Akamai: verified AI crawlers shift to POST requests on retail sites

Akamai's 30-day analysis found verified AI crawlers, including ChatGPT, increasingly sending POST requests instead of reading pages. Ecommerce accounted for 44.8% of those AI bot POST transactions, travel reached 30%, and MCP traffic made up 4.1%.

• Ecommerce accounted for 44.8% of AI bot POST requests
• Travel share climbed to 30% in a single month
• MCP made up 4.1% of AI bot POST transactions
• Akamai advises bot visibility and edge segmentation