> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.peec.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Deep Research's reading budget — navigation crowds out your content

> Peec's Deep Research logs (Jun 2026) — each page open returns only ~5–6k characters; on link-heavy pages just 33% of the first read is real content, so front-load the answer in plain HTML.

Every page ChatGPT Deep Research opens returns only a capped window of text — roughly 5,700 characters median on first read, \~8,000 max — never the whole page. Peec measured this from recorded session logs ([full study](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal), Jun 2026). Every link on the page renders inline as a marker that spends characters from that same window, so navigation competes directly with your content:

* **Light navigation (under 20 links):** \~78% of the first read is real content.
* **Medium (20–59 links):** \~55% — nearly half the read goes to menus and markup; most pages sit here.
* **Heavy navigation (60+ links):** \~33% — two-thirds of the read is chrome before the agent reaches your answer.

"Skip to main content" links do not help: activating one requires a click, and the agent never clicks — it reads the link as text and keeps going through the menu. Source order is what fills the budget, not on-screen position: a nav rendered at top by CSS but sitting late in the HTML costs nothing.

The fixes (Jun 2026 findings): put the main answer in the first screen of HTML as plain text, keep the header slim, move mega-menus below the content in source order, and unblock `OAI-SearchBot`. A page the agent dismisses on first read almost never gets a second look — re-reads are earned by keyword `find` hits. Full pipeline mechanics: [How Deep Research reads your site](/research/how-deep-research-reads-your-site).

**Source:** [How ChatGPT Deep Research reads your site: What the logs reveal](https://peec.ai/blog/how-chatgpt-deep-research-reads-your-site-what-the-logs-reveal), Peec (David Konitzny), Jun 2026.