Cold Start Timeline: AI Platforms Arriving in Sequence and the Early-Mover Dividend

Each row is one of the AI Platforms, with time on the horizontal axis. The 30–35 days is the gap between the first crawler and the next from the same platform. This is an observation from a single site; for three platforms, the interval is a lower bound. Figure 7-1, “IDAEO Growth Milestones,” shows this site's cumulative volume. Records before Aug 24 may include duplicate requests. Arrival records are still needed to assess whether earlier readiness leads to earlier accumulation.

Cold Start Timeline: AI Platforms arrive in sequence; the earlier you are ready, the earlier you accumulate
2026/3/3–10/8 · 6 AI platforms with two or more crawlers, sorted by the first crawler's first day · dot = first-seen date (color = purpose, size = total requests)
Large number on the arc = days between the two first appearances; prior requests in the right column · right column = summary of the next crawler after measurement began
OpenAI
+30 days or more
Anthropic
+31 days or more
Perplexity
+35 days or more
DuckDuckGo
+30 days
Google
+31 days
Our AI Search
+70 days
Five of the six fall within 30–35 days; the one with a 3/3 first day is a lower bound.
AI traffic has an early-mover dividend: the earlier you are ready, the earlier you accumulate. AI platforms send their next crawler only about 30 days after the first.
Cold Start
AI traffic accumulates from 0; industry rule of thumb: about 90 days.
Even with S1 fully prepared, AI platforms still arrive in sequence.
Warm Start
Content meets S1 and goes live on an AI Traffic Hub; rule of thumb: about 30 days.
TK Lin's IDA: reached S7 (AI Answer) in 14 days.
AI Platforms
First crawler → next crawler after measurement began
3/3
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
10/8
Platform-verified AI ID from 8/24 ▸
OpenAI
3 crawlers · 12 million total
Training/real-time:
Present at start
30+ days
Training crawler ≤3/3
Real-time crawler 3/5
Search crawler 4/2
+30 days or more
First new arrival after measurement began: search crawler
First seen 4/2 · 30 days or more after the first
237,000+ prior requests
Real-time crawler: 40 times in the first week
Anthropic
5 crawlers · 24.49 million total
31+ days
+12 days
+47 days
+1 day
Training crawler ≤3/3
Real-time crawler 4/3
Search crawler 4/15
Unclassified crawler 6/1
Unclassified crawler 6/2
+31 days or more
Training crawler → real-time crawler
905+ prior requests (training crawler 905)
Real-time crawler: 57 times in the first week
Third: search crawler 4/15
+43 days or more · 4,687+ prior requests
Fourth: unclassified crawler 6/1
+90 days or more · 2.01M+ prior requests
Fifth: unclassified crawler 6/2
+91 days or more · 2.06M+ prior requests
Perplexity
2 crawlers · 229,000 total
35+ days
Search crawler ≤3/3
Real-time crawler 4/7
+35 days or more
Search crawler → real-time crawler
4,864+ prior requests (search crawler 4,864)
Real-time crawler: 2 times in the first week
DuckDuckGo
2 crawlers · 14,000 total
+30 days
Search crawler 3/5
Q&A crawler 4/4
+30 days
Search crawler → Q&A crawler
28 prior requests (search crawler 28)
Q&A crawler: 4 times in the first week
Google
5 crawlers · 3.56 million total
+31 days
+37 days
+25 days
+74 days
Search crawler 3/11
Note-organizing crawler 4/11
Deep research crawler 5/18
General bot 6/12
Image crawler 8/25
+31 days
Search crawler → note-organizing crawler
127,000 prior requests (search crawler 127,000)
Note-organizing crawler: 2 times in the first week
Third: deep research crawler 5/18
+68 days after the first · 365,000 prior requests
Fourth: general-purpose crawler 6/12
+93 days after the first · 995,000 prior requests
Fifth: image crawler 8/25
+167 days after the first · 2.39M prior requests
Our AI Search
2 crawlers · 2.82 million total
+70 days
Index crawler 6/26
Cross-site index crawler 9/4
+70 days
Index crawler → Cross-site index crawler
2.81 million prior requests (index crawler 2.81 million)
Cross-site index crawler first week 2,213 requests
AI Platforms with only one crawler (26, by first day)
Microsoft search ≤3/3
Yandex search ≤3/3
ByteDance search ≤3/3
Amazon training 3/5
Apple search crawler 3/11
You.com search 4/1
Baidu search 4/4
Common Crawl training 4/9
Brave search 4/10
Cohere unclassified 5/5
Huawei search crawler 5/6
Kagi search 5/16
Meta training 6/14
Sogou search 6/26
TollBit task 6/26
Task-tool platform 6/26
Linkup search 7/31
DeepSeek unclassified 8/7
Yahoo Japan search 8/7
Parallel index 8/24
Japan informatics institute 8/25
Auto-detected AI task 8/26
Golemreach page-check 8/26
Mistral real-time 8/29
Japan research institute 8/29
Andi page-check 9/17
Use
Training
Index
Someone asks AI
Crawl
Tracking in Progress
Hollow = present at start; 3/3 is a lower bound
Dashed = first seen after verification
Data: daily requests 2026/3/3–10/8; each dot is placed by the crawler’s first day, sized by the log of total requests.
First day 3/3 is the measurement start; days since then and prior requests are lower bounds.
From 8/24, platform-verified AI identities are used; dashed circles mark the first appearance after verification was enabled.
Family totals combine different crawlers from the same AI platform; AI tools and Tracking in Progress are listed separately.
ID
EO