Is AI crawling your website? How to check and why it matters

As I mentioned within a recent LinkedIn post, the end of 2024 saw the biggest drop in Google’s market share that we’ve seen in almost a decade. Not only does this demonstrate clear decentralisation in search, it also emphasises the importance of having your website content successfully crawled and indexed by alternative search engines and AI tools. With a growing array of such tools gaining rapid traction – such as SearchGPT, ChatGPT, and Perplexity AI – it is vital that any website aiming to drive significant search traffic is accessible to these emerging platforms and their associated bots.

One of the main ways in which you can determine whether your website content is being crawled by search engine / AI bots is by reviewing your website log files. There are two methods you can use to do this, you can either take a manual approach and review the logs yourself, or you can use a log file analyser tool such as that offered by Screaming Frog. I am going to go into more detail below – but please know that if you aren’t comfortable accessing or analysing log files, please get in touch. The experts at Varn are here to help!

When we have confirmed that key bots have access to / can crawl our most important content, we can then repeat either of these methods, in order to check additional bots – and not just AI bots. This process works for a variety of user agents, including search engines (Googlebot, Bingbot, Yandexbot, Baiduspider, DuckDuckbot etc.), AI bots (ChatGPT, SearchGPT, OpenAI, PerplexityBot, YouCrawler and so on), social media bots and even specialised bots (AhrefsBot and Semrushbot for example).

As the landscape of search continues to evolve, it is more important than ever to ensure that your website content is accessible to search engines and AI bots, rather than focusing all of your efforts on Google. By regularly checking your log files (or using a log file analyser) as detailed above, you can easily determine which bots are crawling your website and which content they are accessing. This is your crucial first step in optimising for the wider search landscape, and is key to understanding any restrictions you might have in place on your content, as well as potential opportunities. It can even help gain insights into the type of content more often reviewed by bots, so that you can adapt and optimise your content strategy accordingly.

For more information on how to ensure your content is optimised for AI and search engines alike, take a look at our recent post on Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). You can also check back regularly for the latest search innovation news – or get in touch with us if you would like to be added to our innovation newsletter recipient list. We would love to hear from you, and potentially discuss how Varn could help your website reach a wider audience.