Hacker News: SpikeyCoder

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "OpenAI Agents API"

SpikeyCoder — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 02:24:57 +0000

Interesting concept, but blue ocean as to your target customer. Would be good to see other case studies, use cases for this. Also, thank you for not another “bring your keys” product. Just abstract it away for me.

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "Show HN: Open-sourcing my market mental map"

SpikeyCoder — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 05:08:16 +0000

Interesting - you imply in China AI that there's no capital flight. That instead, Chinese are just shifting money from property to gold/stocks(imp. Chinese market only). Not sure if that was what you are going for, but from my conversations with mainlanders, there isn't much trust in China's stock exchanges.

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "Show HN: An AI-Powered Widget for Collecting User Feedback"

SpikeyCoder — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 05:04:04 +0000

Could actually see this working well in a company with QA, design, and product submitting feedback in real-time using dev, closed prod environments.

The average B2C play requires too many clicks for customers. They are not motivated enough to submit feedback unless a major event happens to them (payment failure, site crash in middle of purchase, etc.). At that point, this tool wouldn't help.

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers"

SpikeyCoder — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:16:22 +0000

I disclosed on my first comment how I got my data. I thought it was an interesting find, and one that really hinders the non-technical small business owner from figuring out how to ensure their company finds their way to the right customer.

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers"

SpikeyCoder — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:12:14 +0000

Small businesses don't. You're right. But somehow those larger companies seem to get cited. Wouldn't it be nice if we all knew how we were being influenced, both potential consumer and small business owner? Let's have the lid off!

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers"

SpikeyCoder — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:02:22 +0000

If the goal of the web was just to transmit objective facts like 'who created Linux', this wouldn't be a problem at all. Wikipedia handles that pretty dece.

The issue arises when we move away from objective trivia and into subjective, localized buying intent, which is where the web monetizes itself.

If I ask an LLM 'who created Linux?', there is one right answer. But if I ask an LLM 'who are the best commercial roofers in Houston?', there isn't one right answer. There are dozens of highly qualified local businesses that do possess unique value, unique pricing, and unique availability.

When an LLM answers that roofing question, it typically cites 3 to 5 businesses. The other 40 legitimate roofing companies in the area are left out. My study isn't arguing that every single one of those 40 companies deserves to be in the answer; it's pointing out that those 40 companies currently have no idea they are being left out.

In the Google era, if you weren't on page 1, you could look at Search Console, see your ranking, check your backlinks, and understand why. In the AI Search era, businesses are being scraped to build these answers, but they have zero telemetry on whether they are actually making the cut. This index is just an attempt to provide that missing telemetry.

New comment by SpikeyCoder in "Only 8.9% of sites block AI crawlers, but 94.8% are never cited in AI answers"

SpikeyCoder — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:41:12 +0000

I get that pushback. My goal with this index/report wasn't to write a new 'AI SEO' playbook or encourage people to start gaming the system. The goal was simply to shine a bit of light on what's going on. Right now, there is a massive information asymmetry: AI companies are turning their assistants into primary search engines, but webmasters have zero visibility into whether their sites are actually being cited in those live answers.

You're absolutely right to be concerned about an arms race. If the data showed that doing X, Y, and Z guaranteed a citation, we'd be right back to the worst days of keyword stuffing.

But what this data actually shows is the opposite: even if you do everything 'right' (allow the retrieval bots, provide perfect machine-readable schema, don't block anything), you still have a 94.8% chance of never being cited. How LLMs cite is entirely opaque.

I built this to give site owners a baseline measurement of what is actually happening to their content today (as a free, anonymous view), so they can make an informed decision on whether keeping their doors open to these crawlers is actually worth it.

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

SpikeyCoder — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 11:53:52 +0000

Article URL: https://website-auditor.io/ai-visibility-index

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49143630

Points: 40

# Comments: 61