How often do AI crawlers visit your site? Comparing crawl frequency across platforms

Crawl frequency varies significantly by AI platform and purpose.

Different AI crawler types:

ChatGPT-User is special:

It’s triggered by actual user queries. When someone asks ChatGPT about your topic, it may crawl your page in real-time.

This is the best signal of AI visibility - ChatGPT-User requests mean users are finding your content through AI.

Frequency determinants:

1. Content quality and authority
2. Update frequency (fresh content attracts crawlers)
3. Server response time
4. Site structure and crawlability
5. Topical relevance to common queries

Hard data on crawl frequency comparison.

14-day analysis across 50 sites:

The pattern:

AI crawlers visit less frequently than Google but grab more data per visit.

ChatGPT-User timing:

Correlates with US business hours. Peak when Americans are actively using ChatGPT.

Perplexity pattern:

More consistent throughout day - users worldwide for research queries.

Claude pattern:

Evening peaks suggest professional/research use after work hours.

Understanding timing helps you ensure content is fresh during peak crawl windows.

The freshness-crawl frequency connection.

What we observed:

Pages updated within 24 hours get crawled 3x more frequently by AI bots than stale content.

AI crawlers notice updates:

When we update a page:

• PerplexityBot returns within 4-6 hours
• ChatGPT-User traffic increases same day
• GPTBot returns within 24-48 hours

The flywheel:

Fresh content → More crawling → More citations → More queries → More crawling

Practical application:

We update our top 20 pages weekly. AI crawl frequency to those pages is 5x higher than our static content.

Content freshness signals:

1. Last-modified header
2. Schema dateModified
3. Visible “Updated” date on page
4. Actual content changes

AI systems track all of these. Keep important content fresh.

Does crawl frequency correlate with citations?

Our analysis:

Compared crawl frequency vs citation rate for 200 pages.

Correlation exists but it’s not causation.

High crawl frequency often indicates:

• Content is valuable
• Site has authority
• Topic is relevant to queries

These same factors drive citations.

The real insight:

If your crawl frequency drops, it might signal declining content relevance. Monitor it as a leading indicator.

Conversely:

Increasing crawl frequency without quality won’t help. AI systems crawl to evaluate - they don’t cite everything they crawl.

New content discovery speed.

We tested publishing new content:

Perplexity is fastest for new content.

Published a vendor comparison on Tuesday, cited in Perplexity by Friday.

How to speed up discovery:

1. Internal links from high-crawl pages
2. XML sitemap update
3. Social signals (sometimes trigger crawls)
4. Update related existing content

The first impression matters:

If AI crawler visits and finds thin/incomplete content, it may take longer to return. Make content publication-ready before it goes live.

Server performance affects crawl frequency.

Our experiment:

Same content, two identical sites, different server speeds.

Slower server = 62% fewer AI crawler visits.

AI crawlers have limited time. They deprioritize slow sites.

The technical checklist:

1. Response time under 500ms (ideally under 200ms)
2. Proper caching headers
3. CDN for static assets
4. Server capacity for crawl spikes
5. No intermittent errors

Monitor during crawl peaks:

If your server struggles during AI crawl waves, crawlers will back off. Check server health during peak crawl hours.

Platform behavior differences.

Perplexity:

• Most aggressive crawler
• 157,000% increase in requests year-over-year
• Research-focused, citations-heavy
• Returns frequently to pages it found valuable

ChatGPT:

• GPTBot is background, infrequent
• ChatGPT-User is the visibility signal
• Query-triggered means popular topics = more crawls
• Most valuable for broad visibility

Claude:

• Most unpredictable pattern
• Heavy bursts, then silence
• Seems to focus on specific topic areas
• Professional/enterprise focus

Google AI:

• Uses existing Googlebot data
• Real-time retrieval from index
• No separate AI crawler

Strategy implication:

Don’t optimize for one crawler. Optimize for quality - all platforms reward the same fundamentals.

Great insights. My crawl frequency optimization plan:

Monitoring setup:

1. Separate tracking for each AI crawler type
2. ChatGPT-User dashboard (immediate visibility indicator)
3. Weekly crawl frequency reports
4. Alerts for significant changes

Optimization priorities:

1. Server speed - target sub-200ms response
2. Content freshness - weekly updates on top pages
3. Site structure - ensure AI crawlers find important content
4. XML sitemap - current and submitted

Content strategy:

1. Prioritize updating content that gets crawled
2. New content linked from high-crawl pages
3. Ensure publication-ready quality before live
4. Regular freshness signals (dateModified, etc.)

Key metrics to track:

The insight:

Crawl frequency is both an input (what we can influence) and an output (indicator of AI relevance). Optimize for it while using it as a health metric.

Thanks everyone - clear action plan now.