AI platforms are increasingly becoming targets for web scraping, a significant shift from their traditional role of gathering information. Businesses are now monitoring AI outputs to understand consumer trends and how their products are perceived, with further coverage provided by Tech Radar.
Recent research from Decodo indicates a fundamental change in how organizations utilize web scraping. Instead of scraping consumer search data, businesses are now scraping AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity to analyze the information being provided to users. ChatGPT accounted for 14% of observed scraping activity, potentially to monitor product rankings, brand mentions, and citations. Perplexity followed with 10%. This trend coincides with a decline in scraping activity for conventional retail sites such as Walmart and eBay, suggesting a broader shift in consumer behavior towards AI and social media platforms. Decodo anticipates that AI agents may eventually automate the scraping process, making decisions rather than just collecting data.
Source: Tech Radar
