Microsoft Clarity now shows which AI bots crawl your site, which AI assistants send real visitors, and how often AI answers cite you. Here is how to set up every free AI Visibility report in 10 minutes.
01Microsoft Clarity groups visits from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity into an “AI Platform” channel with no extra setup.
02Microsoft Clarity Bot Activity reads server-side CDN logs from Cloudflare, Fastly, Amazon CloudFront, Azure Front Door or Akamai to show which AI crawlers hit which pages.
03The Clarity AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio, launched on 13 August 2026, ranks AI operators by how much they crawl versus how many visitors they send back.
04Clarity Topic Insights is in beta, uses GPT-5.3, and is limited to 10 reports per week per project, so treat its numbers as directional.
Microsoft Clarity AI Visibility shows you, for free, which AI bots crawl your website, which AI assistants send you real visitors, and how those visitors behave once they land. Set it up in about 10 minutes and you finally get an answer to the question every CMO is asking: is AI search taking our content or sending us customers?
Most marketers still use Clarity only for heatmaps. That leaves the most useful 2026 features switched off. Here is how to turn them on, what each report tells you, and what to do with the numbers.
Microsoft Clarity AI Visibility is a free dashboard inside Microsoft Clarity that tracks how AI systems interact with your site. It combines server-side bot logs (who crawls you), AI referral sessions (who sends visitors), and citation data (how AI answers use your pages) in one place, with no paid tier.
It sits under Dashboards > AI Visibility and groups four kinds of reports. Some need nothing beyond the standard Clarity tag. Others need a CDN or server connection, which we cover below.
Clarity offers five AI-related reports: AI channel groups for referral sessions, Bot Activity for crawler logs, robots.txt violations, the AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio, and Citations with Topic Insights. Each answers a different question, so it helps to know which one to open before you start clicking.
| Report | Question it answers | Setup needed |
|---|---|---|
| AI Platform channel | How many sessions came from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity? | None, works with the Clarity tag |
| Bot Activity | Which AI crawlers hit which pages, and how often? | Connect a CDN or server |
| Robots.txt violations | Which bots ignore your disallow rules? | Connect a CDN or server |
| Scrape-to-Referral Ratio | Which AI operators take content but send little traffic back? | CDN plus Clarity tag on the same domains |
| Citations and Topic Insights | How often AI answers cite you, and against which competitors? | Verify your domain; Topic Insights is in beta |
Open your Clarity dashboard, find the Channels card, and filter by the “AI Platform” or “Paid AI Platform” channel group. Clarity has grouped sessions from AI chat tools this way since 29 August 2025, so no extra setup is needed if the Clarity tag is already on your site.
“AI Platform” covers organic visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity. “Paid AI Platform” covers clicks on ads shown inside AI chat experiences. If you are testing ChatGPT Ads, that second group is where those visits should land.
Pro tip: Save the AI Platform filter as a segment. You can then apply it to heatmaps and see exactly where AI-referred visitors click on a landing page.
A project admin connects a supported CDN or server under Settings > AI Visibility, then opens Dashboards > AI Visibility > Bot Activity. Clarity reads server-side request logs, because AI crawlers rarely run the JavaScript tag that powers normal session analytics.
Microsoft’s May 2026 update lists Cloudflare, Fastly, Amazon CloudFront, Azure Front Door and Akamai. Cloudflare works on Free, Pro and Business plans, not only Enterprise. On WordPress, the latest Clarity plugin turns bot tracking on by default, so update the plugin before you hunt for CDN settings.
Watch the bill: Microsoft’s documentation says log delivery charges come from your provider, not Clarity. On high-traffic sites, check your CDN’s logging pricing before you connect.
Look at four cards: AI request share, bot activity by purpose, crawler requests by operator, and path requests. Together they show how much of your server load comes from AI, why bots visit (search, AI assistants, data services), which companies run them, and which URLs they want most.
The path requests table is the hidden gem. It shows HTML pages alongside JSON, XML, images and other assets. If AI bots hammer old blog posts you no longer care about, while ignoring your service pages, your internal linking and sitemap need work. Our guide to internal linking mistakes is a good next read.
Also check the request status card added in May 2026. A high share of redirected or failed requests means bots waste their visits on broken URLs, which is fixable in an afternoon.
A crawl is not a citation. Bot Activity tells you who reads your site, not who recommends it.
Microsoft says this plainly in its own documentation: a bot request does not prove your content was cited or shown in an answer. Treat Bot Activity as a supply report. The next two reports tell you about demand.
Open the Bot Analytics dashboard and check the Violations card, added on 23 June 2026. It compares every bot request against your robots.txt rules and shows violations as a percentage of bot requests, with filters by operator, bot name and activity type, plus the exact URLs that were requested.
This matters for two reasons. First, you can prove whether a crawler respects the rules before you decide to block it at the CDN level. Second, it shows whether your robots.txt is blocking pages you actually want AI tools to read, such as pricing or product pages.
Note: Clarity reports bots. It does not block them. Blocking still happens in robots.txt, your CDN’s firewall or your server config.
The AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio, launched on 13 August 2026, compares how much each AI operator crawls your site with how many visitors it sends back. A ranked list shows which operators return real traffic and which take content heavily while sending little or nothing in return.
Click any referral source and Clarity opens the Recordings tab with that AI source already filtered. You can then judge quality, not just volume: do these visitors scroll, fill forms and buy, or bounce in seconds?
Citations shows how often AI answers cite your domain, using the grounding queries AI systems run before they respond. Topic Insights, launched in beta on 9 July 2026, groups that data by topic and shows your visibility, your influence on answers, the competitors cited beside you, and content gaps to close.
To switch it on, create a project and verify your domain, then open AI Visibility in the left menu. Since 3 August 2026 you can split queries into branded and non-branded, which tells you whether AI cites you only when people already know your name.
Microsoft discloses the limits: Topic Insights runs your prompts through GPT-5.3, caps you at 10 reports per week per project, and is available only for eligible website categories. Treat it as directional, then pair it with our AI search optimization guide to act on the gaps.
Clarity is better for AI bots and AI behaviour, while GA4 is better for revenue attribution. GA4 cannot see crawlers that skip JavaScript and needs a custom channel group to isolate AI referrals. Clarity groups AI referrals automatically and adds bot logs, recordings and citations at no cost.
Use both. Clarity can push a “Clarity Playback URL” custom dimension into Google Analytics, so you can jump from a GA4 session straight to its recording. If you have not built AI channels in GA4 yet, our GA4 guide covers the setup.
Microsoft Clarity AI Visibility is the most useful free AI search tool a marketer can switch on today. The AI Platform channel needs zero setup and should be on every client dashboard this week. Bot Activity is worth the CDN connection for any site with real traffic, as long as you check logging costs first. Topic Insights is promising but capped and in beta, so use it to spot gaps, not to report results to the board. Use our simple framework: Crawl, Cite, Click, Convert. Bot Activity covers crawl, Citations covers cite, AI channel groups cover click, and recordings tell you whether AI visitors convert.
Yes. Microsoft Clarity has no paid tier and no traffic limits. Your CDN or cloud provider may charge for delivering server logs to Clarity, and that cost is billed by the provider, not Microsoft.
Only for the bot reports. The AI Platform channel works with the standard Clarity tag. Bot Activity, robots.txt violations and the Scrape-to-Referral Ratio need a connected CDN or server, or the latest Clarity WordPress plugin.
Microsoft names ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity as examples of AI chat platforms in the AI Platform channel group. Ads shown inside AI chat experiences are grouped separately as Paid AI Platform.
No. Clarity reports bot activity and robots.txt violations but does not block bots. You block crawlers through robots.txt, your CDN firewall or your server configuration.
No. Microsoft states that a bot request does not prove your content was cited or shown in an AI answer. Use the Citations dashboard to see how often AI answers cite your domain.
Digital Evangelist and Entrepreneur at Clickseek Digital. A results-oriented marketing leader with an 18+ year track record driving transformative growth for diverse global businesses. Expert in performance marketing, demand generation, customer acquisition, strategic partnerships, and market expansion within B2B SaaS, Consumer-Tech, Fintech, Travel/Hospitality, and CRM/ITES Solutions sectors. IIM alumnus with a strong analytical background and a string of accolades, including "Top 50 Most Influential E-Commerce Professional of India" and "Top 100 Digital Marketer of India."
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