# What ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini really read

> Every day, AI assistants browse the Wispra directory to answer their users. This barometer measures what they read, how fast they arrive, and which businesses they send visitors to. All figures come from our own measurements, and the method is public.

Canonical page: https://directory.wispra.com/ai-barometer
Edition: 1 · September 2026 · Data from November 5, 2025 to September 24, 2026
Next edition: October 2026

## Key figures

- 80% of newly listed businesses are read by a conversational AI by the next day at the latest.
- 78% of directory listings were read by ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity over the last 90 days. (31% by all three)
- ×5 more AI on our Markdown pages: 25% of their visits come from an assistant, versus 5% on HTML.
- ×2.2 more visitors sent by ChatGPT to each equipped client site between April and August 2026.

## Who really reads the directory?

Many tools count Googlebot or Meta's crawler as “AI visits”. We don't. In this barometer, an AI read means a visit from a conversational assistant only: OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude) or Perplexity.

Out of 100 visits from so-called “AI” bots, only 20 come from an assistant: 
- Meta crawler: 51.7%
- Bingbot: 15.2%
- OpenAI (ChatGPT) (counted assistant): 11.7%
- Googlebot: 8.0%
- Anthropic (Claude) (counted assistant): 7.1%
- Other crawlers: 4.7%
- Perplexity (counted assistant): 1.6%

- Split of AI reads over the last 90 days: OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity. 45% · 41% · 14%
- Median delay to first read: Perplexity, then ChatGPT, then Claude. 1 · 5 · 9 days
- 80% of listings are read by the next day at the latest, 88% within a week.
- AI reads come in waves: Claude concentrated 61% of its quarterly reads into a single week in August.

## What AI reads, and what gets it to recommend

Two different rankings. Assistants mostly read blog articles. But the visitors they send arrive more often through product pages, documents and reviews.

Share of AI reads by content type (3 July to 23 September 2026, HTML and Markdown versions combined.): 
- Blog articles: 58.9%
- Product / offer pages: 17.2%
- Business profile: 7.6%
- Documents: 4.4%
- Blog index page: 3.7%
- Customer reviews: 3.6%
- Catalogue index page: 1.5%
- FAQ: 1.5%
- Other (testimonials, document lists): 1.6%

Visitors sent per 1,000 AI reads (Visitors arriving from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Gemini, relative to AI reads of the same page type. 11 March to 23 September 2026.): 
- Product / offer pages: 9.4
- Documents: 6.2
- Customer reviews: 6.1
- FAQ: 5.9
- Blog articles: 3.7
- Catalogue index page: 3.5
- Blog index page: 3.1
- Business profile: 2.8

- 66% of Perplexity's reads are blog articles. It is the most “editorial” of the three.
- 25% of ChatGPT's reads are business profiles and documents, versus 6% for Claude.
- A blog index page is re-read 2.6 times more often than an article: it is how AI discovers the rest.

## Markdown: the format AI prefers

Since July 2026, every directory page also exists in Markdown (since May for business profiles): the same content as plain text, without layout. It is advertised in the page's code and in our llms.txt file.

Share of reads done in Markdown, by bot: 
- Claude (Anthropic): 33%
- ChatGPT (OpenAI): 22%
- Bingbot: 8%
- Meta crawler: 7%
- Googlebot: 0.1%
- Perplexity: 0%

- 25% of visits to Markdown pages come from an AI assistant, versus 5% on HTML pages. Markdown is read almost exclusively by AI.
- 60% of directory articles had their Markdown version read by an assistant in under three months.
- 0 Google impressions on Markdown pages: they point to the HTML page, so there is no duplicate content.
- Markdown complements HTML, it does not replace it: Perplexity and Google only read the HTML version, which must stay complete and readable without JavaScript.

## AI sends visitors, mostly through ChatGPT

An AI that reads a page may then recommend it. On client sites equipped with the Wispra pixel, we measure visitors arriving directly from an assistant.

Where visitors sent by AI come from (Split by assistant, June to September 2026.): 
- ChatGPT: 81.6%
- Gemini: 9.1%
- Perplexity: 4.2%
- Claude: 3.4%
- Copilot: 1.7%

- 4.4% vs 4.0% of visitors sent to the directory by an AI then click through to the business website, versus visitors from Google. As often, or slightly more.
- ×2.2 more ChatGPT visitors per site between April and August 2026. The index has stayed above 190 since May.

## AI searches Google… and doesn't click

Before answering, assistants run their own searches on Google and Bing. Those queries leave a trace in Google Search Console: they read as if written by a machine, rank well, and generate almost no clicks.

- 10% of the directory's Google impressions come from “machine” queries: multiple quotes, exclusion operators, prompt-like sentences.
- 0.1% vs 2% click-through rate on these queries versus human queries, at an average position of 6.9.
- ×9 Google clicks per week to the directory between March and September 2026.

## Five levers to be read, then recommended

1. **Publish articles** — The blog is what assistants read the most. Answer the questions your customers ask ChatGPT.
2. **Detail your offers** — Prices, specs, service area: product pages are what get a site recommended.
3. **Offer a Markdown version** — With an llms.txt file, it is the format Claude and ChatGPT favour when it exists.
4. **Keep complete HTML** — Perplexity and Google only read HTML. It must render without JavaScript.
5. **Get listed early** — A listing published on the directory is read by an assistant by the next day, in the vast majority of cases.

## How we measure

- Sources. Server logs of the directory.wispra.com directory, the Wispra pixel installed on our clients' websites (visitors referred by an assistant) and the directory's Google Search Console.
- AI read. A visit from a conversational assistant, identified by its user-agent. Search-engine and social-network crawlers are excluded. Counted: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User. Excluded: Googlebot, Bingbot, meta-externalagent.
- Shares and ratios. Results are expressed as shares, ratios, delays and indices, so they stay comparable from one edition to the next whatever the directory's growth.
- Periods. Shown under each chart. HTML / Markdown comparisons start on 3 July 2026, the date by which every Markdown page was live.
- Known limit. We do not yet separate a read for model training from a live read during a conversation. That will be the subject of a future edition.

Cite this barometer: Wispra AI Barometer, edition #1, September 2026. https://directory.wispra.com/ai-barometer

## FAQ

**What counts as an “AI read” in this barometer?** A page fetched by a conversational assistant's bot: OpenAI (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User), Anthropic (ClaudeBot, Claude-User) or Perplexity (PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User). Googlebot, Bingbot and Meta's crawler are excluded, even though many tools label them as AI.

**How quickly do AI assistants read a new listing?** 80% of listings created on the Wispra directory are read by ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity by the next day at the latest. The median delay is 1 day for Perplexity, 5 days for ChatGPT and 9 days for Claude.

**Do AI assistants read Markdown pages?** Yes. On the directory, 25% of visits to Markdown pages come from an assistant, versus 5% on HTML. Claude reads 33% of the pages it visits in Markdown and ChatGPT 22%; Perplexity and Google only read HTML.

**How often is the barometer updated?** Every month. Each edition keeps the same indicators so trends can be compared. Next edition: October 2026.