68 Million AI Crawler Visits: What Actually Drives AI Search Visibility
An analysis of 858,457 websites reveals: AI crawlers logged nearly 69 million visits in February 2026. 59% of all analyzed sites were crawled at least once. What structured data, content depth, and external integrations have to do with AI visibility -- and what businesses should do now.
For anyone working in digital marketing, one question is becoming impossible to ignore: How do I become visible in AI search results? A new analysis of 858,457 websites on the Duda platform provides hard data for the first time. In February 2026, 68.9 million AI crawler visits were recorded -- and the patterns clearly show which factors drive AI visibility.
This article summarizes the key findings from the study and puts them in context. The original analysis was published by Roger Montti on Search Engine Journal.
AI Crawling Has Reached Scale
The numbers speak for themselves:
- Sites analyzed: 858,457
- Sites with at least one AI crawler visit: 506,910 (59%)
- Total AI crawler visits in February 2026: 68.9 million
AI crawling is no longer limited to prominent or high-traffic websites. The activity is widespread, affecting the majority of the web.
Who Crawls the Most? OpenAI Dominates
The distribution of crawler activity is heavily concentrated:
| Provider | Visits | Share |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | 55.8M | 81.0% |
| Anthropic (Claude) | 11.5M | 16.6% |
| Perplexity | 1.3M | 1.8% |
| Google (Gemini) | 380K | 0.6% |
OpenAI leads by a significant margin, reflecting ChatGPT's role as the most widely used tool for AI-powered search and information retrieval.
Crawling Purpose Has Shifted: Real-Time Answers Over Indexing
A critical paradigm shift: AI crawlers are no longer primarily used for indexing. The majority of activity now serves real-time content retrieval to answer user queries.
- User Fetch (real-time answers): 56.9% of all crawler activity, driven almost entirely by ChatGPT
- Training (model learning): 28.8%, split across GPTBot and others
- Discovery (indexing): 14.3%, distributed across multiple systems
ChatGPT alone accounts for approximately 39.8 million User Fetch visits. Content is increasingly not collected for an index, but retrieved directly in response to specific user queries.
LLM Referral Traffic Is Growing Fast
Beyond crawling, the study shows a clear increase in referral traffic from AI systems:
| Platform | 2025 | 2026 | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total LLM Referrals | 93,484 | 161,469 | +72.7% |
| ChatGPT | 81,652 | 136,095 | +66.7% |
| Claude | 106 | 2,488 | 23x |
| Copilot | 22 | 9,560 | From near-zero |
| Perplexity | 11,533 | 13,157 | +14.1% |
Traffic from AI systems is no longer a fringe phenomenon -- it's a growing source of website visitors.
Crawled Sites Get More Human Traffic
The study shows a clear correlation -- not causation, but a consistent pattern:
- Average human traffic (crawled vs. non-crawled sites): 527.7 vs. 164.9 sessions (3.2x higher)
- Average form completions: 4.17 vs. 1.57 (2.7x higher)
- Average click-to-call actions: 8.62 vs. 3.46 (2.5x higher)
- Sites with 10,000+ sessions: 90.5% crawl rate
AI systems don't discover weak or inactive sites and boost them. They return to sites that already attract human visitors. The focus should be on building real audience demand, not just trying to "get crawled."
What Correlates With More AI Crawling
The study identifies three groups of factors that consistently correlate with higher crawler activity:
1. External Integrations
- Yext integration: 97.1% crawl rate vs. ~58% without (+38.9 percentage points)
- Review integrations: 89.8% crawl rate vs. 58.8% without; 376.9 average crawler visits
Sites connected to external data and review systems are crawled more frequently and more intensively. AI systems appear to use these integrations as signals that a business is real, verifiable, and relevant.
2. Structured Site Features and Business Data
- Google Business Profile sync: 92.8% crawl rate vs. 58.9% without; 415.6 average crawler visits
- Local schema: 72.3% vs. 55.2% (+17.1 percentage points)
- Dynamic pages: 69.4% vs. 58.2% (+11.2 percentage points)
Sites that clearly define their business identity and structure information in a machine-readable format are crawled more often. AI systems favor content they can easily interpret, verify, and extract.
3. Content Depth
- Sites with 50+ blog posts: 1,373.7 average crawler visits vs. 41.6 with no blog (~33x higher)
More content means more opportunities for AI systems to retrieve, reference, and reuse information in responses. Sites with extensive content are visited significantly more often.
Local Business Schema: The More Complete, the Better
A particularly revealing finding concerns the completeness of local business schema (name, phone, address, hours, social profiles):
- No local schema fields: 55.2% crawl rate
- 10-11 completed schema fields: 82% crawl rate
- Difference: +26.8 percentage points
The more complete the structured business information, the more frequently a site is crawled and revisited. AI systems can more easily identify and verify such sites -- the prerequisite for traffic from AI search.
What This Means for Your Business
The study highlights clear action areas:
- Complete your structured data: Implement local business schema with all relevant fields -- name, address, phone, hours, social profiles. The more complete, the better.
- Sync your Google Business Profile: The connection between website and Google Business Profile is one of the strongest crawling indicators.
- Take content strategy seriously: Sites with extensive, quality blog content are crawled drastically more often. 50+ posts show a 33x difference.
- Use external integrations: Review platforms, business directories, and verification systems signal trustworthiness to AI systems.
- Don't block AI crawlers: 59% of all analyzed sites are already being crawled. Blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt means giving up a growing traffic channel.
Our Take
The data confirms what we at TYS Digital have been observing for a while: AI visibility is no longer an optional add-on, but an integral part of every digital strategy. The businesses that invest in structured data, content depth, and technical accessibility today will capture the traffic advantage from AI search tomorrow.
That's exactly what we deliver for our clients: websites optimized not just for Google, but also for ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Technically sound, content-rich, structurally well-thought-out.
Want to know how your website is positioned for AI crawlers? Get in touch -- we'll analyze your current situation and show you concrete optimization opportunities.
Source: Search Engine Journal: "68 Million AI Crawler Visits Show What Drives AI Search Visibility", Roger Montti, April 2026. Based on a study by Duda.
