AnalyticsGenerative AIStrategy Corner

Humans Are Becoming the Minority Online Traffic

For the first time, bots now outnumber humans online. Human traffic dropped from 62.8% in 2019 to below 50% in 2024. Meanwhile, bots—both helpful and harmful—now dominate web traffic, marking a fundamental shift in digital strategy.

The Data Tell the Story

Key Insights:

• Human traffic steadily decreased from nearly 63% to just above 50%.
• Good bot traffic has increased, growing from about 13% (2019) to 17.6% in 2023.
• Bad bot traffic rose sharply from about 24.1% in 2019 to around 32% in 2023.
• Overall, bot traffic (both good and bad) accounted for nearly half (49.6%) of all web visits by 2023.
• U.S. websites are disproportionately targeted by bots, especially malicious ones, compared to global averages.

Industry-specific highlights (2023):

• Media/News: ~7-8% good bots, ~32% bad bots, ~60% human
• Gaming: ~57% bad bots
• Community/Social Platforms: ~50%+ bots
• Entertainment: Mostly human-driven (~70%), but still significant bot presence (13.5% good bots)
• Retail e-commerce: ~20% good bots (product aggregators), ~20-26% malicious bots
• Financial services: ~20% good bots, ~30% malicious bots

We’ve Been Here Before (Sort Of)

Remember when mobile overtook desktop? Companies that pivoted quickly flourished. Those who hesitated struggled. We’re now at a similar tipping point—but this shift isn’t just about how content is accessed, it’s about who (or what) is accessing it.

Meet Your Three Audiences

1. Humans (~49.7%) Still crucial—but no longer the majority.
2. Good Bots (~18.1%) Search crawlers, AI assistants, and other beneficial bots that amplify your content reach.
   • AI Agents portion of this is set to grow significantly in 2025 as OpenAI Operator, Manus.ai, Gemini Deep Research, and Anthropic all build web agents.
3. Bad Bots (~32.2%) Automated threats like data scrapers, spammers, and cyber attackers.

Budget-Friendly AI-First Web Design

When redesigning your nonprofit website, prioritize:

• Semantic HTML that clearly communicates content hierarchy to bots
• Lightweight, fast-loading pages that conserve bandwidth for both users and crawlers
• Structured data implementation for program descriptions, events, and donation opportunities
• Clear pathways for both humans and bots to access your most important content

Analytics Evolution: Beyond Traffic from Humans

At Whole Whale, we’re seeing a fundamental shift in how we analyze website performance for our nonprofit clients. Traditional metrics like pageviews and session duration are increasingly influenced by bot behavior. We now examine:

• AI agent interaction patterns with your content
• How AI systems interpret and represent your information
• Upstream search behavior that includes both human and AI-mediated queries
• Which content pieces are being referenced by AI assistants in responses

Traffic to WholeWhale.com from AI Chat Platforms Feb 2024-Feb 2025

Understanding how AI agents operate around your site matters as much as tracking human visitors. This dual-audience analytics approach provides a complete picture of your digital presence and impact.

Implications for Nonprofits

Nonprofits face a critical digital shift as their content increasingly passes through AI intermediaries rather than directly to human eyes. By creating AI-friendly content, organizations can significantly enhance visibility, optimize limited resources, and amplify their reach without extra staff. Additionally, structuring content for AI discoverability directly improves donor engagement—especially as more supporters rely on voice search and AI assistants. AI-friendly practices also naturally align with accessibility standards, benefiting users of assistive technologies. Finally, structuring program and impact data for machine readability is becoming vital as grantmakers adopt automated screening, directly influencing fundraising success.

Immediate Steps to Adapt Content and Strategy

As AI becomes increasingly capable of generating basic informational content, nonprofits must pivot strategically toward creating original research, unique insights, and intellectual property to maintain a distinctive digital presence. Bots excel at aggregating and disseminating existing content, but humans retain the exclusive ability to generate original thought, emotional storytelling, and nuanced insights.

Technical & Analytics Strategy

1. Structure Your Data Use schema markup and structured data to make your content AI-friendly.
2. Summarize Clearly for AI Craft concise content summaries that AI can easily extract and present.
3. Enhance Security Against Bad Bots Implement CAPTCHAs, rate limiting, and robust security measures.
4. Optimize for Conversational Search Target voice and conversational AI queries to ensure your content is surfaced in these interactions.
5. Monitor and Adapt Regularly analyze bot interactions to refine your strategy continuously.
6. Audit your site content: Use AI tools to scrape your own site and perform a chat-first search audit.
7. Evolve Your Analytics Approach Pay attention to both traditional web analytics and how AI systems interact with your content. At Whole Whale, we help clients understand this complete picture of their digital ecosystem.

Content & Story Strategy

To ensure your content retains its motivational and emotional impact, structure nonprofit narratives clearly so AI intermediaries easily grasp and convey their essence. Emphasize:

• Authentic emotional storytelling
• Clear and impactful summaries
• Engaging and interactive elements that distinguish human-centric content from AI-generated summaries
• Strategic conversion paths designed explicitly for bot-driven and human-driven interactions

Head in the sand works only until the tide comes in

At Whole Whale, we’re proactively helping clients analyze website analytics to:

• Identify where human and bot traffic is lost or bottlenecked
• Shift content types strategically to align with evolving audience interactions
• Plan effectively for future AI-driven changes

By adopting this comprehensive analytics approach, nonprofits can proactively manage their digital strategies and maintain impactful engagement in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

The shift from desktop-first to mobile-first transformed digital strategy. Now, it’s time to embrace AI-first thinking. Bots are the new majority online—your digital presence depends on adapting to this new reality.