--- title: AI crawlers are inflating your view counts | daily.dev description: AI crawlers like Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, and Baiduspider are making hundreds of thousands of requests per day, inflating server-side analytics counts.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/ai-crawlers-are-inflating-your-view-counts-ddaqfpcpm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: AI crawlers are inflating your view counts | daily.dev og:description: AI crawlers like Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, and Baiduspider are making hundreds of thousands of requests per day, inflating server-side analytics counts.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/ai-crawlers-are-inflating-your-view-counts-ddaqfpcpm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/DDaqfPcpm.png og:image:alt: AI crawlers are inflating your view counts og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # AI crawlers are inflating your view counts **[thoughbot](https://daily.dev/sources/thoughbot)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary AI crawlers like Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, and Baiduspider are making hundreds of thousands of requests per day, inflating server-side analytics counts. A Rails app using Ahoy for tracking found its view counts were measuring scraper activity, not real users. The fix involves three stacked layers: moving tracking to a client-side JavaScript beacon (using a Stimulus controller with requestIdleCallback) so crawlers that don't execute JS get excluded, adding a robots.txt disallow for the tracking endpoint, and adding an early-exit bot check in the tracking controller to return a cheap 204 for bots that announce themselves via user agent. This approach filters out the vast majority of bot traffic without chasing ever-changing user agent blocklists. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot](https://daily.dev/posts/someone-is-running-mass-vulnerability-scans-spoofing-ai-bots-like-claudebot-homewd2zq) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [You should feed the bots: \(Maurycy's blog\)](https://daily.dev/posts/you-should-feed-the-bots-maurycy-s-blog--aqquphtsq) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI scrapers request commented scripts](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-scrapers-request-commented-scripts-uktxehbfv) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#rails](https://daily.dev/tags/rails) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-crawlers-are-inflating-your-view-counts-ddaqfpcpm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"AI crawlers are inflating your view counts","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-crawlers-are-inflating-your-view-counts-ddaqfpcpm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-crawlers-are-inflating-your-view-counts-ddaqfpcpm"},"datePublished":"2026-06-16T00:30:12.257Z","dateModified":"2026-06-18T11:33:57.166Z","description":"AI crawlers like Meta-ExternalAgent, Bytespider, and Baiduspider are making hundreds of thousands of requests per day, inflating server-side analytics counts....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/b28525ee70bbb3190f0fc0496a9a23fe?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/b28525ee70bbb3190f0fc0496a9a23fe?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"thoughbot","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"thoughbot","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/9fe12feb57f944a29ff63a79e350081a","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/thoughbot"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/ai-crawlers-are-inflating-your-view-counts-ddaqfpcpm","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"rails","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"thoughbot","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/thoughbot"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"AI crawlers are inflating your view counts"}]} ```