requests from AI bots to the panel's stores in ~3 weeks
requests from a single AI vendor to one store (~34,000/day)
…of those reached product pages. The rest burned server resources on service pages and category filters
product pages read by AI bots at the panel's most machine-readable store
human visits from AI assistants (90% — ChatGPT). Google Analytics files them under “direct”
online orders attributed to AI so far. The market is one second before the start
| Bot | Requests |
|---|---|
| meta-externalagent | 70,929 |
| Amazonbot | 24,394 |
| GPTBot | 16,839 |
| PerplexityBot | 15,300 |
| Applebot | 5,484 |
| ClaudeBot | 2,565 |
| ChatGPT-User | 1,519 |
| OAI-SearchBot | 1,062 |
| Vertical | Stores | Genuine bots, median |
|---|---|---|
| Sport & outdoor | 3 | 94.23% |
Over one million AI-bot requests hit just three stores in three weeks. This traffic is invisible to standard analytics: bots do not run JavaScript, so GA never sees them.
The record-holder received 606,017 requests from one AI vendor — and only 8 of them reached product pages: the crawler drowned in category filters, the catalog stayed unread, and the server paid for every hit. A machine-readable store on the same panel got 73,715 product pages read.
144 human visits came from AI assistants, 90% of them from ChatGPT. Standard analytics files them under “direct”, so store owners do not know these visitors exist.
Not a single online order has been attributed to an AI assistant yet. Median AI-readiness across the 63 stores we audited is 38/100. The first stores that become readable will take the first AI orders. Rating →
