# Grok-DeepSearch > Grok-DeepSearch is xAI's crawler for answering questions. Grok's deep research mode gathering sources for a long answer. Someone asked Grok for a researched answer and your page was one of the sources it read. These sessions fetch many pages, so a burst is normal. **Category:** AI crawlers **Also known as:** xAI Grok-DeepSearch **Updated:** 2026-09-09 **Source:** https://truestat.io/glossary/xai-grok-deepsearch --- ## What Grok-DeepSearch is xAI publishes no crawler documentation at all, which is unusual for an operator of its size — it does not appear even in the community-maintained agent lists. What is known comes from logs: several of its crawlers sign themselves with an x.ai URL, which is how the fleet was identified. On this site Grok-DeepSearch is counted as an AI answer, which is the row it appears in on your dashboard. The category matters because it decides which number moves when this crawler visits, and the four are reported separately for exactly that reason. ## What its traffic looks like Bursts. A deep research session fetches many sources for one question, so ten to fifty requests in a few minutes from this token is the normal shape rather than a runaway crawl. ## How it is verified xAI publishes neither a machine-readable list of the addresses this crawler uses nor a reverse DNS record pointing back at itself. The user-agent header is therefore the only evidence, and anyone can send it — so a visit is recorded as an unverified claim rather than as a confirmed fetch. That is not a gap in the measurement so much as an honest ceiling. A report that showed these as verified would be inventing a confidence nobody can support, and the number it produced would be the first thing to fall apart when somebody asked where it came from. ## If you block it xAI's assistant can no longer open your page to answer a question about it. People will still be told about you from whatever the model already knows, but without the current page, a link, or a citation — which is usually the opposite of what a site owner wants. This is the crawler that brings people back. When an assistant fetches a page to answer with, it usually shows the source and links to it, so the visit can turn into a reader. Blocking it removes you from the answer without removing the question. The argument for blocking is the same one that applies to any zero-click surface: if a model can answer from your page, some readers get what they came for without visiting. That matters most if your pages are the product — reference material, calculators, documentation — and least if they exist to sell something the model cannot deliver. ## How it differs from xAI's other crawlers xAI sends 5 crawlers and gives each its own token, so they can be allowed and refused separately. The tokens differ by a few characters and what the fetch means does not: xAI-SearchBot — ai assistant. Grok fetching a page while answering. xAI-Grok — search indexing. Retrieves and indexes pages so Grok can find them later. GrokBot — ai training. xAI's training crawler, signed with its own address at x.ai. xAI-Bot — other bots. The family name xAI's own robots.txt examples use. Confusing two of these is the most common mistake with this operator, and it is expensive in one direction: a rule meant for the training crawler that lands on the search crawler removes you from results without stopping any training. ## One real request ```text Grok-DeepSearch/1.0 (+https://x.ai) ``` ## Questions ### Is Grok-DeepSearch in my logs really xAI? There is no way to prove it. xAI publishes neither an address list nor a reverse DNS record for this crawler, so the user agent is the only evidence and anyone can send it. We record the visit as an unverified claim rather than presenting it as confirmed. ### How do I tell Grok-DeepSearch apart from xAI's other crawlers? By the token, and only by the token. xAI also sends xAI-SearchBot, xAI-Grok, GrokBot, and the strings differ by a few characters while the jobs differ completely — one may be answering somebody's question while another collects training material. Match on the exact token rather than on the operator's name appearing anywhere in the header, or the four end up counted as one. ### Does Grok-DeepSearch run JavaScript? No. It requests the HTML and leaves. That is why a browser-based analytics tag never records these visits: the tag is JavaScript, and nothing runs it. Seeing this crawler at all requires reading it server-side. ### Why is Grok-DeepSearch counted as AI answers and not something else? Because that is the job this particular crawler does. xAI runs more than one — xAI-SearchBot, xAI-Grok, GrokBot — and they are counted separately because the decisions about them are separate. Filing them together under one operator name would let ordinary indexing look like AI interest, which is the single most misleading thing an AI traffic report can do. ### Why does Grok-DeepSearch not show up in Google Analytics? Google Analytics runs in the browser. This crawler never opens a browser — it requests the HTML, reads it, and leaves, so the tracking script is never executed and no event is ever sent. Every browser-based analytics tool has the same blind spot, which is why crawler traffic has to be read from the server side to be seen at all. ### Why can a Grok-DeepSearch visit not be verified? xAI publishes neither a machine-readable list of the addresses its crawler uses nor a reverse DNS record pointing back at itself. With neither, the user-agent header is the only evidence, and anyone can send it. Rather than showing a confidence we cannot support, the visit is recorded as an unverified claim — which is also the honest answer to give anyone asking how much of your AI traffic is real. ## Related - https://truestat.io/glossary/xai-searchbot - https://truestat.io/glossary/xai-grok-search - https://truestat.io/glossary/xai-grokbot - https://truestat.io/glossary/xai-bot - https://truestat.io/glossary/fcrdns - https://truestat.io/glossary/spoofed-crawler --- From the TrueStat glossary — https://truestat.io/glossary. Privacy-first web analytics that also shows you which AI assistants are reading your site.