EZY Research · 2026
Four baseline studies from EZY.ai's 556-domain research panel, plus the monthly AI Traffic Index. The first four used server-side logs from 125 connected (opt-in cohort) business websites and pre-optimisation audits of 387 more. Index issue 2 uses a fixed panel of 173 connected sites. Index issue 3 uses the next 30-day window on a fixed cohort, with 319 domains in the wider dataset. Every number below comes from a query run on production data.
+33%
AI crawler growth
user-triggered fetches fell 35%
+65%
Citation-driven growth
vs +20% crawler growth
7
OpenAI llms.txt fetches
vs 3,990 robots.txt fetches
3.8x
Usage vs training
live user fetches per training crawl
1.8x
AI vs Googlebot
763k AI crawls vs 444k Googlebot
69%
No AI instructions
of 387 never-optimized sites
AI Traffic Index #3
Fixed panel, 24 Aug-22 Sep 2026: AI crawlers +33.2%, user-triggered fetches -34.6%. Grok went from 17 requests to 14,680. EZY AI Traffic Index, issue 3.
Read the studyAI Traffic Index #2
173 sites, two 30-day windows: citation-driven AI visits +65%, crawler visits +20%. Citation traffic grew 3.3x faster. EZY AI Traffic Index, issue 2.
Read the studyStudy 1
83 sites, 12 weeks of server logs: OpenAI read llms.txt 7 times, Anthropic 9, Perplexity 0 - while fetching robots.txt thousands of times.
Read the studyStudy 2
Server logs from 125 business sites: ChatGPT-User made 147,830 live fetches vs GPTBot's 39,042 training crawls. AI traffic is 4:1 usage over training.
Read the studyAI Traffic Index #1
12 weeks, 125 sites: AI crawlers hit business websites 1.8x as often as Googlebot, yet send under 1% of visitors. The EZY AI Traffic Index, issue 1.
Read the studyStudy 4
We audited 387 business websites before optimization: 69% give AI crawlers no instructions, 12.7% block GPTBot, 52% lack llms.txt.
Read the studyServer-side request logs with user-agent classification and signature verification. Pre-intervention site audits for the readiness benchmark. Temporal coverage 27 Apr-19 Jul 2026 for the baseline studies; AI Traffic Index issue 2 compares 25 June-24 July 2026 with 25 July-23 August 2026. Issue 3 compares 25 July-23 August 2026 with 24 August-22 September 2026. Aggregate CSVs available on request under CC BY 4.0. See also our FAQ and the guide to What is AEO?.