Definition
Bot traffic is any request to your site made by software instead of a person using a browser. It includes search engine crawlers, AI crawlers, uptime monitors, SEO tools, feed readers and scrapers. Bots identify themselves with a user-agent string, though some disguise themselves as regular browsers.
For example, Aarvi Skin's server logs might show requests from Googlebot, GPTBot, a monitoring service and an unidentified scraper in the same hour. Most analytics tools filter known bots out of visitor reports, so this activity is usually visible only in server or CDN logs.
Why it matters
Separating AI crawlers from the rest of your bot traffic shows which AI systems are actually reading your pages and how often. If the search crawler for an assistant never visits your key product pages, that is worth investigating before any content work. Logs can also reveal crawlers blocked by a firewall you did not know about, or heavy scraping that affects site performance. Bot data complements answer tracking rather than replacing it.
What to do
- Export server or CDN logs and group requests by user-agent.
- Tag known AI crawlers separately and verify important ones against published IP ranges.
- Check which pages each AI crawler requests and whether any receive errors or blocks.
Common questions
Can I see AI crawler visits in Google Analytics?
Usually not. Tag-based analytics tools rely on JavaScript running in a browser, and most crawlers do not run those tags. Analytics platforms also filter known bots. To see AI crawler activity, review server logs, CDN logs or a dedicated log analysis tool instead.
Is bot traffic bad for my website?
Not necessarily. Search and AI crawlers are how your pages get discovered. Some bots, such as aggressive scrapers, can waste resources or copy content. The goal is to identify which bots visit, decide which you want, and manage the rest with robots.txt, rate limits or firewall rules.