AI Barometer · Edition #1 · September 2026

What ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini really read

Q: 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.

Q: 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.

Q: 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.

Q: How often is the barometer updated?

Every month. Each edition keeps the same indicators so trends can be compared. Next edition: October 2026.

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.

List my business See the method ↓

Data from November 5, 2025 to September 24, 2026 Updated September 25, 2026 · next edition in October 2026

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.

×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.

01 · The readers

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

Visits from bots labelled “AI” on the directory, by family, November 5, 2025 to September 24, 2026. In colour: the assistants we count.

Meta crawler 52%
Bingbot 15%
OpenAI (ChatGPT) 12%
Googlebot 8%
Anthropic (Claude) 7%
Other crawlers 5%
Perplexity 2%

Meta, Bing and Google crawlers mostly serve social networks and search engines. Counting them as “AI” would inflate the figures about 5 times.

The top reader changes from one month to the next

Share of each assistant in the directory's AI reads, by month. September runs to the September 23, 2026.

50%

100%

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep*

See the data

	OpenAI	Anthropic	Perplexity
March	85.8%	0.0%	14.2%
April	64.6%	31.2%	4.2%
May	58.6%	39.1%	2.3%
June	70.2%	26.3%	3.5%
July	69.9%	26.2%	3.9%
August	20.4%	75.0%	4.7%
September	29.3%	16.1%	54.6%

AI assistants reach a new listing fast

Delay between a listing going live and its first read by an assistant, as a % of listings created from mid-March to end of August 2026.

20%

40%

60%

49%

Same day

31%

Day +1

Days 2–7

Days 8–14

Days 15–30

30+ days

Not yet

80% of listings are read by the next day at the latest, 88% within a week.

45 · 41 · 14%

Split of AI reads over the last 90 days: OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity.

1 d · 5 d · 9 d

Median delay to first read: Perplexity, then ChatGPT, then Claude.

61%

AI reads come in waves: Claude concentrated 61% of its quarterly reads into a single week in August.

02 · The content

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 59%
Product / offer pages 17%
Business profile 8%
Documents 4%
Blog index page 4%
Customer reviews 4%
Catalogue index page 2%
FAQ 2%
Other (testimonials, document lists) 2%

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

Each assistant has its favourite content

Share of each assistant's reads by content type, 3 July to 23 September 2026. Read by column.

Share of reads by content type for each assistant
	OpenAI	Anthropic	Perplexity
Blog articles	48%	63%	66%
Product / offer pages	17%	19%	12%
Business profile	15%	4%	4%
Documents	9%	2%	3%
Blog index page	3%	3%	6%
Customer reviews	4%	4%	3%
Catalogue index page	2%	1%	3%
FAQ	2%	1%	2%

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.

×2.6

A blog index page is re-read 2.6 times more often than an article: it is how AI discovers the rest.

03 · The format

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.

/business/your-business · HTML

<head>
  <link rel="alternate"
        type="text/markdown"
        href="…/your-business.md">
</head>
<body> menus, scripts, layout… </body>

/business/your-business.md · Markdown

# Your business
Activity, service area, opening hours.

## Offers
- Offer A: price, specs
## Customer reviews
4.8/5 · dated excerpts

Share of reads done in Markdown, by bot

Directory pages available in both formats, 3 July to 23 September 2026.

Claude (Anthropic) 33%
ChatGPT (OpenAI) 22%
Bingbot 8%
Meta crawler 7%
Googlebot < 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.

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.

04 · The visitors

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%

Visitors sent by ChatGPT, per equipped site

Index 100 = April 2026. Average across sites that received at least one ChatGPT visitor that month.

100

200

100

Apr

211

May

225

Jun

193

Jul

225

Aug

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.

05 · The search engines

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.

What a query written by an AI looks like

Examples reworded from Search Console. In orange: exclusions added by the agent.

photographe de mariage à [ville], france -site:indeed.com -site:instagram.com -site:linkedin.com -site:bark.com
"[assureur]" "assurance" -site:reddit.com -site:x.com -site:tripadvisor.com -site:yelp.com
my competitor appears in ai results and i don't - what do i do

Assistants filter out platforms (jobs, social networks, review sites) to find direct providers. A clear, complete directory listing is part of what they keep.

06 · What it means for you

Five levers to be read, then recommended

What this edition's data tells businesses that want to appear in AI answers.

Publish articles

The blog is what assistants read the most. Answer the questions your customers ask ChatGPT.

59% of AI reads

Detail your offers

Prices, specs, service area: product pages are what get a site recommended.

×2.5 visitors per read

Offer a Markdown version

With an llms.txt file, it is the format Claude and ChatGPT favour when it exists.

33% of Claude's reads

Keep complete HTML

Perplexity and Google only read HTML. It must render without JavaScript.

0% Markdown reads by Perplexity

Get listed early

A listing published on the directory is read by an assistant by the next day, in the vast majority of cases.

80% read within 24 h

Method

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. GPTBotOAI-SearchBotChatGPT-UserClaudeBotClaude-UserPerplexityBotPerplexity-User GooglebotBingbotmeta-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.

Frequently asked questions

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.

Join the businesses AI reads

List your business on the Wispra directory: in the vast majority of cases, ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity read it by the next day.

Get listed