Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers

Despite only 8.9% of websites blocking AI crawlers, 94.8% of audited sites never appear in AI assistant answers to customer questions about their business category. The study found that even among the four major AI assistants tested (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity), only 1.9% of answers named the businesses being queried, with Gemini performing best at 2.9% citation rate. The research reveals a disconnect between website visibility to AI crawlers and actual citation in AI-generated answers, suggesting that machine readability alone doesn't guarantee meaningful visibility in AI search results.