Publishers are rejoicing – or at least breathing a sigh of relief – in the face of increasing AI bot invasions: Google visitor statistics show that the search giant directs an incredible 831 times more people to websites than AI systems. TollBit’s “State of the Bots Q2 2025” report, published on October 1, reveals a one-sided digital tug-of-war. As AI crawlers search content farms for training data, hardly any clicks are returned, driving up server bills and sparking heated debates about fair play. With bots eclipsing even Microsoft Bing in terms of pure traffic, this snapshot of Google’s visitor statistics underscores why newsrooms and blogs are still relying on the Alphabet empire to survive in an AI-powered web.
AI bots are increasing, but delivering nothing: Important breakdown of Google visitor statistics
AI’s web raid is driving up costs without any real payoff, the report says. Publishers block 336% more bots year-over-year, but crawlers circumvent rules and hallucinate URLs, turning traffic into a costly ghost town. Human visits fell 9.4% from Q1 2025 to Q2 2025, while bots increased from 1 in 200 to 1 in 50 visitors – a four-fold jump that now surpasses Bingbot.
Take a look at the stark contrasts in Google visitor statistics:
- Recommendation gap: Google claims 84.1% of external traffic (up from 90%+ in Q2 2024), while AI apps only account for 0.102%.
- Visitor rate: For every single AI-controlled human, Google sends 831 – after 135 scrapes result in a single click.
- CTR drop: AI interfaces are 91% behind the top 10 click-through rates in organic search.
- Oh: AI traffic outperforms Bingbot; Googlebot crawls increased by 34.8% according to the AI overviews, which worsened recommendation rates by 24.4%.
- Scraping hotspots: B2B content has the highest bot-to-human ratio; Parent inquiries increased 333%, purchases increased 111%; APAC locations endure three times as many US inquiries.
- Rule breaker: 13.26% of AI bots disregard robots.txt (previously 3.3%); OpenAI’s 404 error rate for fake links is 3.7%.
- Deal perks: OpenAI-licensed publishers endure 88% more abuse, but get far better recommendations.
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This hectic pace is changing content quests: AI tools are swallowing answers completely and reducing publisher clicks. National news suffers five times more real-time errors compared to training runs, while Europe dodges 27% fewer hits than the US. TollBit’s bot paywall blocks increased 360% in the second quarter, ushering in an era of publisher pushback. Anthropic’s Claude has eliminated web traffic errors (down from 55% to 4.8%), but the broader bot blitz is hurting ad revenue and SEO dreams.
With Google visitor statistics showing a clear winner, there are increasing calls for AI companies to increase license fees. Publishers are eyeing paywalls and deals to recapture value – will Big Tech give in, or will the scrape war rage on? Stay tuned; Your next search could cost more than you think.
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