Why Is AI Not Citing Your Media Mention?

You secured a great brand mention in Forbes, but when you check AI platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity, the article doesn’t get cited. Meanwhile, a mention from a smaller publication does appear in AI answers. What’s the reason?

Here’s why some media mentions appear in AI responses while others don't and what you can do to get your brand mentions seen by AI.

How AI Tries to Access Your Mentions

When an AI model generates an answer, it follows these steps:

1. Search for relevant content across the web
2. Fetch articles to read the content
3. Extract and analyze the text
4. Generate a response with proper citations

If step 2 or 3 fails—meaning AI can't actually read the article—it will skip that source entirely. Even if it’s the top search result. That’s why you might see your mention listed in search results but not cited in AI responses.

But when does AI struggle to access articles? It’s the publisher’s decision. 

Why Publishers Block AI Access

Publishers might block AI access to get more control over how their content is used, especially by AI tools. Some expect permission or payment first. 

There are a few ways to block access:

1. Require AI platforms to pay for access. If the AI doesn’t have a license, it can’t see or cite the article at all. 
2. Use paywalls. Some AI tools will still see your paywalled articles via search snippets or licensing deals—others won’t.
3. Block AI bots outright, even if they allow Google crawlers.

The first two ways create uneven results. Some AI engines can see your brand, while others can’t.

Accidental block

Some publishers might not realize their site is inaccessible to AI bots. If a site uses heavy JavaScript, many AI bots won’t be able to read it. 

To people, the article looks fine. To AI, it’s invisible. Either way, it affects whether your brand shows up in AI answers.

Why AI Access Can Vary Within the Same Outlet

Publishers don’t treat all content the same. Some pieces exist to attract traffic from the wider public, while the more premium articles are written for subscribers only. 

Example: Two Forbes Articles, Different Outcomes

• Article A (Blocked): Behind an AI licensing gate like TollBit → AI is redirected → Can’t read or cite.
• Article B (Visible): Behind a standard paywall → Search engines indexed parts → AI can cite it via snippets or deals.

What’s the Difference?

AI licensing paywalls like TollBit are built to detect and block AI bots. They act as smart gates, redirecting crawlers away from protected content, usually premium or high-value articles.

Standard paywalls were designed for human readers, not AI. They often still allow search engines to index a public snippet, which some AI platforms can access, especially through licensing deals or content syndication.

Where to Pitch to Show Up in AI Results

There are two ways to figure out which media outlets to pitch to get your brand in AI.

While you can't control publisher settings, you can:

• Make strategic decisions about where to pitch and how to track your mentions
• Check which publications block AI and which don’t

Prioritize AI-Friendly Publications

Not all publications are equally visible to AI. The AI PR Toolkit helps you identify which outlets are most likely to be cited by language models through our AI-cited media finder.

You can discover outlets that rank high in AI Trust (scored 0-100), which measures how likely a publication is to be cited by AI. Instead of experimenting blindly, you can see which outlets in your industry consistently deliver AI visibility.

The tool also provides Collective AI Media Impact, a metric that calculates the potential influence on AI platforms if your brand were featured in specific outlets. This helps you prioritize outreach to publications where mentions will have the greatest AI visibility impact.

Check If a Publication Blocks AI

Want to verify whether a specific publication is blocking AI bots? There are a few ways to check that:

Check the Publisher's Robots.txt

A robots.txt file is a simple set of instructions that guides crawler behavior by telling bots which pages or sections of a website they can access and which they should avoid.
To see whether a site blocks AI crawlers, visit example.com/robots.txt in your browser (replace "example.com" with the actual site). Look for entries that name specific AI user-agents (like GPTBot or ClaudeBot) followed by a Disallow rule:

User-agent: GPTBot

Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot  

Disallow: /

If you see these, the publisher is blocking those specific AI crawlers.

Technical Check for AI Paywalls

You can verify if a publication uses an AI paywall service:

Run this command in your terminal:

curl -I -ChatGPT-User "article-url"

If you see a redirect to tollbit.com or similar services in the response, the publication has an AI licensing paywall active, even if the article displays normally in your browser.

Note: This is a technical diagnostic method. If you're not familiar with command-line tools, consult with your IT team to verify the publication's settings.