In 2025, Googlebot continues to dominate web crawling, outpacing other bots, including emerging AI crawlers. A recent report from Cloudflare highlights significant shifts in web traffic patterns as AI crawlers surged in number, while publishers took steps to block bots from accessing their sites.

Googlebot’s Continued Dominance

Googlebot remains the king of web crawling, generating more than 25% of all verified bot traffic in 2025. The bot alone accounted for 4.5% of all HTML request traffic—surpassing all other AI bots combined, which contributed only 4.2%.

Google’s focus on both search indexing and AI training has solidified its position as the leading force in the digital space. In fact, Googlebot’s crawl volume far exceeded any other AI-based crawlers, including major players like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta.

AI Crawling: A Rapid Surge

AI-based crawling activity grew significantly in 2025. Cloudflare data revealed that AI crawlers, which simulate human behavior to gather data, surged by more than 15 times compared to the previous year. As AI crawlers became more sophisticated, they increasingly encountered restrictions, with many websites blocking them through robots.txt files.

Interestingly, AI crawlers from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI showed a stark contrast in terms of traffic. Anthropic, for instance, exhibited a very high crawl-to-traffic ratio, reaching nearly 500,000:1 in the early months of 2025, meaning it crawled far more content than it sent back as traffic.

Google Still Holds the Search Crown

Despite the growing role of AI in crawling, Google’s dominance in search remains unrivaled. The search giant continues to deliver nearly 90% of all search engine referral traffic, maintaining its overwhelming lead over competitors such as Bing (3.1%), Yandex (2.0%), and Baidu (1.4%).

In fact, Googlebot’s web crawling volume dwarfed that of all AI crawlers, reaffirming the company’s ongoing centrality in the digital ecosystem. The competitive landscape for search engines showed minimal movement, with Google continuing its reign as the most trafficked search engine.

Key Takeaways for Webmasters and Content Publishers

As AI crawling surges, website owners may need to rethink their bot management strategies. The increase in AI crawlers may lead to higher traffic volumes and potential data scraping concerns. At the same time, Googlebot’s role remains as crucial as ever for search visibility and AI training purposes.

Publishers should ensure their websites are optimized for both search engine crawlers and AI bots to stay ahead in 2025’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.

As web crawling evolves and AI bots increase in prominence, staying on top of your digital marketing strategy has never been more important. Google’s dominance in web crawling and search indexing plays a major role in driving organic traffic to your website. To make the most of this traffic, partnering with a trusted digital marketing agency like SEO Guru NYC can give you the edge in navigating these changes.

From SEO to content marketing, we help businesses in New York stay ahead of the curve. If you’re ready to improve your website’s visibility and stay competitive in a rapidly changing online landscape, contact us today for expert digital marketing services tailored to your needs.