{
  "kind": "fact",
  "studySlug": "crawler-behavior",
  "slug": "gptbot-rarely-uses-the-homepage-as-an-entry-point",
  "title": "GPTBot rarely uses the homepage as an entry point",
  "description": "GPTBot overwhelmingly lands deeper in the site.",
  "lastUpdated": "2026-02-01",
  "lastTested": "2026-02-01",
  "sourceStudyUrl": "/trakkr-research/crawler-behavior",
  "sourceStudyTitle": "When AI Comes to Your Website",
  "claimIds": [
    "crawler-behavior:gptbot-homepage"
  ],
  "relatedSlugs": [
    "answer:are-most-ai-crawler-visits-one-and-done",
    "answer:does-gptbot-behave-differently-from-claudebot",
    "tracker:crawler-share-tracker"
  ],
  "methodologySummary": "Built from 575,788 AI crawler visits across 84 brands and 314,501 unique URLs observed between June 11, 2025 and February 1, 2026.",
  "limitations": [
    "This study measures observable crawler traffic rather than hidden fetches or internal cache reads.",
    "One dominant e-commerce brand was excluded to keep the page-type patterns more generalizable.",
    "Visit share and homepage preference vary sharply by bot family, so averages can hide crawler-specific behavior."
  ],
  "keywords": [
    "AI crawlers",
    "GPTBot behavior",
    "ClaudeBot behavior",
    "AI bot traffic"
  ],
  "schemaHints": {
    "pageType": "Article",
    "includeDataset": true
  },
  "claim": "GPTBot initiates crawling from the homepage in only 2.75 percent of observed sessions.",
  "supportingMetrics": [
    {
      "label": "GPTBot homepage rate",
      "value": "2.75%",
      "detail": "GPTBot rarely starts on the homepage."
    }
  ],
  "whyItMatters": "Because homepages serve as weak safety nets for GPTBot discovery, search operators and content strategists must ensure deep pages and individual articles are independently optimized and accessible to AI crawlers.",
  "citationBlock": {
    "quote": "GPTBot hits the homepage only 2.75% of the time in the crawler behavior study.",
    "attribution": "When AI Comes to Your Website - Trakkr Research",
    "url": "https://trakkr.ai/trakkr-research/crawler-behavior/facts/gptbot-rarely-uses-the-homepage-as-an-entry-point"
  }
}