What this checklist is

A single AI crawler surge can shift your user numbers significantly. Anyone reporting figures to management or the newsroom needs a quick way to pressure-test the data.

This one-pager brings together eight signals that flag likely bot distortion in your reporting: from traffic spikes without a publishing trigger to second-long sessions, datacenter IPs, geo shifts, and gaps between your analytics tool and your server logs. Each signal comes with what to look for and how to check it using the tools you already have.

No deep forensics, no new tooling, just a working checklist you can apply to your next reporting cycle.

Who it's for

Heads of product, audience, analytics and data leads, editorial managers, and anyone who reports user numbers to management or the newsroom.