How Block Club Chicago appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews
A free AI-visibility snapshot for Block Club Chicago (blockclubchicago.org) — a nonprofit newsroom based in Chicago, IL.
Overall AI visibility
blockclubchicago.org
66/100
Grade C
Across the four AI engines we audit (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews), Block Club Chicago is inconsistently cited by the engines we tested, with an overall 66/100 score. The largest open lift is on the engines below where Block Club Chicago's articles are missing structured signals other nonprofit newsroom sites of the same size already publish.
ChatGPT
63
Crawler: GPTBot
GPTBot is allowed but article-level structured data is thin.
Perplexity
44
Crawler: PerplexityBot
PerplexityBot blocked or paywalled before the lede.
Claude
88
Crawler: ClaudeBot
ClaudeBot crawls clean HTML; Anthropic citations appear for evergreen pieces.
Google AI Overviews
69
Crawler: Google-Extended
AIO surfaces the site occasionally; missing FAQ + speakable hurts.
What Block Club Chicago can ship this week
- Cross-link each article from at least two evergreen topic pages so AI engines can find it after the homepage rotates it off.
- Publish a `/llms.txt` at the root that maps your beats, reporter bios, and the canonical URL for each topic.
- Mark paywalled body content with `cssSelector` exclusions but leave the lede + first 200 words free — that's what answer engines quote.
- Server-render every article. JS-only shells fail GPTBot's HTML fetch and quietly drop you out of citations.
- Add `<script type="application/ld+json">` NewsArticle schema with `speakable`, `dateline`, and `isAccessibleForFree` to every story page.
If you work at Block Club Chicago — or any other nonprofit newsroom — the same audit, but live and continuous on every article you publish, is what Mani does.
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