traffic across hundreds of automotive websites. Through our findings we help dealers optimize their online advertising strategies and target potential customers more effectively.
What is Non-Human Web Traffic?
Non-human web traffic is visitors to a website that are not human; these are frequently “bots” that load web pages, crawl pages, scrape pages, and falsely load ads. Not all of this non-human traffic is malicious – crawlers and search engine bots are good bots.
Non-human traffic can mimic human behavior, inflating website traffic numbers. This skews the analytics data that dealers rely on.
Recognizing the Signs of Non-Human Traffic
What are the indicators that website traffic is non-human? The following can point to traffic being non-human:
- High Bounce Rate
- Low Average Session Duration
- Abnormally High Click Through Rates
- Unusual Traffic Spikes
- Unusual Geo Locations
Monitoring and Optimization: Ensuring Traffic Quality
Better quality media will have less non-human traffic and thus provide better outcomes. Monitoring campaigns and optimizing them to minimize non-human traffic is an integral part of what your agency and any paid media vendors should be doing. Eliminating poor traffic sources and placements will maximize the amount you are spending on driving real consumers to your website. Less non-human traffic means less advertising waste!
About Automotive Internet Media
Automotive Internet Media, AIM, is a leader in digital marketing and technology, headquartered in Hinsdale, Illinois. Our team specializes in media buying and campaign optimization for automotive dealerships across the United States.