What is agent readiness? A complete guide
How well AI agents can get into your site, understand it, find their way around and complete tasks: what each part means, what good looks like, and where to start.
Articles
Guides to agent readiness
Practical, step-by-step guides to making your website work for AI agents. Each one maps to a check in AgentScore.
Start here 3 guides
New to agent readiness? Begin with the overview, then meet the agents and learn the language.
The AI agents that visit your website, and what each one wants
Training crawlers, AI search crawlers, assistant fetchers, browser agents and tool-using agents: what each does, what it needs from your site, and how to treat it.
Agent readiness glossary: the terms you'll hear, in plain English
Plain-English definitions of the terms behind agent readiness, from assistant fetchers and Web Bot Auth to structured data, the accessibility tree, MCP and AgentScore.
Access 11 guides
Let the agents you want reach your site, and keep the ones you don't.
robots.txt for AI agents: who to allow and who to block
The three kinds of AI agent, the robots.txt names each one uses, a sensible default, and the most-specific-group rule that catches most people out.
How to tell if an AI crawler is real
Anyone can claim to be GPTBot or Googlebot. How to verify AI agents with published IP ranges, reverse DNS and signed requests, and what to do when there's no proof.
Bot protection and CAPTCHAs: stop blocking the agents you want
Why bot protection catches AI assistants, how to tell if it's happening, and how to tune your CDN, WAF and CAPTCHAs so good agents get through and bad bots don't.
How to write an llms.txt file
What llms.txt is, what to put in it, a complete example for an online store, and the mistakes that make it useless to AI agents.
MCP and WebMCP: giving AI agents a direct way into your site
What MCP servers and WebMCP tools are, what they mean for your business, how AgentScore detects them, and how to start safely.
Agentic commerce protocols explained
What ACP, UCP and AP2 are for, what they mean for your store, what to ask your platform, and what AgentScore can and can't detect.
Guest checkout: why AI shopping agents need it
Why forced accounts stop AI agents at the last step, how AgentScore checks for guest checkout, and how to offer it without losing accounts.
Rate limits for AI agents: fair limits that don't turn customers away
How to set rate limits that stop scrapers but not AI assistants: 429 with Retry-After, per-agent limits for verified agents, and what to watch.
Setting up your CDN for AI agents
How to set up your CDN and WAF for AI agents: verified bot categories, signed requests, rule order, challenge versus block, and logging.
Geo-blocking, VPN blocks and AI agents
Why country, VPN and data center blocks and IP-based redirects catch AI agents visiting from cloud servers abroad, and how to let verified agents through.
Login walls and gated content: what AI agents can reach
What AI agents can't reach behind logins and paywalls, what to keep public, how to hand off to the customer, and paywall structured data for publishers.
Readability 12 guides
Make sure agents can read and understand what's on your pages.
Product data that AI shopping agents can read
How to describe products, prices, stock, shipping and returns with schema.org structured data, with a complete JSON-LD example and the rules that keep it trustworthy.
Why AI agents can't see your JavaScript-only content
Many AI agents read only the HTML your server sends. How to check what they see, what usually goes missing, and how to fix it with server rendering.
Alt text for AI agents: describing product images
Why AI agents rely on alt text, what AgentScore checks, and how to write useful descriptions for product photos across a whole catalog.
XML sitemaps for AI agents
How AI agents and crawlers use your sitemap, what AgentScore checks, what to include and how to keep it accurate.
Titles, descriptions and headings AI agents understand
How AI agents use page titles, meta descriptions, headings and the lang attribute, and how to write each so agents pick the right page.
Prices AI agents can read
How to show prices AI agents read correctly: in the server HTML, with a clear currency, labelled sale prices, variant prices and one source of truth.
Shipping, returns and FAQ pages AI assistants can quote
How to write shipping, returns and FAQ pages that AI assistants can find, read and quote accurately to shoppers before they buy.
Business and store details AI agents can trust: Organization and LocalBusiness data
How to describe your business, contact points, opening hours and return policy with Organization and LocalBusiness JSON-LD that AI agents can trust.
Product descriptions AI agents can compare
How to write product descriptions AI agents can compare: specs as text and tables, consistent attributes, units, materials and compatibility.
Reviews and ratings AI agents can read
How to make reviews and ratings visible to AI agents: reviews in the HTML, AggregateRating and Review markup that follows the rules, and honest moderation.
Canonical URLs and duplicate pages for AI agents
How to stop AI agents reading the same page at many URLs: rel=canonical, parameter and variant URLs, http, https and www redirects, and clean sitemaps.
Languages, currencies and regions: international sites for AI agents
How to make international stores work for AI agents: lang and hreflang, unambiguous currencies, region redirects that don't trap agents, and shipping countries.
Navigability 7 guides
Help browser agents find their way around and use your pages.
Buttons, links and forms agents can use: a checklist
Browser agents navigate by the names and roles of controls. Fix icon-only buttons, fake buttons, unlabelled fields, blocking pop-ups and hover-only menus.
Cookie banners and pop-ups that trap AI agents
How cookie banners, sign-up pop-ups and chat widgets block AI agents, what AgentScore checks, and how to design overlays agents can dismiss.
Link your key pages from the home page
AI agents start at your home page and follow links. Make sure products, the cart and pricing are linked in plain HTML so every agent can find them.
Site search and filters AI agents can use
Build a search box, results URLs and filters that AI agents can operate, so they find the right products instead of giving up or guessing.
Size, color and variant pickers AI agents can use
Build size and color pickers AI agents can use: named options, a readable selected state, clear sold-out options, variant URLs and prices that update.
Infinite scroll, “load more” and pagination for AI agents
Infinite scroll can hide most of your catalog from AI agents. Back it with real paginated URLs, a “load more” link and a sitemap.
Error messages AI agents can understand and fix
Help AI agents recover from mistakes: error text tied to each field, live regions, useful 404 pages and HTTP status codes that match what the page says.
Task completion 5 guides
Make sure agents can finish the jobs people send them to do.
How to make checkout work for AI shopping agents
A step-by-step guide to the shopping journey for AI agents: finding products, choosing options, adding to cart, checkout and the payment handoff.
Sign-up, booking and lead forms AI agents can finish
How to build sign-up, booking and quote forms AI agents can complete, and how to handle email verification, CAPTCHAs, date pickers and the handoff.
How to test your key journeys with AI agents
Which journeys to test with AI agents, how to test by hand and with Ghost Agents, what to measure, and how to test safely without real purchases.
Carts AI agents can manage: quantities, promo codes and totals
How to build a cart AI agents can change and check: named quantity and remove controls, usable promo code fields, clear totals and carts that last.
Order tracking, returns and reorders by AI agents
How to let AI agents track orders, start returns and reorder for customers without a login, and when to hand back to the person for security.
Measurement 4 guides
See which agents visit, which are real, and where they get stuck.
Why your analytics can't see AI agents, and how to measure agent traffic
JavaScript analytics tags miss most AI agents. How to measure agent traffic from server and CDN logs, and what to track: who's visiting, who's real, and where they're blocked.
Tracking visits and sales that come from AI assistants
How to spot visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants in your analytics, report them in GA4, and understand what attribution misses.
Agent readiness KPIs: what to report each month
A monthly agent readiness report in six measures: AgentScore, agent visits, verification, blocks and errors, Ghost Agent pass rates and AI referrals.
Finding the errors AI agents hit, in your server and CDN logs
How to find the 403s, 429s, challenges, timeouts and server errors AI agents hit in your logs, with example queries and how to separate real agents from fakes.
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