Track AI Bot Visits (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot)
Google Analytics deliberately filters known bots, so AI crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot never appear there. To see them you need a log-based or edge-level tracker. The right path depends on what you already have on your site — Searchlight detects this on every scan and recommends a specific option on the AI Visibility tab.
If you're on WordPress
Install a plugin that surfaces raw request logs in the WP admin. Good options: Wordfence Security (Live Traffic feed), Burst Statistics (privacy-friendly analytics that doesn't filter bots), WP Statistics (built-in bot report), Simple History (audit trail). Filter for user-agents containing GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot.
If you use Plausible, Matomo, Fathom, Umami or PostHog
All of these can be configured to record bot visits — unlike GA4. Plausible: see their bot-traffic doc and disable the bot filter on a secondary site. Matomo: set [Tracker] enable_detect_bots = 0 in config.ini.php and segment by user-agent. Umami: set DISABLE_BOT_CHECK=1. PostHog: disable bot filtering for a dedicated project. Fathom: enable Bot Insights.
If you have Cloudflare or Vercel
Cloudflare AI Audit (free) gives you a per-bot dashboard for every site behind Cloudflare with no code changes. Vercel projects get a per-bot timeline in the Firewall tab. Both are the lowest-effort way to start tracking AI crawlers.
Dedicated AI-bot analytics services
DarkVisitors and Tollbit are purpose-built for AI crawler analytics. DarkVisitors is a one-line script tag with a per-bot dashboard. Tollbit additionally lets you rate-limit and monetise AI crawler access.
User-agents to filter on
GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User (OpenAI) · ClaudeBot, Claude-User, Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic — replacing legacy anthropic-ai / Claude-Web) · PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User · Google-Extended · CCBot (Common Crawl) · Bytespider (ByteDance) · Amazonbot · Meta-ExternalAgent · Applebot-Extended · Cohere-AI · Mistralai-User · Diffbot.
Ready to try it?
Put this guide to work in your dashboard.
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