How to monitor Bot Traffic via Imunify Security Plugin
AI Bot Management is a security feature in Imunify360 designed to protect websites from excessive automated traffic.
It identifies automated requests and applies request limits based on the type of bot making the request. Legitimate human visitors are not affected.
This helps protect your website from aggressive crawling and excessive resource usage caused by automated traffic.
Bot Traffic Categories
Imunify360 classifies automated traffic into the following categories:
Category | Description |
|---|---|
Verified search engines | Crawlers verified through reverse DNS as belonging to search engines such as Google and Bing. These are given a higher request allowance to avoid disrupting indexing. |
Verified AI crawlers | Verified crawlers belonging to AI/LLM providers, including crawlers used for training or retrieval. |
Unknown automated | Automated clients that do not match a known and verified crawler. |
Unverified bots | Clients claiming to be a known bot but failing reverse-DNS verification. |
Malicious bots | Known malicious clients or clients detected by the honeypot. These are blocked when protection is enabled. |
Humans | Normal website visitors. AI Bot Management does not apply bot rate limits to human visitors. |
Accessing Bot Protection
AI Bot Management is enabled at the server level. You will be able to view and manage the protection preset from the Imunify Security widget in the WordPress dashboard.
The widget displays the Current Bot Protection status, active preset, and the number of requests blocked in the last 24 hours.
Available Bot Protection Presets
Imunify360 provides three presets: Balanced, Strict and Monitor only. The selected preset determines the request limit applied to each bot category.
Bot category | Balanced | Strict | Monitor only |
|---|---|---|---|
Verified search engines | 300 requests/min | 300 requests/min | Not enforced |
Verified AI crawlers | 10 requests/min | 3 requests/min | Not enforced |
Unknown automated | 5 requests/min | 2 requests/min | Not enforced |
Unverified bots | 2 requests/min | 1 request/min | Not enforced |
Malicious bots | Blocked | Blocked | Not enforced |
Balanced — sensible limits for a typical site. Recommended for most sites. | |||
Strict — tighter limits for sites under heavy bot pressure. | |||
Monitor only — classifies traffic but does not block or limit anything. Useful for trying the feature out before enforcing it. |
To change Preset
Balanced is the default preset. To view a detailed view of the preset click on Bot protection.
To change the active Bot Protection preset:
- Click Change next to the current preset.
- Select the required preset.
- Click Save.
You can also force a specific preset by adding the following entry to the website's wp-config.php file:
// Force a specific preset (balanced | strict | monitor):
define( 'IMUNIFY_AI_BOT_PROTECTION_PRESET', 'strict' );
View the Bot Traffic Report
To view detailed information about bot traffic, click “View full bot traffic report”.
Turn Off Bot Protection
You can disable Bot Protection directly from the WordPress administration dashboard:
- Open Bot Protection in the Imunify Security widget.
- Click Turn off on this site.
Alternatively, you can disable AI Bot Management by adding the following entry to the website's wp-config.php file:
// Force AI Bot Management off for this site (overrides the widget):
define( 'IMUNIFY_AI_BOT_PROTECTION', false );
This configuration disables AI Bot Management for the website and overrides the setting selected in the WordPress widget.
Updated on: 01/09/2026
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