JULY 23, 2026 — In a recent article where Fortune discussed the dead internet theory and growing prevalence of traffic from AI agents and bots, the author cites a Seer blog that discusses this new analytics blind spot. We know AI traffic is rising (from our own research and third-party analyses), so it's great to see well-known sites like Fortune discussing the implications for brands today.
What We Found
In 2025, we documented an analytics tracking problem with OpenAI's Operator. Operator has since been discontinued, but we're continuing to see challenges with tracking AI traffic and agent activities — from on-site problems like invisible crawlers and agentic browsers that mimic human behaviors, to off-site agent transactions on behalf of users.
The Bigger Picture
Human Traffic found a 7,851% increase in year-over-year agentic AI traffic, with non-human traffic growing 8x faster than human traffic. That's not going away any time soon. Brands have to embrace the fact that their sites now serve both humans and AI agents, and figure out how to track the traffic that matters.
Our Take: What This Means for Marketers
It's time to adapt your digital marketing strategies to optimize for traditional SEO and search AI.
Segment your traffic as best you can to get a clear picture of real user behaviors versus automated interactions. And if you're in ecommerce, make sure you're getting visibility into off-site agentic purchases by building a bridge between your analytics and ecommerce order management systems.
Then reassess your KPIs. AI can create extra noise you'll have to filter out of your analytics — inflating engagement, artificially depressing bounce rates, and distorting session duration. For more specifics on what your brand can do, check out the recommendations in our blog.
Resources
Check out our post about tracking AI traffic: The New Analytics Blind Spot: AI Traffic & AI Agents That Shop Without Visiting Your Site
Read the Fortune article: Turns Out Dead Internet Theory Was Right: AI Agents Are Eating the Web, Growing by Nearly 8,000% and Rewiring the Internet's Business Model
