Milivoje Krivokapic 
Not all traffic to your website comes from people. A growing share now comes from AI bot traffic, or retrieval crawlers launched by chatbots like ChatGPT or Perplexity whenever a user asks a question. According to TollBit, this kind of activity jumped 49% in just the first quarter of 2025, and it shows no signs of slowing down.
If this feels familiar, it should. Twenty years ago, web crawlers like Googlebot quietly changed the entire SEO playbook, deciding which pages deserved to rank. Today’s AI retrieval bots are doing something similar, but faster: instead of indexing your content for later, they fetch it in real time, while the user is waiting for an answer.
For site owners, this shift creates both opportunity and pressure. Opportunity, because being visible in AI-generated answers is the new front door to discovery. Pressure, because sudden spikes in bot activity can overwhelm servers or miss the content that matters most.
The next chapter of technical SEO isn’t just about ranking. It’s about making sure your infrastructure can handle the new wave of crawlers without slowing down.
What Are Real-Time Retrieval Crawlers?
Think of a web crawler as a scout: it moves through sites on a set schedule, collecting information for its search engine commander. Googlebot, Bingbot, and others have worked this way for decades. Simple rules: crawl today, index tomorrow, rank later.
Real-time retrieval crawlers are different. They’re not scouts. They’re couriers. When you ask an AI chatbot a question, it usually doesn’t rely only on pre-indexed data. Instead, it sends out a retrieval bot to fetch fresh content directly from the web, right then and there. That’s why you might see a sudden spike in AI bot traffic without a single human visitor on your page.
The difference matters. Traditional crawlers care about building a database. Retrieval crawlers care about speed and freshness. If your site responds slowly, blocks them by mistake, or serves shallow content, your brand won’t show up in the AI-generated answer at all.
Why AI Bot Traffic Matters for Your Website
AI retrieval is the brand new front line of visibility. When AI bot traffic hits your site, it’s often the difference between your brand being cited in an AI-generated answer or disappearing completely.
Here’s why it matters:
- Visibility in AI responses: If retrieval bots can’t access your content, you won’t make it into the answer stream. It’s today’s equivalent of being left out of Google’s index.
- Server stability: Spikes in automated requests can slow your site or, worse, crash it. Even good web crawlers become a problem if they flood your server without checks.
- Content control: Misconfigured directives in robots.txt or llms.txt can block the wrong assets, keeping critical pages out of reach.
- Business impact: Every missed fetch is a missed opportunity. AI-driven discovery is already replacing some search clicks, and if your content isn’t retrievable, it isn’t visible.
Simply put, managing AI bot traffic isn’t optional. It’s how you protect performance while securing your place in the answers people are seeing first.
Preparing Site Infrastructure for AI Retrieval Bots
So, how do you get ready for this surge in AI bot traffic?
The key is treating real-time retrieval not as noise, but as a new type of search demand. That means making sure your site can serve these bots quickly, clearly, and without draining resources.
Here are the main areas to focus on:
Manage Bot Traffic Proactively
Every crawler acts differently. Some are legitimate retrieval bots, while others are scrapers disguised as them.
Monitor your traffic closely and separate trusted AI bots from suspicious ones. Tools that filter and throttle requests help you keep servers stable while still allowing real retrieval crawlers to do their job.
Use IP and Log Analysis to Identify AI Bots
Server logs are your best window into who (or what) is hitting your site, and that view isn’t limited to your origin. Your content delivery network (CDN), such as Cloudflare, also provides request logs and bot intelligence. By tracking IP ranges, user-agent strings, and request patterns across both layers, you can separate genuine web crawlers from bad actors and spot unusual AI bot traffic faster.
Set up alerts for unusual spikes so you can react before performance takes a hit.
Tune Crawl-Delay and Server Responses
Retrieval bots move fast. If they hit slow responses or timeouts, they’ll skip your content. Use crawl-delay directives where supported to balance access with stability, and optimize caching so pages are served quickly.
Put a CDN in front (e.g., Cloudflare) to offload and accelerate delivery. Cache at the edge (HTML where safe), set clear Cache-Control/ETag headers, and use stale-while-revalidate so AI bot traffic gets a fast, consistent render.
Architect static-first. The more dynamic your site, the more origin work each request triggers. Pre-render pages (SSG/ISR), push truly dynamic bits behind lightweight APIs, and let the CDN cache 100% of static outputs. That way, web crawlers and retrieval bots are served from the edge, not your origin. This way, the server never becomes the bottleneck.
Balance Robots.txt and LLMS.txt Rules
Traditional web crawlers read robots.txt, while emerging AI bots are starting to check llms.txt. Both files act like instruction manuals: what’s allowed, what’s blocked, what should be prioritized. Keep them in line and intentional.
If your directives send mixed signals, you risk blocking the very content you want AI to surface.
Why This Isn’t Just Technical
Preparing for retrieval bots isn’t just a defensive move. It creates real wins for your business and your audience. By managing AI bot traffic and guiding web crawlers effectively, you set up a stronger digital presence:
- Better visibility in AI answers: Your content is more likely to be fetched, understood, and cited when it’s easy for retrieval bots to access.
- Faster, smoother experiences: Server resources stay balanced, so human visitors don’t feel the drag of uncontrolled bot activity.
- More accurate brand representation: With the right directives, you decide which content AI crawlers see first, shaping how your brand appears in generated answers.
- Competitive edge: While others scramble to catch up, your infrastructure is already optimized for the next wave of discovery.
In short, bot traffic doesn’t have to be a burden. With the right preparation, it becomes another channel for visibility and trust.
Turn AI Bot Traffic Into a Visibility Win
AI retrieval crawlers aren’t the dot on a visibility horizon anymore. They’re already here, and the volume is only climbing. Just as web crawlers once reshaped SEO, AI bot traffic is now reshaping how visibility works in real time.
The takeaway is clear: websites that manage bot access, tune server performance, and set clear directives will be the ones consistently cited in AI answers. Those who don’t risk being invisible. Or worse, getting crushed by competitors and forgotten by SERPs.
At Zlurad, we help brands prepare for this shift by aligning technical SEO with infrastructure readiness. From traffic analysis to crawler directives, we make sure your content is delivered fast, clean, and reliably, whether the visitor is human or a bot.
The bots are knocking. Make sure your site is ready to respond.