If you’re relying solely on Google Analytics to understand how users interact with your site, you’re missing a major piece of the puzzle: AI crawlers.
AI models like ChatGPT and Claude (by Anthropic) are already visiting your site, pulling your content into language models to answer people’s questions — and they don’t leave a trace in GA4, Looker, or any traditional analytics tools.
But your server logs do.
In this article, we’ll walk you through:
- Why log file analysis matters more than ever
- How to access your logs (step-by-step)
- How to identify visits from AI crawlers like GPTBot or the ChatGPT-User agent
- What this means for your SEO and content strategy
- Actionable ways to respond
Why Log File Analysis Is Crucial in the Age of AI
Language models aren’t just trained on datasets from years ago — they increasingly retrieve information from live websites in real time to respond to prompts inside AI chat interfaces.
In just the past 24 hours, we observed over 55 hits from the ChatGPT-User agent on our own ClickTrust website. These hits weren’t from people browsing our blog. They were retrievals by OpenAI’s models — pulling answers to someone’s query in ChatGPT by fetching content from our training pages, blog posts, and SEO resources.
That’s not something Google Analytics will tell you.
And that’s the new reality: AI is now a content distribution channel, whether you’ve prepared for it or not.
Step-by-Step: How to Pull and Read Your Server Logs
Here’s how you can see for yourself how AI models like GPTBot are interacting with your site.
1. Access Your Web Server via FTP
You can’t usually get access logs directly through your hosting provider’s dashboard — you’ll need to connect to your server using an FTP client.
We recommend FileZilla, a free and reliable tool.
- Open FileZilla
- Go to Site Manager
- Create a new connection using your SFTP credentials (host, username, password, port)
- Once connected, navigate to folders like:
/var/log/ /var/log/nginx/ - Look for files like
access.log— they contain all the requests made to your site.
2. Download and Open the Log Files
These files can look overwhelming — essentially lines of IP addresses, timestamps, and user agents.
To make sense of them:
- Use a tool like SEMRush Log File Analyzer
- Or import them into a spreadsheet
3. Filter for AI User Agents
Search for these common user agents:
GPTBot→ indicates training crawlsChatGPT-UserorChatGPT-User/1.0→ indicates retrieval for user promptsClaudeBot→ used by Anthropic’s Claude AI
These aren’t bots testing uptime or SEO crawlers — these are signals that your content was used inside a conversation with a real user.
What Can You Learn from This?
Once you’ve isolated AI crawler traffic, here’s what to look for:
→ Which URLs Are Retrieved Most Often?
Identify the pages AI pulls most frequently. Are they your top-of-funnel (TOFU) guides? Or are they high-converting bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) content like training calendars, case studies, or service pages?
This helps you understand:
- Which content is being surfaced in AI tools
- Which parts of your site are invisible in analytics but active in LLM ecosystems
→ How Is the Buyer Journey Shaping Up via AI?
Server logs show you how models navigate your site:
- Do they land directly on your blog, then fetch a services page?
- Are certain pieces of content getting more AI traction than others?
This gives you a new layer of insight into user intent — through the lens of AI-powered retrieval.
What To Do With These Insights
Now that you can see AI traffic, here’s how to act on it.
1. Optimize for AI-Readability
Just like traditional SEO, make sure your content is:
- Structured clearly (headings, bullet points, internal links)
- Factual, well-written, and semantically rich
- Aligned with user questions — AI picks up on content that directly answers them
2. Protect or Permit AI Access Intentionally
You can control which parts of your site are accessible to AI:
- Use
robots.txtto disallow or allow GPTBot - Decide whether you want certain content indexed by AI tools or kept private
3. Track Over Time
Download your logs regularly. AI traffic patterns change fast — and what’s being crawled today could shift tomorrow.
Set up internal processes (or even automation) to:
- Flag new AI bot traffic
- Correlate with content updates or new pages
- Adjust your content strategy accordingly
Final Thoughts: Don’t Ignore What’s Hidden
As marketers, we pride ourselves on being data-driven. But if we’re blind to how AI tools access and use our content, we’re operating without the full picture.
Server logs reveal what your analytics can’t.
By looking into them:
- You gain a competitive edge in understanding AI distribution
- You future-proof your SEO and content strategies
- You tap into a new layer of insights that reflect how real people — via AI — interact with your site
