Etsy, the global destination for unique and creative goods, wanted to gain more control over scrapers and other types of bots. Using DataDome’s AI-powered solution, they reduced computing costs and improved data accuracy by filtering bot traffic. This has enabled Etsy to protect its community of millions of buyers and sellers.

“DataDome offers a lot of flexibility. We frequently refine our integration as attackers change their tactics and DataDome provides many options. Overall, I’m a fan of the platform.”

The challenge: Escalating bot threats leading to resource drain, skewed data, & fraudulent transactions

Etsy wanted to solve for the growing presence of “scrapers” which would gather information on publicly visible content by pretending to be shoppers. Mike Adler, the company’s Principal Systems Architect, recalls the early days when bot traffic was more of an inconvenience than a serious problem. “It started as something harmless we would notice, maybe a bit of annoyance, but we tolerated it,” he says. For many years, the bot activity was not critical enough to warrant interventions which would run the risk of bothering real users.

However, as Etsy grew into a larger marketplace, more bots showed interest in the platform. At the same time, Etsy was improving the customer experience with more and more machine learning, which can increase the amount of servers needed to serve pages. As a cost-conscious company, they wanted to stay in control of how resources were used.

Etsy analyzed their data and estimated that, if left unmanaged, scrapers could possibly account for about 1% of Etsy’s computing costs. “At our scale, 1% is big enough to justify making investments,” notes Mike.

As the bots grew into more of a nuisance, it took more work to prevent impacts. The scrapers might accidentally slow down one database and while it might not affect users, it could result in engineers being alerted. This was toilsome and caused annoying distractions.

The company was ready to try a more sophisticated approach to manage this growing threat.

The solution: Seamless integration with Google Cloud, cost-effectiveness & no impact on legitimate users

When Etsy searched for a bot management platform, one of the key considerations was finding a provider that could seamlessly integrate with its existing infrastructure. The company migrated their website and mobile apps to Google Cloud in 2018 to improve performance and engineering efficiency. It was therefore essential that any new solution worked harmoniously. DataDome is designed to integrate quickly and easily with all Google Cloud services, without disrupting existing application infrastructure or workflows.

Two other criteria were central for Mike and his team: cost-effectiveness and the management of false positives. “It was important that the cost of running the solution was outweighed by the savings from reduced bot traffic. We needed it to be ROI-positive,” Mike explains. DataDome’s flexible pricing model and scalable infrastructure enabled Etsy to deploy the solution across its entire ecosystem without worrying about escalating costs. 

While Etsy feels it’s important to minimize waste and mitigate admin toil, the paramount concern is protecting the customer experience of users that manage their business on Etsy. False positives—incorrectly identifying legitimate users as bots—can degrade the user experience and risk the success of the sellers. To address this, DataDome worked closely with Etsy to run extensive testing over several months. “We needed to be absolutely certain that false positives wouldn’t hurt the conversion rates for our sellers,” Mike says. With DataDome, they were able to block bots while preserving user experience.

By combining DataDome’s AI-driven bot management with Google Cloud’s powerful, scalable infrastructure, Etsy found the best-of-breed solution to safeguard its platform.

The results: Reduction in bot traffic, cost savings, & ever-evolving bot protection 

As promised, DataDome seamlessly connected with Etsy’s Google Cloud infrastructure, enabling the platform to scale without interruption. “We needed a solution that could handle our scale and complexity, and DataDome met our requirements,” Mike Adler reflects.

One of the most noticeable and immediate results was the reduction in bot-driven resource wastage. After deploying DataDome, Mike saw a notable decrease in computing workload on one important cluster, due to preventing scrapers from hitting high-traffic product pages. This translated into significant cost savings, reinforcing DataDome’s ROI-positive promise. 

The trial offered by DataDome was another key element of the venture, allowing Etsy to rigorously test the solution. “Having the flexibility to run all our tests during the trial period gave us confidence that we could deploy DataDome without affecting conversion rates or user experience,” notes Mike. The DataDome team offered Etsy great flexibility throughout the process. “They were responsive when adjustments were needed, ensuring the solution evolved alongside the changing tactics of attackers.” 

In the end, DataDome and Google Cloud provided Etsy with a first-class solution for managing bot traffic and comprehensive security for its websites and mobile apps. The integration was seamless, the cost savings were real, and the accuracy of the solution; both in stopping bots and preserving user experience, is satisfying. 

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