Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers (website-auditor.io)

A recent analysis from the AI Visibility Study reveals that a staggering 94.8% of small and mid-sized businesses are never mentioned in AI-generated answers about their respective categories. The study assessed nearly 6,000 responses from AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, finding that only 1.9% named the businesses being queried. Notably, only 8.9% of websites block AI crawlers, a statistic that reflects a significant gap between enabling AI visibility on the web and actually being cited in AI responses. This disconnect is crucial for the AI/ML community, highlighting the need for better machine readability of business websites. While many sites publish structured data, only 19.3% utilize LocalBusiness schema, which effectively communicates essential business information to AI crawlers. The findings indicate that improving machine input signals (like structured data) could enhance a business’s chances of being included in AI responses. This study underscores the challenges businesses face in gaining visibility within AI applications and suggests that attention to web practices could meaningfully impact their digital presence in the age of AI-driven search.