How is this different from Google Analytics?

Google Analytics shows you traffic. Shadow shows you traffic, AI bot activity, what AI platforms say about your brand, AND tells you what to do about all of it. It's analytics + AI intelligence + action steps in one tool.

Do I need to install anything?

For basic monitoring (bot detection, AI perception, readiness score) — nope, just enter your URL. For full visitor analytics (clicks, behavior, sessions), add one script tag. One-click integrations for Vercel, Shopify, WordPress, and more.

Will it slow down my site?

No. The script is under 5KB and loads async. Zero impact on page speed or Core Web Vitals. External monitoring has literally no impact — it watches from the outside.

What AI bots does Shadow detect?

All of them. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, Amazonbot, and dozens more. The Shadow Network means new bots get identified across all users instantly.

What do you mean by "actionable steps"?

Shadow doesn't just show you graphs. It says things like: "ChatGPT has your pricing wrong — add structured data to /pricing to fix it" or "Your bounce rate on /features is 68% — here's why and what to change." Specific, do-it-today recommendations.

Can Shadow block bots?

Shadow is a telescope, not a shield. It shows you who's visiting and what AI says about you. It generates block rules and robots.txt configs you can apply — but it doesn't intercept traffic.

Yes. Shadow never collects PII. IP addresses are hashed after classification. No cookies on your visitors. All Shadow Network data is anonymized. GDPR compliant by design.

How do I block Bingbot?

Add this to your robots.txt file: User-agent: Bingbot / Disallow: /

Does Bingbot respect robots.txt?

Yes, Bingbot by Microsoft respects robots.txt directives.

AI Search Respects robots.txt

Bingbot

by Microsoft First seen: 2010-06

About

Microsoft's primary web crawler powering both Bing search and Microsoft Copilot. Since Copilot's integration into Bing, Bingbot's crawl data feeds directly into AI-generated answers, citations, and Copilot's web grounding. One of the highest-volume crawlers on the web.

Purpose

Search indexing for Bing + real-time grounding for Microsoft Copilot

User Agent String

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

How to Control in robots.txt

🚫 Block Bingbot

User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /

✅ Allow Bingbot

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

Complete Guide: How to Block Bingbot

Server-level blocking, nginx configs, Cloudflare rules, Next.js middleware, and more →

Is Bingbot crawling your site?

Run a free scan to check if Microsoft's crawler is accessing your website.

Check if Bingbot is crawling YOUR site →