> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://tinyanalytics.io/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Bot and AI Crawler Analytics

> Separate automated requests from human analytics, measure bot traffic, and see which AI crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot read your site.

The Bots & AI crawlers report shows automated traffic **separately from your human analytics**: how many bot requests your site gets, what share of all traffic they are, and which bots and AI crawlers are visiting. Bots never appear in your human sessions, visitor counts, or the live counter — so this report is where you go to see them on purpose, especially the AI crawlers reading your pages for models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity.

## What do the overview cards show?

The report opens with eight cards summarizing automated traffic for the current window and filters. The first two are totals; the remaining six count how many requests each detection layer caught.

| Card                     | What it means                                                                                                    |
| ------------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Bot requests**         | Total automated requests detected.                                                                               |
| **Bot share of traffic** | Bot requests as a percentage of all traffic (bots + humans).                                                     |
| **UA pattern**           | Caught by a known crawler, scanner, or automation string in the user agent.                                      |
| **Bot ASN**              | Caught by originating from a hosting, cloud, proxy, or datacenter network.                                       |
| **Header heuristics**    | Caught by HTTP headers missing what a real browser always sends.                                                 |
| **Rate anomaly**         | Caught by crawl-shaped bursts — many requests from one visitor, or one IP fanning across many paths or hosts.    |
| **Client signals**       | Caught by automation tells in the browser itself, such as `navigator.webdriver` or impossible screen dimensions. |
| **Referrer spam**        | Caught by a referrer host on the Matomo referrer-spam blocklist.                                                 |

## How does tinyanalytics detect bots?

tinyanalytics runs **six detection layers** over every request, listed in the table above. They range from the obvious — a crawler that announces itself in its user agent — to signals that catch bots actively hiding, like datacenter networks, missing browser headers, crawl-shaped request bursts, and automation flags in the browser runtime.

A request flagged by **any** layer is counted here instead of in your human analytics. Because the layers overlap, one request can be caught by several at once, so the six layer counts can add up to more than the **Bot requests** total.

Detected bots are given synthetic sessions and kept entirely out of your session counts and live visitor counter, so automated traffic can never inflate your real numbers.

<Note>
  Period comparison isn't available on this report. The date-range picker on the Bots & AI crawlers page has no compare option — see [compare periods](/docs/analytics-period-comparison).
</Note>

## Which AI crawlers are reading my site?

The report leads with an **AI crawlers** section naming the AI bots that visited — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, CCBot, and others. A crawler that hides its user-agent but comes from a known AI network is still counted and named by its **operator** (such as Anthropic or OpenAI). AI crawlers that can't be named individually roll up into **Other AI crawler**.

The bot-traffic-over-time chart draws a second **"of which AI crawlers"** line beneath the total, so you can see AI crawling grow independently of ordinary bot traffic. It's styled in violet rather than the red of the total line — an AI crawler reading your site is usually something you *want* if you care about being cited in AI answers.

## How is bot traffic broken down?

Below the chart, bot traffic is broken down the same way human traffic is:

* **Referrers, Pages, Countries** — where bots come from and what they hit.
* **Devices** — the browser, operating system, and device a bot reports (often sparse for headless crawlers).
* **Categories, patterns, and networks** — the bot's category (search, AI, social), the matched pattern, and the operating network.

Click a filterable row to narrow the whole report to it.

<Info>
  **Crawling is not citation.** This report shows that an AI crawler *read* a page — the step that comes before you're cited in an AI answer. It cannot tell you whether a crawl produced a citation, and no user-agent or referrer can: that needs the AI platforms' own data. To see the *other* end of the funnel — humans who clicked through from an AI answer — use the [AI traffic report](/docs/ai-referral-traffic-analytics).
</Info>

## Frequently asked questions

<AccordionGroup>
  <Accordion title="Do bots count toward my visitor numbers in tinyanalytics?">
    No. Detected bots are given synthetic sessions and kept entirely out of your session counts, visitor counts, and live visitor counter, so automated traffic can never inflate your real numbers. The Bots & AI crawlers report is where you see that traffic on purpose.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Can tinyanalytics detect bots that hide their user-agent?">
    Yes. tinyanalytics flags a request as a bot in two ways: a known user-agent pattern, and a known network (the ASN a crawler operates from). The network check catches crawlers that disguise their user-agent, and those are named by their operator, such as Anthropic or OpenAI.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Which AI crawlers does the tinyanalytics bots report name?">
    The AI crawlers section names GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, CCBot, and others. AI crawlers that can't be named individually roll up into **Other AI crawler**.
  </Accordion>

  <Accordion title="Does a crawl mean an AI assistant cited my page?">
    No. The Bots & AI crawlers report shows only that an AI crawler read a page — the step that comes before a citation. No user-agent or referrer can tell you whether a crawl produced a citation. To see humans who clicked through from an AI answer, use the [AI traffic report](/docs/ai-referral-traffic-analytics).
  </Accordion>
</AccordionGroup>

## Related

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="AI traffic" icon="robot" href="/docs/ai-referral-traffic-analytics">
    Humans who clicked through from an AI assistant — the other half.
  </Card>

  <Card title="How tinyanalytics works" icon="diagram-project" href="/docs/how-tinyanalytics-works">
    Why bot traffic is kept out of your human analytics.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Filter your data" icon="filter" href="/docs/analytics-filters">
    Narrow bot traffic to one crawler, page, or country.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Dashboard overview" icon="gauge" href="/docs/web-analytics-dashboard">
    Your human analytics, with bots kept separate.
  </Card>
</Columns>


## Related topics

- [How Analytics Bot Detection Works](/docs/resources/analytics-bot-detection.md)
- [AI Referral Traffic Analytics](/docs/ai-referral-traffic-analytics.md)
- [Use tinyanalytics Documentation with AI Tools](/docs/resources/tinyanalytics-docs-ai-tools.md)