Verify filtering

To make sure everything is set up, make one visit as a person and one as a bot, then find both in the log.

Before you checkCopy Anchor Link

• In the template's Bots row, choose Send to the bot URL and enter a URL — this makes the result easier to see.
• If Treat first clicks as bots is above 0, your first visits also count as bots. Set it to 0 while you check.

Visit as a personCopy Anchor Link

Open the link in a regular browser. You should land on the destination URL or the URL of the matching stream.

Visit as a botCopy Anchor Link

Send a request as a search engine crawler — it counts as a bot at any filter level:

curl -s -i -A "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" \
  "https://example.com/Ab3xZ"

For 302 Temporary and 301 Permanent, the bot URL is in the location header; for other methods, it is inside the page. If a response code is selected for bots, you get an empty page with that code.

With Double Meta Refresh, repeat the same request a second time — the first response only reloads the page.

Find the visits in the logCopy Anchor Link

In Statistics → Clicks, find your visits by IP. The browser visit should be in the Humans segment, the curl request in the Bots segment.

One visit shows that the settings work, but not how good the filter is. How to choose a level based on real traffic is in Bot filtering.

If your visit was counted as a botCopy Anchor Link

• Check Treat first clicks as bots, the bot lists and Allowed referrer: if it is filled in, a direct visit counts as a bot.
• At the JavaScript level, a browser with JavaScript turned off counts as a bot.