Why bot management is indispensable today
The digital landscape is changing rapidly: More and more website visits are coming not from humans, but from bots - and their behaviour is becoming increasingly unpredictable. According to recent studies, over 13% of AI bots now ignore the instructions in the robots.txt file, which has been the standard for controlling crawlers for decades. At the same time, the proportion of malicious bots that overload servers, extract data and impair the performance of websites is increasing. This poses an enormous challenge for operators of content management systems (CMS): How can they ensure the availability and performance of their own platform without penalising legitimate users?
EGOCMS offers an intelligent solution: the bot brake. This feature dynamically regulates bot access and only accepts requests when the server load allows it. But why is this necessary - and how does it work?
The challenge: bots ignore rules, servers suffer
The challenge: bots ignore rules, servers suffer
The end of the robots.txt era
Since 1994, robots.txt has served as the "silent guardian of digital politeness". But in 2025, it is clear that many modern bots, especially AI-supported crawlers, deliberately disregard these guidelines. OpenAI, Perplexity AI and other AI providers extract content on an industrial scale, often without any significant return for the website operator. The result: servers are overloaded, real users experience slow loading times, and hosting and bandwidth costs increase.
The figures speak for themselves
Every third website visitor is now a bot. AI crawlers such as OpenAI-GPTBot scan millions of websites every day, surpassing even Googlebot in terms of reach. This development leads to distorted analytics data, higher infrastructure costs and a poorer user experience for real visitors.
The solution: EGOCMS Botbremse - intelligent load control
The solution: EGOCMS Botbremse - intelligent load control
Dynamic access control
The EGOCMS bot brake analyses the current server load in real time. Bot requests are only processed if sufficient resources are available. This ensures that performance for human users is always prioritised.
Protection against overload and misuse
- Automatic throttling: Bot requests are delayed or temporarily blocked if the load is high.
- Prioritisation: Legitimate users and important services are always given priority.
The bot brake is a new feature of EGOCMS version 25.4. Further information on the bot brake can be found in the EGOCMS Help.
Why traditional methods fail
Why traditional methods fail
robots.txt: A relic of the past
robots.txt was never intended as a security feature, but as a courtesy rule. Today, it is simply ignored by many bots - especially by AI agents that extract content for training purposes(obituary robots.txt at heise.de).
CAPTCHAs and IP blocking: Inadequate and not user-friendly
- CAPTCHAs also hinder real users and are often no longer an obstacle for modern bots.
- IP blocking is ineffective, as many bots constantly change their IP addresses or operate via proxies.
Alternative protocols: Not yet established
Google and others are discussing successor solutions such as ai.txt or HTTP headers, but these have not yet been implemented across the board and can also be circumvented.
Conclusion: Proactive bot management as standard
Conclusion: Proactive bot management as standard
The EGOCMS bot brake shows how modern CMS technology responds to current challenges: not with static rules, but with dynamic, load-dependent control. For companies, universities and public institutions - the main target group of EGOCMS - this means more stability, security and control over their own digital presence.
What can you do?
What can you do?
- Check how much of your traffic comes from bots - and whether they are putting an unnecessary strain on your resources.
- Rely on solutions that intelligently manage bot access instead of relying on outdated protocols.
- Find out more about the bot brake and other innovations from EGOCMS.
As a long-standing EGOTEC customer and EGOCMS user, you know - simply update.
If you have any questions about configuring the bot brake, simply contact EGOCMS support