Stats, analysis, notes from the lab.
Every deep dive, data pull, and analysis we publish. Numbers cross-checked by hand; sources cited at the foot of every post.
- Web Scraping Statistics: State of it in 2026
Web scraping stats for 2026. 2,471 numbers cross-checked and cross-tabulated by hand across Cloudflare Radar, DataDome, F5 Labs, Akamai, and independent site owners.
- How Much Data Is Created Around the World
The world creates roughly 402.74M TB a day, 181 ZB in 2025. Over 842 stats cross-checked and cross-tabulated by hand: per-day activity, the recursion problem, and what the top-line still misses.
- How Much Data Does the Average Person Use Per Month?
Ericsson says 21 GB per smartphone. OpenVault says 767 GB per household. Consumer sources say 5 to 10 GB. Over 663 stats cross-checked and cross-tabulated by hand: how the same question yields five right answers for five different populations.
- How Much Are AI Companies Spending on Data Centers?
Goldman puts 2026 AI investment at $1T; McKinsey $5.2T through 2030; Reuters $1.09T in uncommenced leases. 868 stats cross-tabulated by hand across the seven companies driving the buildout.
- How Many Data Centers Are in the USA, and Why the Numbers Don't Agree
US data-center counts range from about 2,100 to 8,049 depending on the provider. Over 598 stats cross-checked and cross-tabulated by hand: the 2026 map, the 6.2× planned pipeline, the seven-month opinion swing, and the grid constraint.
- How Much Water Does ChatGPT Use Per Query in 2026?
The viral 500 ml per query figure is off by roughly two orders of magnitude. The 2026 answer sits between 0.3 and 6 ml — here's how the wrong number spread, and where AI water use actually goes.
- AI Bots Are 34% of All Bot Traffic Now: Bigger Than Search Engines
AI-related bots hit 34.30% of all bot traffic on Cloudflare's global CDN in the 28 days to August 1, 2026: for the first time larger than search-engine crawlers (26.13%). Four numbers behind the tilt: scale, growth, top operators, and where AI bots actually land.