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 img2dataset?

Add this to your robots.txt file: User-agent: img2dataset / Disallow: /

Does img2dataset respect robots.txt?

No, img2dataset by HuggingFace / Community has been observed ignoring robots.txt directives.

AI Training Ignores robots.txt

img2dataset

by HuggingFace / Community First seen: 2021-06

About

img2dataset is an open-source tool used to download and resize large image datasets for AI training. Widely used by the ML community to build CLIP training sets and image-generation datasets. When run against a site, it downloads images in bulk without standard browser identification.

Purpose

Bulk image dataset collection for AI training

User Agent String

img2dataset

How to Control in robots.txt

🚫 Block img2dataset

User-agent: img2dataset
Disallow: /

✅ Allow img2dataset

User-agent: img2dataset
Allow: /

⚠️ img2dataset has been observed ignoring robots.txt directives. You may need server-level blocking (e.g., firewall rules or user-agent filtering) to effectively prevent access.

Is img2dataset crawling your site?

Run a free scan to check if HuggingFace / Community's crawler is accessing your website.

Check if img2dataset is crawling YOUR site →