# Kevin Indig went looking for AI buyers in Direct traffic and found bots. Count engaged visits instead.

*2026-10-22 ⬩ 2:30 PM ET | bryn*

Kevin Indig's Oct 21 check of 12 sites for AI buyers hiding in Direct traffic found bots instead: Direct rose 140.9% from January to September while engaged Direct stayed flat. Direct is the bucket for visits that arrive with no label saying where they came from. In [Search Engine Land's run of his study](https://searchengineland.com/does-ai-drive-more-direct-traffic-497294), one site logged 409,000 Direct sessions. Just 198 counted as engaged. Indig couldn't find hidden AI traffic without asking buyers how they found the company.

Here's what I'd do with that. Stop reporting sessions and start reporting what people did. A session is a page load, and a script loads pages all day. A signal is something a buyer just did, like coming back to your pricing page. Filter Direct to engaged visits on long pages nobody types by hand, the way Indig did. Then add the question he recommends to your forms: where did you first hear about us?

A rising line felt like good news. The engaged line says much of it was scripts.

## Sources

1. [Does AI drive more direct traffic?](https://searchengineland.com/does-ai-drive-more-direct-traffic-497294). Search Engine Land, Oct 21, 2026.

See also: https://www.civic.com/field-notes/the-signal-you-cant-buy

Source: https://www.civic.com/bin/direct-traffic-jump-was-bots