AI agents visited Software / SaaS brand pages 3.9× more this week, led by Cognizant Softvision

What stood out this week

Up to three findings, chosen from a fixed list of candidates. A finding only appears when it clears a minimum count, so a large percentage built on a handful of visits is left out.

1. User-directed activity, as Cloudflare labels it, is 1.8× more concentrated in this panel than across Cloudflare's network
   Cloudflare labels 9.1% of the AI-agent visits to this site as "User Action", against 5.0% across its whole network. Both figures use Cloudflare's classification, so the two sides are comparable.
   Why this matters. It shows whether this site sees an unusual amount of the traffic Cloudflare attributes to a person's action, which affects how far these numbers can be generalised.
   What this does not show. This uses Cloudflare's "User Action" label on both sides, which is not the same thing as Optimly's user-directed group and will not match that number. Our side is out of visits to optimly.ai from the agents Cloudflare counts as AI agents (search-engine crawling excluded, to match the network figure); the network side is out of AI-agent visits across Cloudflare's whole network, as published by Cloudflare Radar.
2. "Known company, reason for the visit unclear" moved up from 17.8% to 25.9% of all visits
   This is one of Optimly's five groups, measured against every visit Cloudflare flagged as automated on optimly.ai during the week. We can name the company, but the company says the agent does more than one job, so we do not know the reason for any single visit.
   Why this matters. A change in the mix means the reason agents are visiting has changed, even when the total looks flat.
   What this does not show. The previous week is a shorter sample scaled up to a seven-day equivalent, so small share changes are within the noise.
3. 59.5% of the visits we could place on a page went to a brand page
   We matched 103,460 visits to a page we publish. 61,566 visits of those went to a brand page. The percentage is out of the visits we could match, not out of every visit.
   Why this matters. Brand pages are the pages we can act on. Knowing what share of matched visits land there tells us whether agents are reaching the content we maintain or the rest of the site.
   What this does not show. We could match only 56.4% of this week's 183,570 visits to a page we publish. The rest went to paths we do not report on, so this share describes the matched visits alone.

Optimly's five groups

Every automated visit lands in exactly one of these five groups, so they add up to the week's total. Share is a percentage of every visit Cloudflare flagged as automated on optimly.ai during the week — 183,570 visits this week.

Cloudflare's own labels for the reason for the visit

This is a second, separate grouping. Cloudflare publishes its own label for each AI agent it recognises, and applies the same labels across its whole network. These numbers are not a breakdown of the five groups above and will not match them, because they count a different set of visits and use a different denominator.

On this site

Share is a percentage of visits to optimly.ai from the agents Cloudflare counts as AI agents (search-engine crawling excluded, to match the network figure) — 171,243 visits this week.

Across Cloudflare's network

Share is a percentage of AI-agent visits across Cloudflare's whole network, as published by Cloudflare Radar. Pulled 2026-08-23.

Under Cloudflare's own “User Action” label, 9.1% of the AI-agent visits to this site carry that label, against 5.0% across Cloudflare's network. That is 1.8× more concentrated in this panel than across Cloudflare's network. Both sides of that comparison use Cloudflare's label, not Optimly's groups.

Which of our pages the visits went to

We could match 103,460 visits to a page we publish, 56.4% of all automated visits. The percentages in this table are of matched visits only, not of the week's total.

Which pages agents requested

Every number below counts page visits we observed in our own server logs: an automated agent asked optimly.ai for a specific page. A page visit records the request and nothing more. It does not show that any AI product mentioned, cited, recommended, or sold anything, and it does not show that a person asked a question.

• Comparison pages requested: Agents requested comparison pages covering 10 brands In the week of Week of August 16, 2026, automated agents requested 41 comparison analysis pages across 10 distinct comparisons — 79% versus the prior week.
• Topic pages requested: Agents requested 65 pages built around a buying topic In the week of Week of August 16, 2026, automated agents requested 245 buyer-question pages across 65 distinct buyer questions — 69% versus the prior week.
• Brand pages requested: Agents requested 19,474 pages for individual brands In the week of Week of August 16, 2026, automated agents requested 61,566 brand pages across 19,474 distinct brands — 55% versus the prior week.
• Brand data files requested: Agents requested the machine-readable file for 3,814 brands In the week of Week of August 16, 2026, automated agents requested 7,449 brand record pages across 3,814 distinct brands — 17% versus the prior week.
• Change reports requested: Agents requested week-on-week change reports for 3,832 brands In the week of Week of August 16, 2026, automated agents requested 7,634 brand delta report pages across 3,832 distinct brands — 14% versus the prior week.
• Category list pages requested: Agents requested 4 pages listing our categories In the week of Week of August 16, 2026, automated agents requested 105 category pages across 4 distinct categories — 38% versus the prior week.

Topics of the pages agents requested most often

These are short topic labels we assign to our own pages, so we can group page visits that keep coming back week after week. The label is our grouping of the page. It is not a person's exact question, and we do not know what anyone typed. Counts run from the week we started grouping pages this way, so the list builds up over time rather than reshuffling every week.

Solution cluster

• Cloud — 16 total (2 this week), first seen 2026-W30
• Ppc — 4 total (2 this week), first seen 2026-W32
• Abm — 2 total (0 this week), first seen 2026-W33

Topic pages agents requested most this week

Each row is one of our own topic pages that an automated agent requested in the week of Week of August 16, 2026, ordered by how many times it was requested. The heading is the topic we assigned to the page. We do not know what any person typed, and a visit does not show that a person asked anything.

AI Search Optimization for B2B SaaS

Requested 15 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Group: solution.

How to Measure AI Referral Traffic and Customers

Requested 10 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Group: solution.

AI Brand Visibility vs Accuracy: What Should You Measure?

Requested 8 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Group: evaluation.

Why Doesn't ChatGPT Recommend My Company?

Requested 6 times this week, most often by ShapBot. Group: problem.

Using Excel or Google Sheets to Manually Calculate Withholdings Net Pay and Tax Liabilities

Requested 5 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Using Personal Credit Cards for Business Expenses and Manually Separating Them At Tax Time

Requested 5 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Hiring Specialized Machine Learning Consultancies to Build and Deploy Custom Models

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Founders Use Personal Savings Credit Cards or Loans From Friends and Family to Launch

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Using Local Git Repositories and Manually Sharing Code Via Zip Files or Shared Network Drives

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem.

Managing Cap Tables and Stock Options Using Excel or Google Sheets

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Managing Kubernetes Control Planes and Nodes Manually On Ec2 Instances or On Premises Servers

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Enterprise Hcm

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: solution. Not seen in the prior week.

Managing Customer Health Scores and Renewals Using Excel or Google Sheets

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Accepting the Risk of Identity Theft Without Proactive Monitoring or Insurance

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Using Personal Checking and Savings Accounts for Business Transactions Common in Sole Proprietorships

Requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Assistant (behavioral). Group: problem. Not seen in the prior week.

Comparison pages agents requested this week

Each row is a comparison page we publish that an automated agent requested this week. When we can match the comparison to a brand we already track, we link to that brand's page so agents can follow it.

• Optimly vs AI Visibility Monitoring Tools — requested 11 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Profound for AI Brand Visibility — requested 6 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot
• Optimly vs Ahrefs Brand Radar — requested 6 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot
• Optimly vs Gumshoe for AI Visibility — requested 4 times this week, most often by xAI-SearchBot. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Brandlight for Enterprise AI Visibility — requested 4 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Peec AI for AI Search Analytics — requested 4 times this week, most often by AI Crawler (behavioral). Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs HubSpot AI Search Grader — requested 2 times this week, most often by OAI-SearchBot
• Optimly vs AthenaHQ for AI Search — requested 2 times this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit — requested 1 time this week, most often by OAI-SearchBot. Not seen in the prior week.
• Optimly vs Brandwatch for AI Brand Intelligence — requested 1 time this week, most often by PerplexityBot. Not seen in the prior week.

Since we started measuring

This index started grouping pages by topic in 2026-W28. This week (Week of August 16, 2026) marks 7 archived weeks of continuous measurement. All counts labeled "total" or "lifetime" on this page are rolled up across every archived weekly report since inception; counts labeled "this week" are the week of Week of August 16, 2026 only.

Brands whose pages were requested far more this week

No brands broke out yet. On a fresh install the WoW comparison window fills in after seven days; expect the first real spikes on the following Monday.

Which agents requested pages from Optimly this week

183,570 visits from automated agents this week, a change of 40% against the prior week.

Agents that fetch a page while a request is in flight

Agents that collect page text in bulk

These agents collect page text to build a model rather than to answer a specific request, so no person is waiting on them. Listed for completeness, kept separate from the numbers above.