You are reading the archived Week of September 6, 2026 report. Numbers on this page are a snapshot from 2026-09-13 and do not change. For the current week, see the latest report.
The Optimly AI Search Trends Index · Week of September 6, 2026
Emergency Medical Training & Certification drew more AI-agent page visits than any other category this week
Crisis Medicine Llc drew the most visits inside Emergency Medical Training & Certification, across 1 brand in the category. 485,298 visits from automated agents this week. A page visit records that an agent requested the page and nothing more.
What a page visit is, and what it is not.
This index counts page visits: an automated agent asked optimly.ai for a page, and our server logged it. That is all a page visit shows. It does not show that any AI product mentioned, cited, recommended, or sold a brand, and it does not show that a person asked a question. Where we cannot tell why a visit happened, we say we do not know. How we group visits →
Window: 2026-09-06 → 2026-09-13 · Published 2026-09-13
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.
User-directed activity, as Cloudflare labels it, is 1.9× more concentrated in this panel than across Cloudflare's network
Cloudflare labels 7.8% of the AI-agent visits to this site as "User Action", against 4.2% 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.
"Automated, no company named" moved down from 88.5% to 75.4% 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.
32.3% of requests this week returned an error
147,867 visits of 458,468 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 — 485,298 visits this week.
Group
Visits
Share
What it means
Someone using an AI product
35,745
7.4%
Visits from agents the company that runs them documents as firing when a person asks for something. This is the only group we connect to a person.
Search engine page crawling
49,279
10.2%
Visits from agents that crawl pages so a search product can find them later. No person is waiting on these.
Model training collection
23,422
4.8%
Visits that collect page text in bulk to build a model. No person is waiting on these.
Known company, reason for the visit unclear
10,792
2.2%
We can name the company, but the company says the agent does more than one job, so we do not know the reason for any single visit.
Automated, no company named
366,060
75.4%
Cloudflare flagged the visit as automated but no company can be named. We do not know who sent it or why.
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) — 458,468 visits this week.
Cloudflare label
Visits
Share
User Action
35,891
7.8%
Search
26,477
5.8%
Training
23,422
5.1%
Mixed Purpose
6,618
1.4%
Undeclared
366,060
79.8%
Across Cloudflare's network
Share is a percentage of AI-agent visits across Cloudflare's whole network, as published by Cloudflare Radar. Pulled 2026-09-13.
Cloudflare label
Share
Training
43.7%
Mixed Purpose
40.0%
Search
10.4%
User Action
4.2%
Undeclared
1.7%
Under Cloudflare's own “User Action” label, 7.8% of the AI-agent visits to this site carry that label, against 4.2% across Cloudflare's network. That is 1.9× 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 333,649 visits to a page we publish, 68.8% of all automated visits. The percentages in this table are of matched visits only, not of the week's total.
Page kind
Visits
Share of matched
Directory pages requested
246,450
73.9%
Brand data files requested
31,869
9.6%
Brand pages requested
24,479
7.3%
Change reports requested
19,737
5.9%
Category list pages requested
6,640
2.0%
Topic pages requested
4,374
1.3%
Comparison pages requested
100
0.0%
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 September 6, 2026, automated agents requested 100 comparison analysis pages across 10 distinct comparisons — 87% versus the prior week.
Topic pages requested: Agents requested 155 pages built around a buying topic In the week of Week of September 6, 2026, automated agents requested 4,374 buyer-question pages across 155 distinct buyer questions — 707% versus the prior week.
Brand pages requested: Agents requested 13,351 pages for individual brands In the week of Week of September 6, 2026, automated agents requested 24,479 brand pages across 13,351 distinct brands — 48% versus the prior week.
Brand data files requested: Agents requested the machine-readable file for 7,660 brands In the week of Week of September 6, 2026, automated agents requested 31,869 brand record pages across 7,660 distinct brands — -26% versus the prior week.
Change reports requested: Agents requested week-on-week change reports for 5,675 brands In the week of Week of September 6, 2026, automated agents requested 19,737 brand delta report pages across 5,675 distinct brands — -58% versus the prior week.
Category list pages requested: Agents requested 4 pages listing our categories In the week of Week of September 6, 2026, automated agents requested 6,640 category pages across 4 distinct categories — 1044% 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 — 18 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W30
SEO — 6 total (4 this week), first seen 2026-W36
Ppc — 4 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W32
Abm — 2 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W33
Okr — 2 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W36
Payroll — 0 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W36
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 September 6, 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.
How to Measure AI Referral Traffic and Customers
Requested 17 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: solution.
AI Search Optimization for B2B SaaS
Requested 15 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: solution.
Conservative Alternatives to Aarp
Requested 14 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: evaluation. Not seen in the prior week.
AI Brand Visibility vs Accuracy: What Should You Measure?
Requested 13 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: evaluation.
Parks and Recreation Management
Requested 9 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.
How to Correct What AI Says About Your Brand
Requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Group: solution.
Business Credit Card for Travel Rewards
Requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.
Enterprise AI
Requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.
Corporate Gifting
Requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.
Alternative to Gpt 4
Requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: evaluation. Not seen in the prior week.
Digital Transformation Consulting Firms
Requested 8 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.
Dell vs Nutanix for Enterprise Virtualization
Requested 7 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: evaluation. Not seen in the prior week.
Continuing to Wear Existing Wardrobe Without Purchasing New Items
Requested 6 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.
Gpt 4 Benchmarks vs Llama 3
Requested 6 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: evaluation. Not seen in the prior week.
Build An App Without Coding
Requested 6 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.
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.
This index started grouping pages by topic in 2026-W28. This week (Week of September 6, 2026) marks 9 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 September 6, 2026 only.
Brands whose pages were requested far more this week
How to read a spike
A spike is a brand whose index moved sharply upward this week, meaning automated agents requested that brand's page far more often than the week before. We attach the top news headline for the brand from the past 7 days as a possible explanation. We do not know that the headline caused the change.
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.
Search intent captured this week
AI systems tried to fetch /why-ai-recommends-brands. A live signal of what people are asking AI about — and what AI thinks Optimly should answer.
Autonomous AI agents — not humans, not chatbots — are discovering Optimly through /mcp/tools/get_action_status/. Model Context Protocol traffic — autonomous AI agents (not humans) discovering Optimly through the MCP endpoint.
Is your brand in the index?
Claim your brand to see its full page-visit history, a per-agent breakdown, and alerts when the pattern changes.
Which agents requested pages from Optimly this week
485,298 visits from automated agents this week, a change of 69% against the prior week.
Why brand rows show an index, not a count
Brand-level values are shown on a 0 to 100 index relative to this week's busiest brand, the way Google Trends does it. 100 is the busiest brand this week and everything else is scaled from it. Exact per-brand counts stay private; only the rollups on this page (the week total and the per-agent totals) are absolute numbers.
Agents that fetch a page while a request is in flight
Agent
Page visits
Unique pages
AI Assistant (behavioral)
352,640
10,000
Claude-User
17,510
1,276
OAI-SearchBot
9,786
2,451
ChatGPT-User
8,651
1,736
Amazonbot
6,618
2,522
Perplexity-User
6,475
1,034
PerplexityBot
6,368
2,413
ShapBot
4,028
956
Claude-SearchBot
3,292
788
YouBot
2,839
368
DuckAssistBot
2,838
307
AI Search (behavioral)
618
212
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.
Bot
Fetches
Unique pages
AI Crawler (behavioral)
12,802
8,615
GPTBot
10,676
2,121
Bytespider
4,997
1,191
ClaudeBot
3,918
846
Google-Extended
3,308
770
CCBot
461
292
Meta-ExternalAgent
62
12
Benchmark — how AI is crawling the whole internet
Optimly's own numbers are a slice of a much bigger picture. Cloudflare Radar publishes AI-bot activity across roughly 20% of all internet traffic. Comparing our zone to Radar shows whether Optimly is over- or under-indexed vs. the network baseline.
Why Optimly's data is different
Radar covers every domain, every agent and every reason for a visit, and most of that is bulk collection of general content. This site is a brand directory built for machine readers, so the mix of agents that reach it looks different: more of the agents that fetch a page while a request is in flight, fewer of the ones collecting text in bulk. That is a fact about which agents arrive here, not evidence about what anyone asked.