Note: Bot filtering will be available from 5 November 2026. Until then, the setting won't appear in your Analytics settings.
Not every visit to your content comes from a real person. This article explains how Turtl identifies suspected bot traffic, how to exclude it from your analytics, and what you might notice in your reports.
What counts as bot traffic
Bots are automated services that open web pages without a person behind them. Many are legitimate and useful, but they aren't your audience. Common types include:
Search engine crawlers: Services that index pages for search results.
SEO and site audit tools: Tools that scan pages to check performance and rankings.
Security and compliance scanners: Services that check pages for cookies, security issues or accessibility.
AI crawlers: Services that collect content for AI search and assistants.
Link preview tools: Services that fetch a page to show a preview when a link is shared.
Ad-verification services: Services that ad platforms use to check the page an ad points to.
Some of these bots load Turtl Docs fully enough to look like engaged readers, which can inflate your reads, contacts and engagement.
How Turtl identifies bots
Every time content is opened, the visit carries information about the browser or tool that opened it, known as the user agent. Most bots identify themselves there. Some ad-verification services look like ordinary browsers, but they can be identified by the source they come from.
Each day, Turtl checks new traffic against a library of known bot signatures. The library is updated automatically as new bots appear, and every new signature is checked against real reader traffic so that genuine readers aren't excluded by mistake.
What happens when you exclude suspected bot traffic
When you exclude suspected bot traffic, all activity from identified bots is excluded from your analytics dashboards and MCP-supported queries. This includes:
Contacts
Visits
Reads and engaged reads
Read time
Sign-ups
The exclusion applies to your historic data as well as new activity, so your trends compare like with like.
Excluded activity isn't deleted. Turtl keeps capturing it in the background, so you can include it again at any time.
Note: Sign-ups that have already been sent to your CRM or marketing automation platform stay there. The setting only changes what you see in Turtl.
How to exclude suspected bot traffic
Only Global Admins and Admins can change this setting, and it applies across your whole Turtl team.
Go to "Settings" and open the "Analytics" tab.
Scroll down to "Bot filtering".
Switch on "Filter out known bots".
Click "Save".
Your dashboards update to exclude suspected bot traffic, including historic data. Engagement and intent scores and the weekly update email update overnight, so for up to a day they may not match your dashboards.
To include suspected bot traffic again, switch "Filter out known bots" off and click "Save".
Note: New Turtl accounts have bot filtering switched on from day one. Existing accounts keep suspected bot traffic included until a Global Admin or Admin switches it on.
What you might notice in your analytics
When you exclude suspected bot traffic, you may see lower figures than before, including for past date ranges. This is expected, as the excluded activity didn't come from real readers.
The change is usually largest for:
Docs promoted through paid ads, as ad platforms check destination pages automatically
Publicly available Docs that are indexed by search engines
Docs on websites that are regularly scanned by SEO or compliance tools
If you shared reports or exports before the change, we recommend re-running them so that the figures match your dashboard.
What bot detection doesn't do
It doesn't exclude bots that disguise themselves as regular browsers. A small amount of automated traffic may still appear in your analytics.
It doesn't change how a read or bounce is defined. See Analytics FAQs.
It doesn't replace blocked IPs. You can still ask the Support Team to block specific IP addresses, for example, your own office network.
If you still see unusual activity
If you notice activity that looks automated, such as many visits from one location in a short time or reads with very short read times, contact the Support Team with:
The Doc or dashboard URL.
The date range you're looking at.
What looks unusual.
We'll investigate and, where needed, block the traffic.