Blocking an AI crawler is a decision you cannot measure afterwards
The bandwidth you save by blocking an AI crawler shows up in a log. The citations you lose do not show up anywhere, because nothing reports an answer that did not mention you.
Shipping notes, in public
How we build the thing that publishes your changelog, your blog and your release notes.
Can an AI answer cite a page that does not rank?
A page can be named in an AI answer without ranking for the question, but the case is narrow: the assistant answered from its own weights instead of running a search. Retrieval produces a link. Memory produces a name with nothing behind it.