By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
Which question does each tool answer?
Google Search Console is Google's own reporting for its own index. CrawlRadar is AI search analytics. The table lists the questions a team usually brings to each, and the tool built for that question.
| The question you are asking | Built for it |
|---|---|
| Which pages are indexed by Google, and with what errors? | Google Search Console |
| What are my impressions and clicks in Google Search? | Google Search Console |
| Which AI crawlers fetched my pages this week, verified against vendor IP ranges? | CrawlRadar |
| How many visitors did ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot send me? | CrawlRadar |
| Is my robots.txt blocking OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot? | CrawlRadar |
What CrawlRadar measures
- AI crawler visits. A server-side collector identifies 56+ AI crawlers in your request log and verifies each against the vendor’s published IP ranges, because these bots never run an analytics tag.
- AI referral traffic. A tracking tag counts the visitors ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Copilot send, and the pages they land on.
- Page readiness. 14 checks score each page 0–100 on whether an answer engine can retrieve, trust and quote it, including the 14 AI crawler tokens in your robots.txt.
How do teams use Google Search Console and CrawlRadar together?
Keep Search Console for Google: indexing, coverage errors and Search performance. Add CrawlRadar for the engines Search Console does not cover, and for AI visits your analytics files under direct traffic.
When is Google Search Console the better choice?
Search Console is Google’s first-party data about Google Search and it is free. Nothing replaces it for indexing problems in Google, and CrawlRadar does not try to.
This page describes Google Search Console by its category rather than its feature list, because feature lists change. Check Google Search Console’s own documentation for what it offers today. See the other comparisons for the rest of the tools CrawlRadar is often used alongside.
Frequently asked questions
Does Search Console show ChatGPT traffic?
No. Search Console reports Google Search. Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude arrive as referrals on your site, which is where CrawlRadar’s tag counts them.
Does Search Console show GPTBot or ClaudeBot visits?
No. Its crawl stats cover Google’s own crawlers. Other vendors’ crawlers only appear in your server logs, or in CrawlRadar’s collector, which verifies them against each vendor’s published ranges.