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

The numbers are giving main character energy to almost no one. This new AI Visibility Index found that only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but a wild 94.8% of audited sites were never mentioned even once in AI answers. Out of 193 sites tested across nearly 6,000 buying-style questions, only 10 got named at all. Even the “best” performer, Gemini, cited the audited business in just 2.9% of answers. In plain English: most websites aren’t shutting the bots out, and the bots are still walking right past them.

And the comment section? Absolute chaos. One camp reacted with a giant “wait, this is bad?” and basically said: hold on, are we really inventing a fresh layer of SEO, except now it’s for flattering chatbots? That sparked the biggest mood of the thread — dread that the web is about to become a pay-to-play beauty pageant for AI answers. Another crowd was even harsher, arguing that AI citations are often glorified decorations, slapped on after the fact and only loosely connected to what the bot actually said. Ouch.

Then came the snark. One commenter dropped Sturgeon’s Law — the classic “90% of everything is crap” jab — to explain why almost no sites get cited. Others wondered if paid content is secretly feeding the machine, while one especially spicy take suggested sources are picked because somebody is paying or pressuring AI companies. So yes: the data says websites are invisible, but the real drama is that the community can’t decide whether being noticed by AI is a prize, a scam, or the beginning of the internet’s next extremely cursed marketing hustle.