Some Web Devs Are Building for Bots, Not People – And It Shows

Have you ever opened a webpage and thought, “This feels weird”? It rarely feels like it was designed with you in mind. Within seconds, pop-ups block the content. After fighting through them, you have to scroll past walls of generic, SEO-saturated text. Eventually, you find the thing you actually came for – buried under jargon, widgets, and filler. That is, if it’s even there at all.

Why is it like this? Most websites aren’t built with people in mind. They’re built to please the bots: search engine crawlers, analytics tools, recommendation engines, and AI scrapers. The real users – you and I – have become an afterthought.

How did we get here? Most developers don’t set out to build bloated, frustrating sites, but the ecosystem has backed them into a corner.

• Search engines reward “optimised” content, so teams chase keyword density, structured data, and massive FAQ sections just to rank.
• Marketing teams demand analytics, filling pages with trackers, heat maps, and A/B testing scripts to spy on users.
• Executives chase engagement metrics, turning interfaces into manipulative mazes.
• AI scrapers want volume, so articles become formulaic and long-winded – written to be parsed by machines, not enjoyed by humans.

The incentives are clear: If the bots are happy, the metrics improve, and the business is happy. It is the human user who is expected to adapt.

The Symptoms (What We Humans Hate)

We feel the consequences every day, and we’ve started to treat them as normal. But they are anything but.

1. The Recipe Site Novella. I personally hate this one. You’ve found the perfect dinner recipe, and instead of just showing you the ingredients and method, you’re forced to scroll through a 3,000-word life story containing:

• The author’s childhood memories.
• What their grandmother used to cook for them.
• A tangent on organic farming.
• …and finally, buried under all of that, the ingredients list.

Why? Because bots prioritise “time on page” and long-form content. Users do not – just give me the recipe.

2. The News Site Minefield. Open a news article to get the latest celebrity gossip, and you land in a hostile environment.

• Floating ads that follow your every move.
• Stories broken up into 12 different pages or slides.
• Pop-up surveys or newsletters every 2 seconds.

The news story isn’t the product anymore; it’s merely the bait to get you to view the ads.

3. The Cluttered E-Commerce Page. All you want is the basic product info. Instead, the page is screaming at you:

• “People also bought…”
• “Top-reviewed in your area!”
• “Frequently bought together!”

Plus, 30 third-party scripts are running in the background, slowing everything down. By the time the page settles, you’ve forgotten why you came…

Don’t Blame the Developers

It’s easy to blame the people writing the code, but the truth is: developers only build what they are asked to build. They aren’t the villains; they are responding to orders from above:

• Product Managers chasing quarterly KPIs.
• Marketing Teams are obsessed with SEO superstition.
• Growth Teams optimising for engagement over experience.
• Business Models dependent on data extraction and attention farming.

The web didn’t change because developers forgot how to build good websites. It became this way because the incentives reward bot-pleasing patterns over human-centric design.

So, is there a better way?

Of course there is, and the answer is simple: Build for humans first.

The irony is that sites built for humans tend to perform better with bots, too. Search engines are getting smarter; they are increasingly ignoring “hacks” and measuring real-world usability. A healthier approach to web development prioritises the person behind the screen:

• Prioritise Performance: Build sites that load faster by ruthlessly limiting third-party tracking scripts.
• Write for Readers, Not Robots: Create content people actually want to read. Users stay on a page because the content is engaging, not because you trapped them there or hid the information they needed.
• Embrace Accessibility: Make your website usable by everyone. When you use semantic HTML and clear navigation to help users, guess what? The bots understand your site better, too.
• Reduce the Noise: Nobody wants countless popups. Users don’t engage with them; they just close them to get to the content.
• Measure Real Outcomes: Stop chasing vanity “engagement” metrics and start measuring user satisfaction. Did the user succeed? Did they find what they needed? Will they return?

These are human metrics, and unlike bot statistics, they are the only ones that drive long-term business success.

The Web Doesn’t Have to Stay Like This. The modern web feels like a maze built for bots rather than the people who actually use it. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Designers, developers, writers, and product teams have a choice. We can choose substance over superstition. We can choose usability over manipulation. We can choose people over bots.

Because at the end of the day, the bots aren’t buying your products. Bots don’t cook your recipes. And bots won’t become loyal customers.

Humans do.

If you want a web development agency that works human-first, get in touch with us today.