AI Bots Account for 52% of Web Traffic: More Than Humans

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Over Half of Web Traffic is AI Bots — 3 Key Numbers

  • 52.3% of all web traffic originates from AI bots[AI CERTs]
  • LLM training crawler traffic increased 4x in 8 months, from 2.6% to 10.1%[2026 AI Bot Impact Report]
  • Meta AI bots account for 52% of all AI crawler traffic, dwarfing Google (23%) and OpenAI (20%)

What Happened?

In 2026, AI bots have taken over the majority of internet traffic. According to the 2026 AI Bot Impact Report, 52% of all web traffic comes from bots, surpassing human user traffic (47.7%).[2026 AI Bot Impact Report]

In particular, LLM training crawlers have surged. As AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind collect data from the web on a massive scale for model training, this sector alone accounts for 35% of traffic.[AI CERTs]

OpenAI’s GPTBot grew by 305% during the tracking period, and user behavior crawling that executes JavaScript also increased 15-fold in 2025.[2026 AI Bot Impact Report]

Why Does It Matter?

Frankly, this is a sign that the fundamental economic structure of the internet is shaking.

Websites operate on advertising revenue. But what if more than half of the visitors are bots that don’t see ads? The advertising model itself is threatened. Personally, I think the impact this will have on the entire content industry is still underestimated.

More serious is the server load. AI bots consume up to 70% of dynamic resources, exacerbating the “noisy neighbor” problem in shared hosting environments. One site’s bot traffic degrades the performance of other sites on the same server.

Companies like Cloudflare are releasing AI crawler blocking tools, and some publishers are starting to adopt a “pay-per-crawl” model. The era of scraping content for free is coming to an end.

What Will Happen in the Future?

AI bot traffic is expected to continue to increase. The demand for model training from AI companies shows no signs of decreasing, and the emergence of AI agents is increasing the number of cases where bots directly explore websites.

Website operators are at a crossroads. There is data that blocking AI crawlers reduces traffic by 75%.[2026 AI Bot Impact Report] Blocking them is a concern for search exposure, and allowing them increases server costs.

Ultimately, a new agreement between AI companies and content creators seems necessary. The current free-riding structure is unsustainable.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: Does AI bot traffic affect my site speed?

A: Yes. AI crawlers request far more pages quickly than regular users. If you use shared hosting, your site may also slow down due to bot traffic from other sites on the same server. If your Core Web Vitals score drops, it will negatively impact your SEO.

Q: Will blocking AI crawlers lower my search ranking?

A: Search engine crawlers like Google and Bing are different from AI training crawlers. Blocking GPTBot or Anthropic crawlers does not directly affect Google search rankings. However, exposure in AI search services may decrease.

Q: How do I check AI bot traffic on my site?

A: You can analyze the User-Agent in the server logs. Look for strings like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended. If you use a CDN like Cloudflare, you can view AI crawler traffic separately in the bot management dashboard.

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