reCAPTCHA is a free user authentication program that enables you to verify if a user on your website is human. Maintained by Google, this handy little software is a CAPTCHA-like system designed to help stop bots from abusing your site traffic. The v3 service now includes a scoring system that identifies which user action is most likely suspicious and filter them out to keep your website free from spambots and your real users happy. reCAPTCHA aims to be easy on humans but hard on bots. It’s used all around the world and helps in boosting productivity.

Nab those bots

A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to figure out whether or not the user is human. It stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." These are the little online tests that stop you from accessing a webpage for a moment, as the site has suddenly detected a strange amount of traffic while you’re around. The tests range from distorted words and numbers or audio snippets you have to type out to clicking which images contain a certain item. 

The most popular you’ll encounter, however, is the simple checkbox you have to manually tick. Once you’ve completed the test, the webpage will load. reCAPTCHA does all of these and allows you to implement it on your website to keep an eye on things. Spambots can hurt your traffic and content—and most especially annoy your human users—so using this program helps filter these bots away. It also lessens the instances wherein your users will encounter them, showing how reliable your site is. 

reCAPTCHA offers advanced security measures in the form of a score-based mechanic that checks which parts of your site have unusual traffic patterns. You can then apply a verification score on how the users going through those parts interact with the website and be able to block low-scoring users at the moment until you can personally check if they’re actually human. Setting up its code can be a bit tricky, though.