A dramatic shift is underway in how websites are accessed, with artificial intelligence now accounting for a significant and rapidly growing portion of internet traffic. New data from web traffic analysis firm Tollbit reveals that in the fourth quarter of 2025, AI bots comprised roughly one in 31 visits – a stark contrast to the 200:1 ratio at the start of the same year. This surge in automated traffic, driven largely by “Retrieval-Augmented Generation” (RAG) bots utilized by companies like OpenAI and Google, is reshaping the digital landscape and posing new challenges for publishers and content creators.
The proportion of bots among website downloads is growing steadily and rapidly. The growth appears to be driven by AI-powered web search.
The increasing presence of artificial intelligence on the internet is reshaping how websites are accessed, according to new data from Tollbit, a firm that tracks traffic from AI-driven bots. Their latest report reveals a significant shift in the balance between human visitors and automated agents. In the fourth quarter of 2025, roughly one AI bot visit occurred for every 31 human visits – a dramatic change from a ratio of 200:1 in the first quarter of the same year.
“Based on the tests we’ve run… many of these web scrapers are indistinguishable from human visitors to the sites,” noted Tollbit. “In light of this, our data is conservative; the reality is likely worse.” The data also indicates a concurrent decline in human traffic to websites, with a 5 percent decrease in human visitors between the third and fourth quarters of 2025.
Initial concerns about AI’s impact on the web centered on companies scraping vast amounts of content to train their models. While this practice continues – as evidenced by ongoing copyright disputes in the courts – Tollbit’s analysis shows that data collection for training purposes now accounts for a smaller portion of overall bot traffic. The firm found that data gathering for training purposes decreased by 15 percent between the second and fourth quarters of 2025.
Bot traffic is now dominated by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) bots,
utilized by companies like OpenAI and Google to extract real-time information from the internet to answer queries posed to platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. RAG bot traffic surged 33 percent during the same period. AI search indexers, which build the indexes used by RAG bots, also experienced a substantial 59 percent increase in traffic. OpenAI is identified as the primary driver of this data collection activity, with its ChatGPT-User bot averaging five times more data requests per page than Meta, the second-largest collector.
The trend suggests a broader shift in how people access information online, with some increasingly relying on AI to gather data on their behalf. Eight Oh Two, a marketing firm, reports that 37 percent of active AI users now begin their searches on platforms like ChatGPT or Gemini, bypassing traditional search engines like Google. A recent Pew Research study found that 62 percent of U.S. adults use AI in some form weekly, indicating growing consumer adoption.
Tollbit’s data shows that B2B and professional websites, national news sites, and lifestyle content are the most frequently accessed by AI. However, the largest growth in data collection over the past year has been in the technology and consumer electronics sectors, with a 107 percent increase. B2B and professional sites saw a more modest growth of 62 percent. “This growth is likely driven by an increase in relevant questions appearing in consumer AI applications, as more users turn to these tools for information-seeking tasks,” Tollbit noted.
Media Companies Face Pressure
The rise of RAG bots is also impacting referral traffic to websites. According to Tollbit, the already limited referral traffic from AI applications to the websites they source information from is declining sharply. The AI-driven click-through rate fell from 0.8 percent in the second quarter of 2025 to just 0.27 percent in the fourth quarter – a nearly threefold decrease. Even websites with AI licensing agreements are not immune, with their click-through rates dropping from 6.5x in the first quarter of 2025 to 1.33 percent in the fourth. “The internet will soon no longer be a place for flesh-and-blood users,” said Olivia Joslin, Tollbit’s co-founder and COO.
“AI-generated traffic will continue to grow and replace direct human visitors to websites,” Joslin stated, “ultimately, AI will become the primary reader of the internet.” This shift in traffic patterns, with declining human visits and increasing bot activity, could fundamentally alter the online landscape, forcing media companies to adapt to a bot-dominated environment. AI visitors read far more than human visitors, don’t get fatigued, and can conduct much deeper research, while we get bored after viewing the third link. The outlook is bleak for publishers: for example, the prestigious Washington Post announced a 30 percent workforce reduction on February 5th, a story that made headlines worldwide.
AI Isn’t Without Drawbacks
Some studies suggest that using AI can have a negative impact on critical thinking skills. Despite warnings about mental health, young people frequently use AI, and studies with students have shown that those who relied on AI for essay writing had poorer knowledge retention than those who did their own research.
These warnings about an AI-driven intellectual crisis overlook the fact that AI represents another layer of manipulation alongside search engine algorithms, influencing what information users access and in what format. Once again, it appears the internet as we know it is dying. This time, however, the focus is on those internet users who are willingly sacrificing the internet on the altar of convenience – AI-powered chatbots.
Source: TheRegister
