AI Bots Keep Overloading Servers. Should Website Owners Keep Paying? via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Search Engine Journal's report on AI bots overloading servers with 80% of AI traffic draining website infrastructure for model training marks a significant concern for website owners. The article highlights the strain that AI bot traffic is putting on website infrastructure, with a substantial portion of traffic being used for model training, potentially leading to increased costs and decreased performance. This means that website owners are facing a dilemma: either continue to absorb the costs of supporting AI bot traffic, potentially affecting their website's performance and search visibility, or take measures to block or limit this traffic, which could impact their search engine rankings. The 80% figure is particularly alarming, as it suggests that a significant portion of website resources are being diverted to support AI model training, rather than serving human users. To mitigate this issue, website owners can take several actionable steps: first, monitor their website's traffic and server load to identify AI bot traffic patterns; second, consider implementing measures such as rate limiting or bot-blocking to reduce the strain on their infrastructure; and third, review their llms.txt files to ensure that they are not inadvertently allowing excessive AI bot traffic to access their site, potentially by specifying allowed or disallowed AI models or traffic sources.