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Tag Archives: web crawlers
Webpage direct visits: bots, crawlers, or real visitors?
"Are webpage visits coming from a direct visit (vs a search) from bots or crawlers vs real visitors, or perhaps AI scrapers?"
Yes - a significant portion of direct webpage visits can come from bots, crawlers, and AI scraping content, not just real human visitors. But how much depends on the site, traffic level, and what kind of page you’re looking at.
Below is a clear breakdown.
1. What “Direct” Traffic Really Means
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Posted in Ask David!, Website Traffic
Tagged ai, AI crawling, ai scrapers, analytics accuracy, bot traffic, bots, bots vs humans, content scraping, crawlers, direct traffic, fake direct traffic, fake traffic, google analytics, matomo, raw server logs, real visitors, robots, seo, SEO analytics, server logs, traffic analysis, web crawlers, website analytics, website monitoring
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AI Gone Rogue Again? Perplexity Bots Bypass IP Blocks and Robots.txt
Just months after Claude’s so-called “blackmail” stunt fueled fears about agentic AI models, the web is facing another wave of rogue behavior. This time, Perplexity AI is under fire for sneaking past website blocks, disguising its bots, and scraping content without permission. While Claude sparked debates about AI ethics and control, Perplexity highlights a more widespread, everyday threat to publishers: unconsented content harvesting at massive scale.
Ignoring Robots.txt
Cloudflare, which recently expanded into bot management, reported that Perplexity’s crawlers often
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