Coop Stops Scraping & Reduces API Costs with DataDome’s AI-Driven Bot Protection

The Challenge: Bot Attacks Straining Web Performance & Resources

As a popular online retailer, Coop’s website became a target for bot attacks. First, scraping bots were relentless, placing a heavy load on their servers. This led to significantly slower page loading times, impacting the user experience of genuine customers. Moreover, Google penalizes slow websites, which impacted Coop’s SEO rankings, reducing their visibility in search results.

Tobias Schläpfer, one of Coop’s Backend Developer for web applications, had to tackle the problem head-on. “We tried multiple low-level protections, such as a WAF and reCAPTCHA, but it became clear that traditional solutions were no longer enough,” Tobias shares.

In addition to the scraping, Tobias and his team discovered that bots exploited some of the website features, such as “find in stock” and “find a store”, which relied on the Google API. Its excessive use overloaded the API, resulting in extra operational costs of $5,000-$10,000 a month. Legitimate users often found the service unavailable, leading to a poor user experience.

“Our IT teams were burdened with the manual task of analyzing traffic to identify and block bad IP addresses,” Tobias recalls, “which was time-consuming and inefficient, as blocking an IP only provided temporary relief before bots would reappear using new addresses.”

All these problems hampered Coop’s performance, prompting the company to look for a robust solution capable of effectively managing and mitigating the impact of malicious bots.

The Solution: Advanced, AI-Driven, Real-Time Bot Protection

As bot attacks became more sophisticated, reCAPTCHA and a WAF proved insufficient. Coop also attempted to allow trusted traffic while blocking bad bots, but the process was too broad, leading to allow listing too much, which defeated the purpose of having a protective measure in place. So, Coop started searching for a more robust anti-bot solution.

They needed an automatic tool requiring minimal manual input to efficiently handle the ever-evolving bot threats. Of course, ease of integration was crucial, as Coop wanted to quickly and seamlessly implement the solution without disrupting their existing operations.

That is when Coop turned to DataDome, impressed by our multiple layers of machine learning. “The AI support was a huge relief for us,” Tobias explains. “We decided to automate the detection process, allowing us to simply monitor it rather than actively identifying threats ourselves. We were highly impressed by DataDome’s AI-driven approach and its ability to swiftly adapt to new threats.”

The Results: Faster Website, Significant Cost Reduction & Time Savings

Thanks to DataDome’s implementation, Coop saw immediate improvements: 25% of the traffic, which was due to bad bot activity, disappeared, allowing web pages to load faster. A reduction that not only benefits users but has a positive impact on Coop’s SEO rankings.

Blocking bad bots also helped reduce the number of server errors caused by these bots. Tobias explained, “Bots were sending requests with parameters that didn’t exist or targeting non-functional endpoints, creating a lot of negative traffic. Removing 25% of bad bot traffic is significant, but the impact for us Backend Developers feels even greater because normal human users don’t generate so much problematic traffic.”

Beyond DataDome’s outstanding performance, Tobias was impressed with the user-friendly dashboard and detailed insights. “The dashboard is incredibly intuitive and makes it easy to monitor traffic and analyze specific bot activity. I can easily share findings with my colleagues by simply copying and pasting the URL from the dashboard. This is a huge time-saver compared to our previous methods of taking screenshots and manually compiling the data.”

Finally, the ability to set custom rules and receive real-time alerts has helped Coop stay one step ahead of potential threats. “With DataDome, setting up custom rules is a breeze,” says Tobias. “I get an email from a client with an IP address, and within a short period of time, I can set up a customized rule. It’s incredibly efficient. For example, when we had an issue with one of our Service providers missing a request parameter, I was able to quickly look at the requests, identify the missing parameters, and adjust the custom rule in no time. This speed and flexibility are invaluable.”

By upgrading to a more dynamic, modern anti-bot solution, Coop strengthened its bot protection, but also enhanced the overall user experience. For example, the new system eliminated friction points that previously required repetitive user verification, streamlining processes for both users and administrators.

Overall, the implementation of DataDome has enhanced Coop’s website performance, user experience, operational efficiency, and cost management.