10. Why might crawler activity increase without a corresponding increase in demand?

AI Search Is Changing Your Website’s Job, Here’s How To Adapt

Who: Sachin Puri of Newfold Digital with Loren Baker on the Search Engine Journal podcast. Publisher date: 7 October 2026. Format: video podcast with a YouTube link. Evidence reviewed: publisher recap. (searchenginejournal.com)

Why it earns a place: It is the most recent selection and addresses a reporting trap: treating machine requests as evidence of customer consideration.

Key takeaways:

• Puri separates crawler activity from observable human referrals.
• His proposed reporting framework covers visibility, factual accuracy and customer action.
• He recommends checking relevant unbranded questions and distinguishing recommendations from mere mentions. (searchenginejournal.com)

Buyer application — our recommendation: Give bot requests their own technical reporting section. Keep them separate from cited answers, qualified enquiries and pipeline; ask what additional observation would connect each stage.

Important limitation: The guest represents a website-hosting business, and several examples concern local services. The crawler findings are company-reported, not universal benchmarks. For SaaS, adapt the factual checks to buying requirements such as integrations and deployment options rather than copying the local-business examples literally. (searchenginejournal.com)