Measurement methodology
How the report numbers are measured
Frozen measurement definitions so figures are citable and stable. If the methodology changes, a new version with a date is published; historical reports are never reinterpreted retroactively.
v1.0 — effective from October 24, 2026
01
Real page loads
A page load by a human. Verified AI bots, security scanners and crawlers are excluded.
The previous "unique visitors" metric was deprecated on 2026-10-23 because it included scanners; see the Servando case log.
02
AI readership levels
AI readership is split into 3 evidence levels:
| Level | What it means | Example bots |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 — Indexing | Index bot | Googlebot, GPTBot in indexing mode |
| Level 2 — Training | Training bots | GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, Applebot |
| Level 3 — Live query | Bot read because a user asked | ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User, Google-CloudVertexBot |
03
A hit is a read, not a citation
An AI reading your page does not prove it will cite you. Citation is only measured with the monthly citation panel (real purchase questions on 5 surfaces, in incognito, with a dated screenshot).
04
Conversion
A click on a WhatsApp button (tracked via /go/* links) or a form submission (tracked on the forms server).
05
Versioning
This is v1.0. Any future change creates a new version with a date and is noted in the first affected report.
Want to see these numbers in your monthly report?
The report measures all of this every month, with the published and stable methodology.