What Are AI Crawlers? How They Work and Why They Matter
What Are AI Crawlers and Why Should You Care?
Think of AI crawlers as the new kids on the block in the search world. While Google's been crawling websites for decades to show search results, these AI bots are different—they're reading your content to train ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI assistants.
- 1 in 4 websites get daily visits from AI crawlers
- AI-powered search is growing 400% year-over-year
- Sites optimized for AI crawlers see 67% more brand mentions in AI responses
The big opportunity: Getting your content in front of these AI crawlers means your brand and expertise can appear in millions of AI-generated responses.
The AI Visibility Revolution
Let's put this in perspective. Last month alone:
- OpenAI's GPTBot: 569 million requests
- Anthropic's ClaudeBot: 370 million requests
- Googlebot: 4.5 billion requests
AI crawlers now generate about 28% as much traffic as Google's crawler. Smart brands are optimizing now to get ahead.
The Complete AI Crawler Directory
Here's a comprehensive list of major AI crawlers with their purposes and user-agent strings.
| Vendor | Crawler Name | User-agent String | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | GPTBot | GPTBot/1.1 |
Trains ChatGPT models |
| OpenAI | OAI-SearchBot | OAI-SearchBot/1.0 |
Real-time web search |
| OpenAI | ChatGPT-User | ChatGPT-User/1.0 & 2.0 |
Loads shared URLs |
| Anthropic | ClaudeBot | ClaudeBot/1.0 |
Fetches citations |
| Anthropic | claude-web | claude-web/1.0 |
Fresh content fetcher |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot | PerplexityBot/1.0 |
Builds AI search index |
| Google-Extended | Google-Extended/1.0 |
Feeds Gemini AI | |
| Microsoft | BingBot | bingbot/2.0 |
Bing + Copilot |
| Amazon | Amazonbot | Amazonbot/0.1 |
Alexa + recommendations |
| Apple | Applebot | Applebot/1.0 |
Siri + Spotlight |
| Meta | FacebookBot | FacebookBot/1.0 |
Link previews |
| ByteDance | Bytespider | Bytespider/1.0 |
TikTok crawler |
| DuckDuckGo | DuckAssistBot | DuckAssistBot/1.0 |
Private AI answers |
| Cohere | cohere-ai | cohere-ai/1.0 |
Enterprise LLMs |
| Mistral | MistralAI-User | MistralAI-User/1.0 |
French AI research |
AI-Friendly Robots.txt Generator
Use this tool to generate a robots.txt file that welcomes AI crawlers to your site. Select which crawlers you want to allow:
How to Optimize for AI Crawlers (Updated)
- Welcome AI Bots in Robots.txt
Use our generator above or manually add the necessary directives to your robots.txt file.
- Structure for AI Understanding
- Use H1–H3 headings
- Write clear summaries
- Add Schema.org markup
- Include FAQ sections
- Text-first Optimization
- Focus on HTML content (58% of AI requests)
- Include publish dates and author names
- Prefer server-rendered content
- AI-Friendly Formats
- Listicles and definitions
- Step-by-step guides
- Comparison tables
Key Takeaways
- AI crawlers are already reshaping discovery—28% of Googlebot volume
- Only 6% of websites currently optimize for AI visibility
- Small updates (structure, clarity, bot access) have massive impact
- Early adopters will dominate the AI-first web
Ready to maximize your AI visibility? Start with our robots.txt generator above, update your top pages, and build long-term authority now.