---
title: Monitoring bot traffic
summary: null
url: >-
  https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/security/bot-management/contentguard/monitoring-bot-traffic
---

Once you've enabled pre-cache inspection for Bot Management on your service, you can monitor bot activity using the [Bot overview](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/security/bot-management/contentguard/monitoring-bot-traffic#bot-overview-dashboard) dashboard and the [Protection page](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/security/bot-management/contentguard/monitoring-bot-traffic#protection-page) in the Fastly control panel. For more detail, you can set up [real-time log streaming](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/integrations/streaming-logs/setting-up-remote-log-streaming) and include bot detection variables in your [custom log format](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/integrations/streaming-logs/custom-log-formats).

## Prerequisites

Before monitoring your bot traffic, you must:

- purchase [Bot Management](https://docs.fastly.com/products/bot-management).
- [deploy Bot Management](https://www.fastly.com/documentation/guides/security/bot-management/about-bot-management/#deploying-bot-management) using pre-cache inspection on each Fastly service where you intend to use ContentGuard.

## Bot overview dashboard

Use the Bot overview dashboard to monitor the volume and types of bot traffic directed at your service.

To access the dashboard in the Fastly control panel:

1.   Log in to the [Fastly control panel](https://manage.fastly.com).

2. Go to **Security** > **Bot Management** > **Dashboards**.
3. _(Optional)_ Use the **Service** and **Time** menus to filter the displayed data by specific services and time ranges.

The dashboard includes the following cards:

- **Total bot inspected requests:** the total number of requests.
- **Human traffic:** the percentage of inspected traffic identified as human visitors.
- **Bot traffic percentage:** the percentage of inspected traffic identified as bot activity.
- **Request traffic:** a line graph showing request volume over time, broken down by Bot Management action (e.g., blocked).
- **Bot traffic by category:** a line graph showing bot request volume over time, grouped by bot category (e.g., search engines, social media bots).
- **Top bots by requests:** a table listing the most active bots by request count, including each bot's identity, category, and the action applied to its requests.

> **NOTE:** Metrics are based on statistical sampling. Fastly analyzes a percentage of traffic and scales the results to represent your total traffic volume. While this approach provides representative metrics with minimal performance impact, the metrics may vary slightly from exact totals.

## Protection page

Use the Protection page to see the number of requests for each bot category and identity. To access the Protection page:

1.   Log in to the [Fastly control panel](https://manage.fastly.com).

2. Go to **Security** > **Bot Management** > **Protection**.
3. _(Optional)_ Click **Configure bots** in the row of a bot category to view the number of requests per bot identity.