AI Traffic: How to Detect Artificial Intelligence Bots on Your Website
AI-generated traffic is exploding. Learn how to identify GPTBot, Perplexity, Claude, and especially those that don't identify themselves, thanks to Senthor technology.
Article about detecting artificial intelligence bot traffic. Explains how to identify GPTBot (OpenAI/ChatGPT), PerplexityBot, Claude (Anthropic), Applebot-Extended, Google-Extended, and unidentified AI bots. Presents Senthor technology for detecting invisible AI crawlers through behavioral analysis. Includes comparison table of known AI bots and Schema.org-optimized FAQ.
AI-generated traffic is exploding.
Since 2024, a growing share of web requests no longer comes from human users, but from bots feeding models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude.
The problem is that only some of these bots clearly identify themselves. Many remain invisible, bypass the robots.txt file, and leave no obvious trace in your standard analytics tools.
This is precisely what Senthor helps reveal: understand, measure, and regain control over AI access to your content.
Why This Matters
AIs already exploit billions of web pages to train and generate responses.
- They consume your bandwidth
- They use your content
- They potentially affect your SEO value
Without proper tools, it's impossible to know which AIs are crawling you or what they're taking.
Detecting AI traffic is no longer a technical curiosity. It's a strategic issue for publishers, agencies, and content creators.
What is AI Traffic
AI traffic groups all requests made by automated agents, often called AI crawlers. These agents are used by large artificial intelligence models to explore and ingest web pages.
Examples of Known AI Bots
- GPTBot (OpenAI) - used by ChatGPT
- PerplexityBot (Perplexity.ai) - AI answer engine
- Claude-Web / ClaudeBot (Anthropic) - Claude AI assistant
- Applebot-Extended (Apple) - Apple Intelligence
- Google-Extended (Google) - Search Generative Experience
- And many others: Cohere, You.com, Mistral, Meta AI...
⚠️ Important: These official bots represent only a visible portion of AI traffic. Many others collect data without identifying themselves or respecting web standards. This is where the difficulty lies: what's visible is just the tip of the iceberg.
How to Recognize and Measure AI Traffic
1. Visible Signs in Your Logs
Server logs remain the best source of information. They record all requests received by your site.
Typical signs of AI traffic:
- Frequent requests on text-rich pages (articles, product pages, documentation)
- Absence of cookies, sessions, or referrer
- Abnormally high HTML / media files ratio
- Sequential access to deep or old pages
💡 Some bots like GPTBot or PerplexityBot have explicit User-Agents. But many others don't, and that's precisely where traditional methods show their limits.
2. Limitations of Traditional Tools
Even with logs or analytical tools like Google Analytics 4, a large part of AI traffic goes unnoticed. Why?
Because these bots:
- Don't execute the analytics script
- Leave no standard identifier
- Use proxies or dynamic IPs
👉 To go further, check out our guide on creating an AI view in Google Analytics 4.
But remember one thing: GA4 only shows visible traffic. The most discreet AIs don't appear there.
3. How Senthor Detects AIs, Even Invisible Ones
Senthor doesn't limit itself to declared User-Agents.
The technology directly analyzes requests and their behavioral patterns to spot hidden signatures of AI traffic:
- Frequency and depth of exploration
- Semantic similarities between visited pages
- Navigation patterns impossible for a human
- Correlation between visible and invisible crawls
✅ Thanks to this behavioral and network approach, Senthor also detects unidentified AI bots, even those masquerading as classic browsers or legitimate search engines.
Where robots.txt or analytics stop, Senthor continues.
Senthor interface: real-time visualization of AI bot traffic on your website
Identifying Known Bots (and Understanding Their Limits)
| Bot | Origin | Declaration | Robots.txt Respect | Particularity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
GPTBot | OpenAI | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | Respects Disallow directive but not always frequency. |
PerplexityBot | Perplexity.ai | ✅ Yes | ❌ No | Fast crawl, often linked to responses generated in Perplexity. |
Claude-Web | Anthropic | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Partial | Light and spaced crawl, but doesn't always respect directives. |
Applebot-Extended | Apple | ✅ Yes | ⚠️ Partial | Used for Apple Intelligence, variable robots.txt respect. |
Google-Extended | ⚠️ Indirect | ⚠️ Partial | Activates AI collection via SGE, variable respect depending on implementation. |
⚠️ Warning: Some AI bots don't identify themselves at all and operate without specific User-Agent. Senthor can spot them through a combination of behavioral, linguistic, and network analysis.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
1. Relying Only on User-Agent
The most advanced AIs no longer send explicit identifiers. Some bots even use classic browser User-Agents to go unnoticed.
2. Thinking robots.txt File is Enough
As explained in our article "Why robots.txt is no longer enough", it was never designed for modern AIs and is neither mandatory nor respected by most of them.
3. Blocking All AI Traffic Without Distinction
Some crawlers can contribute to your visibility in AI answer engines (like Search Generative Experience). Better to understand before blocking.
Check out our AI Visibility rankings to see how different sites manage their presence in AIs.
4. Not Keeping History
Analyzing logs over several weeks allows you to observe trends and prove AI traffic evolution over time.
Measure, Understand, Act
The first step isn't to block, but to measure.
Once AI traffic mapping is established, you can:
- Identify legitimate actors
- Evaluate real server load
- Quantify explored content value
- Decide to allow, limit, block, or open dialogue
Senthor allows you to track this data in real-time, distinguish declared crawlers from anonymous ones, and develop a protection and monetization strategy adapted to your site.
Discover What AIs Do on Your Website
Senthor detects, visualizes, and controls AI traffic, whether declared or not. Understand exactly which artificial intelligences are exploring your content.
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions About AI Traffic
What is AI traffic?
AI traffic consists of visits generated by artificial intelligences that explore the web to feed their learning models. These bots (like GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Claude) crawl millions of pages to train language models.
Can all AI bots be detected?
No, no method is 100% infallible. However, Senthor's behavioral and network analyses can spot even those that don't identify themselves, by analyzing navigation patterns, request frequency, and semantic similarities between visited pages.
Does GA4 allow tracking AI traffic?
Only partially. Google Analytics 4 only displays bots executing the analytics script (which is rare for crawlers). The rest must be analyzed with advanced detection tools like Senthor that work at the server level. See our guide on analyzing LLM traffic in GA4.
Is blocking AI bots a good idea?
Not always. Some crawlers contribute to your visibility in AI answer engines (like Perplexity or Google's Search Generative Experience). It's better to observe their behavior before taking action. Senthor allows you to selectively block some bots while allowing others.
How does Senthor detect unidentified AI bots?
Senthor uses a combination of analyses: behavioral (navigation patterns impossible for humans), network (correlation between IPs and crawls), linguistic (semantic similarity of visited pages), and temporal (frequency and depth of exploration). This multi-dimensional approach can detect even masked bots.
What is the cost of Senthor?
Senthor offers a free plan at €0 that includes complete AI bot detection, an analytics dashboard, and 3-month history. The Pro plan at €499/month adds selective blocking, advanced protection, and monetization (coming soon). More info on the pricing page.