AI Bots Surge, Threatening Publishers' Business Models
Google continues to dominate web traffic, delivering 831 visitors for every one from an AI system. However, AI bots are causing concern, with 13.26% ignoring website rules and pushing up costs.
TollBit's State of the Bots Q2 2025 report reveals a significant drop in human visitors, down 9.4%, while AI traffic increases. AI bot activity has surged, with bot traffic now surpassing Bingbot. Despite this, AI apps sent only 0.102% of referrals, a mere fraction of Google's 84.1%.
Publishers with OpenAI licensing deals experienced 88% more scraping and stronger referral rates. However, AI bots are breaking or rewriting rules, with 13.26% of requests ignoring robots.txt. This is putting the open web at risk, threatening publishers' business models. Google still sends publishers 831 times more visitors than AI systems, but bots are hammering sites, pushing costs higher and scraping more content.
While Google remains the primary driver of web traffic, the rise in AI bot activity is a growing concern. Publishers must adapt to protect their content and business models. Further research is needed to understand and mitigate the impact of increasing AI bot activity.
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