Ghost Team 
By Elliot Garreffa, Co-founder & Head of Growth at Ghost Team
Contents
- Why this matters Discover how ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity crawl your website. Learn 8 critical AI crawler patterns and AEO strategies to optimize your brand's AI visibility.now
- How AI systems learn about your brand
- The 8 critical patterns we discovered
- Final thoughts
At Ghost Team, we built an AI crawler tracking system to understand exactly how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI systems learn about companies. Over 2 weeks, we logged 333 crawler visits across 40 pages and discovered patterns that completely change how we think about brand visibility.
The shift from Google to AI assistants is happening faster than most realize. When someone asks ChatGPT "What does [your company] do?", the answer comes from AI crawlers visiting your site and building their "memory" of your brand.
Most companies have zero visibility into this process. They don't know which AI systems know about them, what pages they're reading, or whether they have accurate information.
This guide shares everything we've learned so far about how AI crawlers actually work.
If you want to learn more about AEO and be among other founders, executives, and professionals figuring this out together, join our community.
We're building in public and sharing everything we learn about AI visibility, crawler optimization, and the shift from search to AI-mediated discovery.
Why this matters now
ChatGPT has 800M+ monthly users. Perplexity, Claude, and other AI assistants are growing rapidly. Users are shifting from "Google it" to "ask ChatGPT" for information discovery.
This creates a new distribution channel - one that most companies are completely unprepared for.
Think about what happens when someone asks an AI assistant about your company:
- "What does Ghost Team do?"
- "Who are the best AI agent agencies?"
- "I need help building AI agents - any recommendations?"
The answer doesn't come from your latest marketing campaign. It comes from AI crawlers visiting your website, reading your content, and forming their "memory" of your brand.
If AI systems don't have accurate, current information about you, they're answering questions with outdated or incomplete data.
This isn't speculation. It's already happening. And most companies have no idea what AI systems actually know about them.
We built a tracking system to find out.
How AI systems learn about your brand
AI systems build knowledge about companies through a 3-layer memory system:
Layer 1: Training Data (Frozen Snapshot)
Models like GPT-4 were trained on web data up to a cutoff date. Your old website might be frozen here. This layer can't be updated directly.
Layer 2: Periodic Crawling (What We're Tracking)
AI bots visit your site regularly to update their "short-term memory":
- ChatGPT-User (user-initiated queries)
- GPTBot (background crawling)
- Claude-Web (Anthropic's crawler)
- Bingbot (Microsoft/Bing AI)
- Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta AI)
This is what we're tracking and optimizing.
Layer 3: Real-Time Fetch (User-Initiated)
When a user asks about a specific URL, AI systems can fetch fresh content. But this doesn't update general knowledge - it's temporary for that conversation only.
The critical layer is #2. Periodic crawling determines what AI systems "know" about your brand when users ask general questions.
The 8 critical patterns we discovered
We logged 333 AI crawler visits over 2 weeks. We’re refining our insights constantly as we learn more. Here's what the data revealed so far:
Pattern 1: The Surface Problem (81.4% shallow crawling)
Finding: 81.4% of AI crawls stay at surface level (homepage + one level deep). Only 0.6% of crawls reach content beyond 2 levels deep.
What this means: AI systems are forming their entire opinion of your company from maybe 20% of your content. Your detailed case studies, service pages, technical documentation - most of it is invisible to AI.
Why it matters: If someone asks "What are Ghost Team's core capabilities?", AI might only know about what's on the homepage, not the sophisticated automation work buried three clicks deep.
Pattern 2: The Homepage Monopoly (25.8% of all traffic)
Finding: 25.8% of ALL AI crawler traffic goes to the homepage. For ChatGPT-User specifically, it's 44.9%.
What this means: Your homepage is where AI forms its first impression. If your messaging isn't clear, accurate, and comprehensive, you're screwed for AI representation.
Action: Audit your homepage right now. Does it clearly state:
- What you do
- Who you serve
- Your core capabilities
- Key differentiators
Try and reduce marketing fluff - actual information AI can parse.
Pattern 3: The Burst Phenomenon (clustered crawling behavior)
Finding: AI crawlers don't visit randomly - they work in clusters:
- GPTBot: 96.0% burst activity (almost always crawls multiple pages rapidly)
- ChatGPT-User: 65.4% burst activity (user queries trigger exploration chains)
- FacebookBot: 52.9% balanced
- Bingbot: 48.6% steady (most consistent)
What this means: When an AI system visits your site, it typically explores multiple pages in quick succession. This creates a brief window where your internal linking strategy determines how much the bot learns about you.
Action: Optimize internal linking from your homepage and top pages. When a bot lands, you have seconds to guide it to your most important content.
Pattern 4: They Have Preferred Hours (not 24/7 random)
Finding: Statistical analysis shows bots have clear time preferences:
- ChatGPT-User: Peaks at 4-6 PM UTC (US afternoon)
- GPTBot: Only active 7 AM - 7 PM UTC
- Meta-ExternalAgent: Prefers midnight, 3 AM, 6 AM UTC
- Bingbot: Peaks at 11 AM, 10 PM, noon UTC
What this means: We’re still looking into what this means for your business and whether you can optimize for it. Potentially, publishing or updating content during peak bot hours could increase the chance of being crawled quickly.
Pattern 5: The 404 Problem (7.2% waste)
Finding: 7.2% of AI visits hit 404 error pages - making it the THIRD most visited "page" on our site.
- Bingbot hit 404s nine times
- GPTBot hit them four times
What this means: AI systems are literally learning about your broken links and dead pages. They're forming associations between your brand and missing content.
Action: Run a broken link audit immediately. Set up proper redirects. Monitor 404s specifically for AI crawler traffic.
Pattern 6: The Hidden Gem Effect (long-form content magnetism)
Finding: Our detailed 7,000-word guide about building AI apps gets 10.2% of all AI traffic - second only to the homepage.
- FacebookBot visits it 41.2% of the time
- Appears in both user queries AND background crawls
What this means: Long, detailed, technical content is a magnet for AI crawlers. High user interest = high AI training value.
Action: Create comprehensive, authoritative content on your core topics. 2,000+ words, technical depth, real examples. This becomes your "AI beacon" content.
Pattern 7: Different Bots, Different Personalities
Findings:
What this means: Each AI system has different crawling strategies. GPTBot explores broadly. ChatGPT-User focuses intensely on specific pages based on what users ask about.
Action: Optimize differently for each bot. For ChatGPT visibility, focus on homepage + key landing pages. For comprehensive AI knowledge, optimize for GPTBot's exploratory behavior.
How to implement this yourself
We're releasing a complete technical implementation guide that shows you how to build your own AI crawler tracking system. It includes:
- Bot detection patterns for all major AI crawlers
- Database schema and logging setup
- Middleware integration (Next.js, Express, custom)
- Testing and monitoring frameworks
We'll also be sharing ongoing optimization strategies as we continue gathering data and testing different approaches.We’ll email this to all our newsletter subscribers!
Final thoughts
This is early. AEO best practices are still being figured out. The companies that experiment, measure, and share learnings will move fastest.
Different rules than SEO. While there's overlap, AI crawlers behave differently than Googlebot. They have personalities, time preferences, burst patterns. Treat them differently.
It's not either/or. Keep doing SEO. AEO is additive, not replacement. You need both.
Distribution is shifting. More people are asking AI assistants instead of searching Google. Your "AI reputation" increasingly affects customer acquisition.
First-mover advantage is real. The companies optimizing now will have better AI visibility and established presence before the market gets crowded.
The shift from Google to AI assistants is happening whether you're ready or not. The only question is whether you're optimizing for it.
Join people building at the AI frontier
We're building in public and sharing everything we learn. We have a community of executives, professionals, and founders all excited about the opportunities that AI brings.
If you're interested in:
- Optimizing for AI visibility
- AEO and AI crawler strategies
- Build Apps in ChatGPT
- Growth agents & automation
Take 2 minutes to apply to join our community.
Connect with us
At Ghost Team, we've built AI crawler tracking systems and optimized AI visibility for companies across various industries. If your company wants to win in AI-mediated discovery, we'd love to talk to you.
We have limited spots available to work with ambitious teams who want to optimize for this new distribution channel.
Book a strategy call with our team here.
