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 GPTBot?

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

Does GPTBot respect robots.txt?

Yes, GPTBot by OpenAI respects robots.txt directives.

AI Training Respects robots.txt

GPTBot

by OpenAI First seen: 2023-08

About

OpenAI's primary web crawler used to gather training data for GPT models. One of the most active AI crawlers on the web, GPTBot indexes pages to improve AI model quality and safety.

Purpose

AI model training data collection

User Agent String

Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.2; +https://openai.com/gptbot)

How to Control in robots.txt

🚫 Block GPTBot

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

✅ Allow GPTBot

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

Complete Guide: How to Block GPTBot

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

Other Bots by OpenAI

ChatGPT-User

Real-time web browsing for ChatGPT users

AI Assistant

OAI-SearchBot

AI-powered search indexing

AI Search

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