Publishers: How to Block AI Bots and Reclaim Control of Your Content
The AI revolution is rewriting the rules of the digital landscape, and publishers are on the front lines. AI bots are crawling the web at an unprecedented scale and siphoning off content to fuel their training data, while AI-powered search results are bypassing publisher sites altogether.
In fact, AI search engines (like OpenAI and Perplexity) send a staggering 96% less referral traffic to news sites than traditional Google search. This isn't just a disruption — it's a hostile takeover of publisher content.
At Akamai, we're witnessing the sheer scale of this issue firsthand. We are seeing more than 150 billion bot requests daily across our platform, with AI bot requests skyrocketing by 300% in just the first half of 2025.
Stay one step ahead of AI bots with adaptive mitigation
Publishers face more than seven times the AI-driven bot traffic than other industries. Akamai is uniquely positioned to help publishers stop the most aggressive forms of automated content extraction.
As AI bots adapt faster, and as large language models (LLMs) improve their scraping capabilities, publishers use Akamai's expertise in mitigating patterns and countering evasive tactics to their advantage. Unlike traditional blocking, adaptive mitigation evolves in response to bot behavior, helping publishers stay one step ahead of scrapers by protecting their content investments now and into the future.
Our bot and abuse protection solutions let customers take control of their relationship with AI bots by allowing the beneficial bots, blocking the adversarial ones, and taking granular context-specific actions on others. As a result, customers can then make the right decisions for their businesses.
We've spent more than two decades standing shoulder to shoulder with publishers through industry transformations across the globe. Today, we're helping them navigate this new frontier of AI bots.
Protect publishers’ content and monetization strategies
Akamai’s sophisticated solution for mitigating AI bots is uniquely suited to address the challenge of protecting publishers’ content and monetization strategies. We provide the only solution that gives publishers the ability to tailor bot management to their evolving needs.
Help publishers take back control
The clock is ticking, and publishers can't afford to wait. With fewer than 25% of executives having implemented ethical GenAI practices, the imperative for action is clear. It's time for publishers to take back control of their content — and their revenue. At Akamai, we're ready to help them do just that.
Find out more
Learn more about how Akamai can help protect your content against AI scraping.
