By Global Tech & Digital Economy Desk
Published: November 2024

The internet as we know it is undergoing a structural transformation, and the shift is happening faster than many predicted. According to fresh projections from Automattic—the driving force behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and WordPress VIP—more than 60% of the traffic hitting its global network could originate from automated bots by the end of 2026.

This eye-opening prediction was shared by José Ramón Padrón, Automattic’s Head of Spanish-Speaking Communities and Growth, during an in-depth interview with José Carlos Cortizo for the Product Hackers podcast. As artificial intelligence reshapes how information is discovered, indexed, and monetized, Automattic is actively overhauling its ecosystem to cater not only to human eyes, but to an increasingly dominant population of digital machines.

1. Main Facts

The core revelation of Padrón’s interview centers on the changing anatomy of web traffic. For decades, website analytics have been built around a simple premise: a human visitor opens a web browser, types a URL or clicks a link, and reads a page. Today, that paradigm is fracturing.

• The 60% Milestone: Automattic’s internal growth models estimate that automated traffic—comprising Large Language Model (LLM) scrapers, indexing crawlers, and task-executing autonomous AI agents—will eclipse human browsing across its massive infrastructure by late 2026.
• A Dual-Audience Imperative: Content creators, media outlets, and e-commerce merchants can no longer optimize exclusively for human users. Websites must now serve two distinct masters: traditional human readers and algorithmic entities that consume raw data to synthesize answers elsewhere.
• Redefining E-Commerce ("Agentic Commerce"): Platforms like WooCommerce are being retooled so that autonomous shopping agents can navigate catalogs, compare items, and complete transactions on behalf of users without requiring a human to manually click through a traditional storefront.
• Infrastructure Overhaul via MCP: Automattic is implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), connecting WordPress directly to AI models and internal data warehouses. This allows internal teams and external systems to query massive repositories using natural language rather than rigid database queries.

2. Chronology: The Evolution Toward an AI-First Web

To understand how Automattic arrived at this juncture, it is helpful to trace the milestones of the company and the broader web ecosystem over the last two decades:

• 2005: Matt Mullenweg and Little Robot co-found Automattic, scaling the open-source WordPress project into the foundational backbone of the modern web. Over the next decade, WordPress grows to power over 40% of all websites globally.
• Late 2022 – 2023: The launch of consumer-facing generative AI tools sparks an explosion in web scraping. Automated crawlers from tech giants and AI startups alike begin aggressively harvesting content to train foundational models, placing unprecedented load on web hosts.
• 2024: Search engine referral traffic begins to shift. As users increasingly rely on conversational AI interfaces (like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity) to receive direct answers, referral clicks to traditional media and blogs begin to plateau or decline. Automattic begins developing native integrations, such as bringing WordPress building tools directly into ChatGPT as an application.
• 2025 (Current Phase): Automattic accelerates its "AI Readiness" initiatives. The company rolls out internal training programs for its 1,450 distributed employees, implements MCP for natural language data querying, and designs specialized pipelines to help enterprise publishers (via WordPress VIP and Newspack) protect and monetize their intellectual property.
• Late 2026 (Projected): Automattic estimates that automated bot traffic will surpass human traffic, crossing the 60% threshold across its network, cementing a permanent shift in how data flows across the open web.

3. Supporting Data and Metrics

While Padrón’s 60% figure is a forward-looking estimate specific to Automattic’s vast network rather than a definitive global census, it aligns with broader industry data indicating a massive surge in non-human web activity.

• The Scale of WordPress: During the interview, Padrón noted that WordPress maintains a market share hovering around 41% of all active websites on the internet. Because Automattic also manages high-traffic properties like Tumblr, WooCommerce, and WordPress VIP, its servers process a significant cross-section of global internet traffic. This gives the company unique visibility into shifting bot patterns.
• The Workforce Transformation: Automattic operates as a 100% distributed company with roughly 1,450 employees. To meet the AI wave, the company has instituted rigorous cross-functional training, pairing remote work cycles with intensive in-person workshops in New York to train staff on LLMs, agentic workflows, and automated pipeline creation.
• Internal Productivity Gains: Utilizing custom-built MCP integrations tied to Automattic’s data warehouse, growth teams can now segment user behavior—such as domain purchases, traffic volumes, and support interactions—using conversational prompts, drastically cutting down the time required to generate actionable business intelligence.

4. Official Responses and Industry Perspectives

The rapid rise of AI agents has sparked fierce debates regarding copyright, web monetization, and the survival of the independent web. Automattic is positioning itself as a defender of the open web, contrasting its philosophy against closed, walled-garden ecosystems.

The Death of Traditional SEO and the Rise of Direct Relationships

For years, digital media companies relied almost entirely on search engine optimization (SEO) to capture audiences via intermediaries like Google. Padrón warns that this model is rapidly expiring. If an AI assistant answers a user’s query directly within a chat window, the user has zero incentive to click through to the source website.

To combat this, Automattic is urging publishers to cultivate direct, unbreakable relationships with their audiences through newsletters, membership communities, live events, and direct subscriptions.

WordPress as the "Operating System of the Open Web"

Padrón emphasized a grander vision for Automattic: positioning WordPress not merely as a blogging tool, but as the operating system of the open web. In an era dominated by proprietary tech giants, Automattic argues that users and creators must retain sovereign control over their data. By integrating open protocols like MCP and building tools that allow WordPress to interface seamlessly with various AI models, the company aims to ensure that creators are not locked into a single closed ecosystem.

5. Broader Implications: What This Means for the Future

The transition toward a bot-dominated web carries profound consequences for every sector of the digital economy.

For Digital Publishers and Media Outlets

The monetization model of the internet—traditionally anchored in page views and display advertising—is under existential threat. When over 60% of a site’s visitors are algorithms extracting data rather than humans viewing banner ads, traditional metrics break down. Publishers must adapt by:

1. Auditing Bot Traffic: Implementing advanced analytics to distinguish between malicious scrapers, training crawlers, and legitimate utility agents.
2. Structuring Data for Machines: Ensuring that content is cleanly structured so that LLMs can parse context accurately, while simultaneously gating premium intellectual property against unauthorized scraping.
3. Diversifying Revenue Streams: Accelerating direct-to-consumer models like paid newsletters, private communities, and niche subscription tiers.

For E-Commerce and WooCommerce Stores

Retail is moving rapidly toward Agentic Commerce. Consumers will increasingly delegate shopping tasks to AI assistants ("Find me the best-reviewed red running shoes under $100 and buy them").

Automattic’s development of the AI Storefront and its AI Regression Review Pipeline are direct responses to this shift. E-commerce merchants will need to ensure their product catalogs, pricing data, and inventory levels are fully optimized for machine interpretation. If an AI agent cannot easily parse a store’s inventory API or complete a checkout autonomously, that store will effectively become invisible to the next generation of shoppers.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What percentage of traffic does Automattic expect will come from bots?

José Ramón Padrón estimates that by the end of 2026, more than 60% of the traffic processed across Automattic’s network could originate from bots. This is an internal projection for Automattic’s infrastructure and not a blanket statistic for the entire global internet.

What does it mean to prepare a website for AI agents?

Preparing a website for AI agents means restructuring its backend data and content so that automated systems can easily find, interpret, and act upon information. For e-commerce sites like WooCommerce, this involves ensuring that product data and checkout pipelines are accessible to AI shopping agents acting on behalf of users.

What is MCP in the context of WordPress?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that allows developers to connect Large Language Models directly to external tools and data sources. Automattic uses MCP to allow WordPress users and internal teams to query databases and execute administrative tasks using natural language.

How is Automattic adapting WooCommerce for AI?

Automattic is developing initiatives such as the AI Storefront to help online stores become discoverable and navigable by AI systems. Additionally, they are implementing automated testing pipelines (like the AI Regression Review Pipeline) to ensure that rapid AI-driven feature rollouts do not compromise platform stability or product quality.