Definition: bot

(1) (roBOT) See robot, chatbot, botnet, botcloud and crypto bot.

(2) (roBOT) A search engine program that indexes the Web. See spider.

(3) (roBOT) A program that performs a repetitive function 24/7 or waits in the background to be triggered by some event (time of day, receipt of data, etc.). The term bot is used for myriad "intelligent agents" on the Web, and it is estimated that more than half the Web's traffic comes from bots and not humans. A bot can be programmed to do almost anything from posting a message to starting up or closing down other software processes.

A bot is often used to find information. For example, a "spider" is a search engine bot that "crawls" the Web 24/7 looking for Web pages. A bot can also run in a user's machine or in a server in a private network. See social bot, scalper bot, trader bot, spambot, chatbot, agent, CAPTCHA and trolling.

(4) (BOT) (Beginning Of Tape) The status of a magnetic tape file when it is first mounted in the drive. See BOF.

(5) (BOT) (Bulk-Only Transport) The early USB protocol for external storage drives. See UASP.