How to Set Up Microsoft Clarity for AI Search

TL;DR

Microsoft Clarity is a free tool that now shows you exactly which AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, GeminiBot) crawl your site, how often, and which pages they hit.
If AI bots cannot reach your pages, AI assistants cannot cite you. Clarity is the cheapest way to see whether that is actually happening on your site.
Install takes 5 minutes. This guide covers setup, reading the AI Bot Activity dashboard, and the 3 fixes to make this week.

Every SEO is now asking the same question: is AI search actually working for my business? You can guess, or you can look. Microsoft Clarity is the fastest free way to look, and in June 2026 Microsoft added an AI Bot Activity dashboard that shows you precisely which AI crawlers are visiting your site and what they are doing once they arrive.

Here is how to install it in 5 minutes, how to read the dashboard, and the exact fixes to make based on what you see.

Why Every SEO Needs Clarity in 2026

Clarity started life as free behavioural analytics: heatmaps, session replays, scroll depth. Useful, but not the reason it matters now. The reason is the new AI Bot Activity layer.

AI assistants answer questions by reading the live web. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini all send crawlers to fetch and index pages. If their crawlers cannot reach you, you cannot be cited in their answers, no matter how good your content is. Most businesses have no idea whether this is happening. The AI Bot Activity dashboard removes the guesswork by surfacing, for free, on any site with the Clarity script installed:

Number of requests per AI bot
Share of your traffic coming from AI bots
Unique pages each bot requested
robots.txt rule violations
Access per bot operator (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, GeminiBot and more)
Each bot's primary purpose, the paths it requested, and its scrape vs referral ratio

Important: Clarity shows you whether bots crawl you. It does not show whether you get cited. For citation share, pair it with Bing Webmaster Tools Citation Share or the Hawk Academy AI Search Page Audit. Crawling is step one. Citation is step two.

Install Clarity in 5 Minutes

You do not need a developer. Pick the method that matches your setup.

Method 1: Google Tag Manager (most flexible)

In Clarity, copy your tracking code. In GTM, create a new tag, choose Custom HTML, paste the code, set the trigger to All Pages, then publish. Done. This is the cleanest option if you already run GTM.

Method 2: WordPress plugin (easiest)

Install the official Microsoft Clarity plugin from the WordPress plugin directory, connect it to your Clarity account, and it injects the script on every page automatically. No code touched.

Method 3: Paste in the head (works everywhere)

Copy the Clarity tracking script and paste it into the <head> of your site, before the closing </head> tag. Most CMS platforms have a header-scripts field in their theme or SEO settings. This works on any platform, including custom builds.

Set Up Your First Project

Go to clarity.microsoft.com and sign in with a Microsoft, Google, or Facebook account. Click Add new project, give it your site name and URL, and choose the platform. Clarity hands you the tracking code for the install method above. Once the script is live, click the gear icon and verify the site: Clarity confirms it is receiving data, usually within a few minutes of your first visitor. From here the AI Bot Activity dashboard populates on its own as bots visit.

Tour the AI Bot Activity Dashboard

Open your project and find the AI Bot Activity dashboard in the left navigation. Set the date range to the last 30 days for a stable read. You are looking at three things in order.

The bot list. Every AI bot that hit your site, with request counts. This is your headline: who is crawling you, and who is missing.
Per-bot detail. Click a bot to see unique pages requested, its share of AI bot traffic, the paths it hit, and its scrape vs referral ratio. A heavy scraper with zero referral is eating bandwidth without sending you anything back.
Violations. Where a bot broke your robots.txt rules. This tells you whether your own rules are doing something you did not intend.

What Good Looks Like

A healthy site has the major AI crawlers present and active. At minimum you want to see GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot (Perplexity) and GeminiBot (Google) all showing real request volume over 30 days. The exact numbers vary with your size and how often you publish, but the pattern is the same: multiple operators, steady requests, pages being read across your site rather than just the homepage.

Different bots behave differently, and that is normal. GPTBot tends to scrape heavier than PerplexityBot. Judge each bot against itself, not against the others.

What Broken Looks Like and How to Fix It

Three patterns mean something is wrong.

Zero AI bot activity

No AI bots in 30 days. Either they are blocked, or your site is too new or too low-traffic for them to have found you yet. Confirm which with the AI Crawler Access Checker: if it shows the bots are allowed and Clarity still shows zero, you are not blocked, the bots simply are not visiting. The fix then is not technical. It is digital PR and content velocity: give the bots something worth crawling. Start with the 2026 Digital PR Calendar.

Single-bot dominance

One bot doing thousands of requests, the rest at zero. That is a configuration issue, not a content issue. Check your robots.txt for bot-specific Disallow rules, then check Cloudflare or your CDN for AI bot blocking and Bot Fight Mode, which catches AI crawlers by default on some plans.

robots.txt violations

A bot is breaking your rules. Decide if you meant to block it. If the block was intentional, leave it. If not, fix the rule. Do not blindly tighten or loosen: intent matters here.

The 3 Actions to Take This Week

Based on what your dashboard shows, do these in order.

Unblock any major AI bot showing zero that you did not mean to block. Remove the Disallow line in robots.txt, or allowlist the bot in Cloudflare. This is the single highest-impact move because it can open up your entire site to a crawler that was shut out.
Cross-check zeros against the Crawler Checker. Tell apart a robots.txt block from a server or CDN block, so you fix the right layer instead of guessing.
If everything is allowed but bots still are not visiting, switch to demand generation. Earn links and publish consistently so the bots have a reason to come. Crawling follows relevance.

How Clarity Fits the Hawk Academy AI Visibility Stack

Clarity closes a loop that two other free Hawk Academy tools open.

AI Crawler Access Checker tells you whether bots CAN crawl you, by reading your robots.txt.
AI Search Page Audit tells you whether a page is READY for AI search, by grading its on-page signals.
Clarity tells you whether bots ACTUALLY crawl you, by showing real bot traffic.

Run all three and you have the full picture: permission, readiness, and reality. To turn your Clarity data into a ranked fix list automatically, install the free Clarity AI Bot Auditor Claude skill: paste your dashboard export and it returns one decisive fix per bot.

The Hawk Academy AI Bot Activity Health Check

Run this 8-point check on your Clarity dashboard right after install. Eight yes answers is a healthy AI crawl profile.

GPTBot is present with real request volume over 30 days.
ClaudeBot is present with real request volume.
PerplexityBot is present with real request volume.
GeminiBot is present with real request volume.
Bots are reading pages across the site, not just the homepage.
There are no unintended robots.txt violations.
No single bot is dominating while the rest sit at zero.
Your heaviest scrapers are sending at least some referral traffic back, not pure scrape.

FAQ

Is Microsoft Clarity really free?

Yes. Clarity is free with no traffic cap, no paid tier, and no credit card. The AI Bot Activity dashboard is included at no cost on any site that has the Clarity script installed.

Does Clarity slow down my site?

The script is lightweight and loads asynchronously, so it does not block your page from rendering. The performance impact is negligible for the data you get back.

Does Clarity show me if ChatGPT or Perplexity actually cited my site?

No. Clarity shows whether the bots crawled you, not whether the assistant cited you in an answer. For citation share, use Bing Webmaster Tools Citation Share or test prompts directly in each assistant. Crawling is the prerequisite for citation, which is why this dashboard matters.

What if I see zero AI bot activity?

Check the AI Crawler Access Checker first. If it shows the bots are allowed and Clarity still shows zero, you are not blocked, the bots simply have not found a reason to visit. Focus on links and publishing consistency.

Do I need both Clarity and Google Analytics?

They do different jobs. GA4 measures human visitors and conversions. Clarity adds behavioural replay plus the AI bot layer that GA4 does not show. Most SEOs run both.