For website owners, attracting visitors and turning them into clients has always been the main goal – and challenge. But today, it’s not only about getting to the top of search results. With hundreds of millions of people using AI tools, it’s also about getting on the AI radar.<\/p>
Our analysis of 66.7 billion web crawlers<\/strong> (also called bots or spiders) across 5+ million<\/strong> websites<\/strong> draws a new picture of the web, and one pattern stands out:<\/p> AI-driven bots – especially those powering assistants like ChatGPT, Siri, TikTok Search, and Petal Search – are steadily increasing their reach across the web. The role of AI in web discovery is becoming more “search-like”.<\/strong><\/p> Even when the total number of AI-driven bot requests decreases, the share of websites they crawl keeps growing. On the other hand, LLM training bots like OpenAI’s GPTBot and Meta’s ExternalAgent show the opposite trend: fewer sites let them in, resulting in steep drops in coverage despite their heavy overall activity.<\/p> Traditional search bots remain stable and predictable. SEO and monitoring crawlers slowly shrink. Social and ad-related bots fluctuate but maintain modest, consistent coverage.<\/p> Let’s dive deep into the numbers to better understand who is really crawling the internet, how their behavior is changing, and what this means for you in 2026.<\/p>