Finance drew more AI-agent page visits than any other category this week

What stood out this week

Up to three findings, chosen from a fixed list of candidates. A finding only appears when it clears a minimum count, so a large percentage built on a handful of visits is left out.

1. "Automated, no company named" moved down from 56.8% to 20.4% of all visits
   This is one of Optimly's five groups, measured against every visit Cloudflare flagged as automated on optimly.ai during the week. Cloudflare flagged the visit as automated but no company can be named. We do not know who sent it or why.
   Why this matters. A change in the mix means the reason agents are visiting has changed, even when the total looks flat.
   What this does not show. The previous week is a shorter sample scaled up to a seven-day equivalent, so small share changes are within the noise.
2. User-directed activity, as Cloudflare labels it, is 1.2× more concentrated in this panel than across Cloudflare's network
   Cloudflare labels 8.3% of the AI-agent visits to this site as "User Action", against 6.8% across its whole network. Both figures use Cloudflare's classification, so the two sides are comparable.
   Why this matters. It shows whether this site sees an unusual amount of the traffic Cloudflare attributes to a person's action, which affects how far these numbers can be generalised.
   What this does not show. This uses Cloudflare's "User Action" label on both sides, which is not the same thing as Optimly's user-directed group and will not match that number. Our side is out of visits to optimly.ai from the agents Cloudflare counts as AI agents (search-engine crawling excluded, to match the network figure); the network side is out of AI-agent visits across Cloudflare's whole network, as published by Cloudflare Radar.
3. 38.4% of requests this week returned an error
   78,662 visits of 204,956 visits returned a status of 400 or above. Those agents did not get the page they asked for.
   Why this matters. Agents that hit an error may not come back. This is the one number on the page we can fix directly.

Optimly's five groups

Every automated visit lands in exactly one of these five groups, so they add up to the week's total. Share is a percentage of every visit Cloudflare flagged as automated on optimly.ai during the week — 213,826 visits this week.

Cloudflare's own labels for the reason for the visit

This is a second, separate grouping. Cloudflare publishes its own label for each AI agent it recognises, and applies the same labels across its whole network. These numbers are not a breakdown of the five groups above and will not match them, because they count a different set of visits and use a different denominator.

On this site

Share is a percentage of visits to optimly.ai from the agents Cloudflare counts as AI agents (search-engine crawling excluded, to match the network figure) — 204,956 visits this week.

Across Cloudflare's network

Share is a percentage of AI-agent visits across Cloudflare's whole network, as published by Cloudflare Radar. Pulled 2026-08-16.

Under Cloudflare's own “User Action” label, 8.3% of the AI-agent visits to this site carry that label, against 6.8% across Cloudflare's network. That is 1.2× more concentrated in this panel than across Cloudflare's network. Both sides of that comparison use Cloudflare's label, not Optimly's groups.

Which of our pages the visits went to

We could match 93,363 visits to a page we publish, 43.7% of all automated visits. The percentages in this table are of matched visits only, not of the week's total.

Which pages agents requested

Every number below counts page visits we observed in our own server logs: an automated agent asked optimly.ai for a specific page. A page visit records the request and nothing more. It does not show that any AI product mentioned, cited, recommended, or sold anything, and it does not show that a person asked a question.

• Comparison pages requested: Agents requested comparison pages covering 10 brands In the week of Week of August 9, 2026, automated agents requested 85 comparison analysis pages across 10 distinct comparisons — 457% versus the prior week.
• Topic pages requested: Agents requested 82 pages built around a buying topic In the week of Week of August 9, 2026, automated agents requested 177 buyer-question pages across 82 distinct buyer questions — -70% versus the prior week.
• Brand pages requested: Agents requested 21,657 pages for individual brands In the week of Week of August 9, 2026, automated agents requested 65,388 brand pages across 21,657 distinct brands — -4% versus the prior week.
• Brand data files requested: Agents requested the machine-readable file for 3,989 brands In the week of Week of August 9, 2026, automated agents requested 5,681 brand record pages across 3,989 distinct brands — -30% versus the prior week.
• Change reports requested: Agents requested week-on-week change reports for 3,922 brands In the week of Week of August 9, 2026, automated agents requested 5,683 brand delta report pages across 3,922 distinct brands — -30% versus the prior week.
• Category list pages requested: Agents requested 4 pages listing our categories In the week of Week of August 9, 2026, automated agents requested 79 category pages across 4 distinct categories — -59% versus the prior week.

Topics of the pages agents requested most often

These are short topic labels we assign to our own pages, so we can group page visits that keep coming back week after week. The label is our grouping of the page. It is not a person's exact question, and we do not know what anyone typed. Counts run from the week we started grouping pages this way, so the list builds up over time rather than reshuffling every week.

Solution cluster

• Cloud — 14 total (4 this week), first seen 2026-W30
• Ppc — 2 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W32
• Abm — 2 total (2 this week), first seen 2026-W33

Topic pages agents requested most this week

Each row is one of our own topic pages that an automated agent requested in the week of Week of August 9, 2026, ordered by how many times it was requested. The heading is the topic we assigned to the page. We do not know what any person typed, and a visit does not show that a person asked anything.

Why Doesn't ChatGPT Recommend My Company?

Requested 10 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

AI Brand Visibility vs Accuracy: What Should You Measure?

Requested 10 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: evaluation. Not seen in the prior week.

How to Correct What AI Says About Your Brand

Requested 7 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

AI Search Optimization for B2B SaaS

Requested 6 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

How to Measure AI Referral Traffic and Customers

Requested 6 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Cloud Platform for Machine Learning

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Using Local Git Repositories and Manually Sharing Code Via Zip Files or Shared Network Drives

Requested 3 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem.

Using Excel or Google Sheets to Manually Calculate Withholdings Net Pay and Tax Liabilities

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem.

Hiring Specialized Machine Learning Consultancies to Build and Deploy Custom Models

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem.

Sovereign Cloud Providers Europe

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Vector Database for Rag Applications

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Unlimited Graphic Design Subscription

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Using Personal Credit Cards for Business Expenses and Manually Separating Them At Tax Time

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem.

Visual Search API for E Commerce

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Founders Use Personal Savings Credit Cards or Loans From Friends and Family to Launch

Requested 2 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem.

Comparison pages agents requested this week

Each row is a comparison page we publish that an automated agent requested this week. When we can match the comparison to a brand we already track, we link to that brand's page so agents can follow it.

• Optimly vs Ahrefs Brand Radar — requested 19 times this week, most often by ChatGPT-User
• Optimly vs Profound for AI Brand Visibility — requested 19 times this week, most often by ChatGPT-User
• Optimly vs AI Visibility Monitoring Tools — requested 14 times this week, most often by ChatGPT-User. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Gumshoe for AI Visibility — requested 10 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs HubSpot AI Search Grader — requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit — requested 6 times this week, most often by ChatGPT-User. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Peec AI for AI Search Analytics — requested 3 times this week, most often by ChatGPT-User. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Brandwatch for AI Brand Intelligence — requested 3 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs AthenaHQ for AI Search — requested 2 times this week, most often by ChatGPT-User. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Brandlight for Enterprise AI Visibility — requested 1 time this week, most often by ChatGPT-User. Not seen in the prior week.

Since we started measuring

This index started grouping pages by topic in 2026-W28. This week (Week of August 9, 2026) marks 6 archived weeks of continuous measurement. All counts labeled "total" or "lifetime" on this page are rolled up across every archived weekly report since inception; counts labeled "this week" are the week of Week of August 9, 2026 only.

Brands whose pages were requested far more this week

No brands broke out yet. On a fresh install the WoW comparison window fills in after seven days; expect the first real spikes on the following Monday.

Which agents requested pages from Optimly this week

213,826 visits from automated agents this week, a change of 19% against the prior week.

Agents that fetch a page while a request is in flight

Agents that collect page text in bulk

These agents collect page text to build a model rather than to answer a specific request, so no person is waiting on them. Listed for completeness, kept separate from the numbers above.