How is this different from Google Analytics?

Google Analytics shows you traffic. Shadow shows you traffic, AI bot activity, what AI platforms say about your brand, AND tells you what to do about all of it. It's analytics + AI intelligence + action steps in one tool.

Do I need to install anything?

For basic monitoring (bot detection, AI perception, readiness score) — nope, just enter your URL. For full visitor analytics (clicks, behavior, sessions), add one script tag. One-click integrations for Vercel, Shopify, WordPress, and more.

Will it slow down my site?

No. The script is under 5KB and loads async. Zero impact on page speed or Core Web Vitals. External monitoring has literally no impact — it watches from the outside.

What AI bots does Shadow detect?

All of them. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider, Amazonbot, and dozens more. The Shadow Network means new bots get identified across all users instantly.

What do you mean by "actionable steps"?

Shadow doesn't just show you graphs. It says things like: "ChatGPT has your pricing wrong — add structured data to /pricing to fix it" or "Your bounce rate on /features is 68% — here's why and what to change." Specific, do-it-today recommendations.

Can Shadow block bots?

Shadow is a telescope, not a shield. It shows you who's visiting and what AI says about you. It generates block rules and robots.txt configs you can apply — but it doesn't intercept traffic.

Yes. Shadow never collects PII. IP addresses are hashed after classification. No cookies on your visitors. All Shadow Network data is anonymized. GDPR compliant by design.

How do I block CCBot?

Add this to your robots.txt file: User-agent: CCBot / Disallow: /

Does CCBot respect robots.txt?

Yes, CCBot by Common Crawl respects robots.txt directives.

AI Training Respects robots.txt

CCBot

by Common Crawl First seen: 2011-01

About

The crawler behind Common Crawl, a nonprofit that maintains a massive open repository of web crawl data. This dataset is used by many AI companies to train large language models.

Purpose

Open web dataset for AI training and research

User Agent String

CCBot/2.0 (https://commoncrawl.org/faq/)

How to Control in robots.txt

🚫 Block CCBot

User-agent: CCBot
Disallow: /

✅ Allow CCBot

User-agent: CCBot
Allow: /

Complete Guide: How to Block CCBot

Server-level blocking, nginx configs, Cloudflare rules, Next.js middleware, and more →

Is CCBot crawling your site?

Run a free scan to check if Common Crawl's crawler is accessing your website.

Check if CCBot is crawling YOUR site →