https://surfacedby.com/blog/nginx-logs-ai-traffic-vs-referral-traffic
Article
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Author prompted four AI tools with their site URL and monitored Nginx access logs.
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Found distinct traffic patterns: ChatGPT hammers URLs, Claude respects robots.txt.
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Gemini showed no distinct user-agent — already had site indexed via Google crawl.
Discussion
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Commenters suspicious the article itself is AI-written (ironic given the topic).
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Pithy summary from HN: ‘ChatGPT DDoS-lite, Claude the polite one, Google was already in your house.’
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Prompt injection via ChatGPT-User agent flagged as an obvious attack surface.
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Discussion notes important distinction: training crawls vs. live web-fetch vs. deep research agents.
Discuss on HN