TL;DR — Compare your crawled pages in Analytics > Crawler Analytics against cited pages in Visibility > Citation Sources to find the gap — pages AI bots can access but never reference in responses. Check Analytics > Page Performance for AI Scores on those gap pages to understand why they are being skipped. Then use Strategy > Content Opportunities to get specific improvement recommendations. Pro tip: a page visited by 4 bots but cited by zero has a content quality or authority problem, not an access problem.
The Question
“Which pages are crawled by AI bots but never cited?”Being crawled is not the same as being cited. An AI model can visit your page, process its content, and still choose to reference a competitor’s page when answering a query. The gap between pages that are crawled and pages that are actually cited in AI responses is one of the most actionable signals in GEO — it tells you exactly which content exists in the AI’s index but lacks the authority, structure, or relevance to be selected as a source. You might also be wondering:
- “Why would an AI crawler visit my page but not cite it in responses?”
- “How do I improve a page that is crawled but never cited?”
- “Which competitor pages are being cited instead of mine?”
Where to Go in Qwairy
Start here: Analytics > Crawler Analytics
Navigate to Analytics > Crawler Analytics — your primary record of pages that AI bots have visited.
Filter the URL list to pages with at least one bot visit in the last 90 days. This is your “crawled” set — the universe of pages that have had a chance to appear in AI responses.
Export this list or note the page count as your baseline.
Go deeper: Visibility > Citation Sources (cross-reference for gaps)
Navigate to Visibility > Citation Sources and review the pages that appear as cited sources in AI responses.
Sort by citation count descending to see your most-referenced pages. Compare this list against the crawled pages from Crawler Analytics — any crawled page that does not appear in Citations is a gap candidate.
Use the Provider filter to break this analysis by AI model, since a page may be cited by Perplexity but not by ChatGPT.
Complete the picture: Analytics > Page Performance + Content Opportunities
Open Analytics > Page Performance to see the AI Score for each crawled-but-uncited page.
Low AI Scores explain why a page is not being selected as a source — weak structured data, thin content, or poor topical relevance.
Then visit Strategy > Content Opportunities to find the content improvements most likely to elevate those pages into citation candidates.
What to Look For
Crawler Analytics — Your Crawled Pages Inventory
The crawled pages list is the foundation of this analysis. Focus on pages that have been visited by at least two distinct AI crawler user-agents — these are pages that multiple AI systems have indexed and had an opportunity to cite. If they are not showing up in Citations despite broad crawl coverage, the issue is content quality or authority, not access.| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Bot visit count per URL | How many times and by which bots a page has been crawled |
| Last crawled date | Recency of the most recent index — content older than 6 months in a fast-moving category may be deprioritized |
| HTTP status on crawl | Confirms the crawler received the page content and not an error or redirect |
| Unique bots per page | A page visited by 4 bots but cited by 0 signals a content quality problem, not an access problem |
Citations — Your Cited Pages Inventory
The Citations view shows which of your pages AI models are actually selecting when they answer queries. The delta between this list and your crawled pages list is the gap you need to close.Pro Tip: Sort Citations by provider to find provider-specific gaps. A page may be a top citation on Perplexity but completely absent from ChatGPT citations — this signals a format or authority issue specific to how OpenAI’s retrieval system evaluates sources.
Filters That Help
| Filter | How to use it for this question |
|---|---|
| Provider | Identify which AI models are crawling but not citing specific pages — the gap varies by provider |
| Period | Use 90 days for the crawl analysis to ensure enough time has passed for citations to appear if they were going to |
| Topic / Tag | Filter both views to a specific content cluster to run the crawled-vs-cited gap analysis on a single category |
How to Interpret the Results
Good result
More than 60% of your crawled pages also appear as cited sources at least once. Your highest-traffic content pages — product pages, comparison pages, and deep-dive articles — are in both lists. The uncited crawled pages are either very new, very thin, or intentionally non-authoritative pages like legal or admin content.Needs attention
A large set of strategic pages (product pages, category guides, pricing pages) appear in Crawler Analytics but have zero entries in Citations across all providers. This means AI models have access to your content but are consistently choosing competitor sources instead. Prioritize these pages for content depth improvements, structured data additions, and external link building to increase their citation authority.Example
Scenario: Your SaaS platform has a detailed API integration guide that ranks on the first page of Google for “REST API authentication best practices,” but it never appears as a cited source when developers ask AI assistants the same question. Your server logs confirm AI bots are crawling the page.
- Open Analytics > Crawler Analytics and confirm the API guide page appears with visits from GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot over the last 60 days. All show 200 OK status — the content is being received and processed.
- Navigate to Visibility > Citation Sources and search for the page URL. It does not appear in any citation record across any provider. Open Analytics > Page Performance for that URL: the AI Score is 29 out of 100. The breakdown shows: no HowTo or Article schema, no author markup, content length at 650 words (while cited competitor documentation pages from Stripe and Auth0 average 2,100 words), and zero external developer blogs or Stack Overflow threads linking to it.
- Use Strategy > Content Opportunities to generate specific improvement recommendations for this page. Expand the guide with code samples in multiple languages, add HowTo and TechArticle schema, include an FAQ section addressing common authentication errors, and target backlinks from 3 developer community sites that are already cited in AI responses for API topics. Re-check Citations in 6-8 weeks to measure improvement.
Go Further
Crawler vs citation gap analysis
Read the Crawler Analytics documentation to understand why some crawled pages never get cited by AI
Crawl-to-citation conversion tracker
Build a crawl-to-citation conversion tracker in Looker Studio using the source-urls data source
Fix uncited pages
Read the Content Opportunities documentation for strategies to convert crawled-but-uncited pages into cited content
Related Questions
How do I get more of my pages cited as sources in AI responses?
From crawled to cited — the content and authority improvements that move the needle
Is my website properly optimized for AI crawlers?
Ensure technical barriers are not the reason your pages fail to convert from crawled to cited
Which content topics generate the most citations?
Find the topic areas where AI models are most likely to cite sources — and plan content there