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Notes from the server side.

AI crawlers, bot analytics, and the half of your traffic that never runs JavaScript - explained without the hype.

Measurement · July 14, 2026 · 11 min read

Measuring AI referral traffic on WordPress: the channel your reports are hiding

ChatGPT and Perplexity are already sending you visitors - but they land in "direct" or vanish into stripped referrers. How to actually segment and measure the AI referral channel.

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Strategy · July 2, 2026 · 12 min read

Should you block AI crawlers? A decision framework, not a hot take

Blocking every AI bot feels decisive and measuring nothing feels safe. Both are usually wrong. A framework for deciding what to allow, what to block, and what to meter - by business model.

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Field guide · June 18, 2026 · 12 min read

A field guide to AI crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and friends

Training crawlers, retrieval bots, and user agents are three different animals with three different deals for your site. What each major AI crawler actually does when it hits your server.

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Fundamentals · June 5, 2026 · 10 min read

Why Google Analytics can't see AI bots (and never will)

GA4 is not broken - it is measuring exactly what it was built to measure, in exactly the place where bots do not exist. The measurement-point argument, and what server-side sees instead.

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