WTF is headless browsing, and how are AI agents fueling it?

"Headless browsers - the behind-the-scenes software that lets machines surf the web like people - were once the domain of quality-assurance testers and SEO agencies. But new AI-powered browsers launched this last year - like Perplexity's Comet and Browser Company of New York's Dia - are bringing new meaning to the term. These players are using headless browsers to power AI agents that need to click, scroll and interact with websites as a human would, to retrieve information."

"For media companies, that raises questions: How much traffic is real vs. automated? How should analytics platforms account for agent-driven browsing? And for advertisers, it raises concerns about whether AI-driven sessions will distort measurement or expose new vulnerabilities to fraud. Read on to find out what this means for publishers, at a time when many are working to block AI bot traffic and protect their content from getting scraped without their control or compensation."

Headless browsers are behind-the-scenes software that lets machines surf the web by clicking, scrolling and loading pages like human users. New AI-powered browsers such as Perplexity's Comet and Browser Company's Dia use headless browsing to enable autonomous agents to retrieve information through real-like sessions. Traditional AI retrieval often flags bots with explicit user-agent strings while newer agents often present as standard visitors, for example using Chromium strings. Agent-driven browsing complicates traffic attribution, analytics, advertising measurement and fraud detection. Publishers face increased pressure to block unwanted bot traffic and to protect scraped content from unauthorized use and uncompensated distribution.

Read at Digiday