{"id":3173,"date":"2023-12-18T16:35:25","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T16:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.progressivepartnership.co.uk\/?p=3173"},"modified":"2024-01-03T14:38:22","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:38:22","slug":"how-to-spot-a-bot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.progressivepartnership.co.uk\/how-to-spot-a-bot\/","title":{"rendered":"How to spot a bot"},"content":{"rendered":"
Online bots have become more and more prevalent in the past few years. They can be a slight nuisance or create complete havoc. Bots are used to automate repetitive tasks and simulate human behaviour. Bots can do a range of things: from rogue comments on social media and writing fake reviews for businesses, to sending spam emails. Online bots are thought to be almost half of internet traffic today<\/a>.<\/p>\n While bots have a variety of uses, bots and fraudulent respondents within the market research industry can be very damaging and pose a serious threat to the production of valid and reliable data. When there is financial gain to be had, bots will exist; whether this is fraudulent respondents taking part in surveys multiple times thanks to the help of bots, or fabricating application answers to take part in an incentivised focus group. With technology and AI getting smarter, bots are getting increasingly difficult to detect.<\/p>\n We might never be able to get rid of them completely and with their methods ever-changing, protecting research data is a persistent challenge. However, there are a few techniques we can use to mitigate the damage.<\/p>\n By having multiple ways of validating responses and potential respondents, we can detect and remove bots step by step.<\/p>\nSo, how does this affect the world of market research?<\/h4>\n
As researchers, how do we overcome this?<\/h4>\n