This November, Five Blocks is sharing more research than we ever have: more than 10 new studies, built with data from AIQ and IMPACT, our own platforms for tracking what AI engines and Google say about companies and their leaders. We would love your feedback. If there is research you are doing, or research you would like to do together with us, get in touch. See all #DataNovember studies.
#DataNovember, Day 5. We read the robots.txt files of 44 major news outlets, then checked what eight AI engines actually cited in 14,392 answers about the Fortune 100 and their CEOs.
What we found
- 25 of 44 outlets block Google’s Gemini app. 25 block Perplexity’s crawler. 12 block ChatGPT’s search bot. None block Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- The Gemini app cited zero articles from the 25 outlets that block it. Google AI Mode cited those same outlets in 69% of news answers.
- Grok cited blocked outlets more often than expected: 312 answers against 228.
- Only 30% to 60% of the links in a news answer came back the next day.
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Data: robots.txt files and page tags read October 23, 2026; answers from Five Blocks AIQ. See all #DataNovember studies.