When an AI agent is asked about your business, it usually starts where people do: your home page. From there it follows links. If the links to your products, cart or pricing aren't in the page's HTML, many agents never find those pages, however good they are. It's one of the simplest things to get right, and one of the easiest to break without noticing.
How agents find their way from the home page
An AI assistant answering "how much is the Pro plan at northwind.example?" or an agent asked to "buy two bags of the house blend" needs to get from your home page to the right page quickly. Agents differ in how they do that:
- Agents that read the HTML. Many AI assistants and AI search crawlers fetch the page as your server sends it and read the links in it. They don't run JavaScript, so a menu that's built in the browser is invisible to them. (See why AI agents can't see your JavaScript-only content.)
- Browser agents. These open a real browser and click around. They can see menus built with JavaScript, but they still need real links and clear names to choose from, and every extra click is a chance to get lost.
Either way, the home page is the map. If the pages that make you money aren't on it, the agent has to guess, search, or fall back on your sitemap, if it looks for one at all.
What AgentScore checks
AgentScore goes looking for your key pages the way an agent would, in this order:
- Links in the home page's HTML. It reads every link to your own site in the page as your server sends it, before any JavaScript runs.
- Your sitemap, if nothing suitable was linked.
- A couple of common addresses, such as
/pricingor/cart, for anything still missing.
It recognizes a key page by its address or its link text. Addresses like /products/house-blend, /pricing, /plans and /cart count, and so do links labelled "Pricing", "Plans", "Cart", "Basket" or "Bag".
The check, "Key pages are linked from the home page", then asks one question: did the home page link to them directly?
| Type of site | Passes when the home page HTML links to |
|---|---|
| Online store | A product page or the cart |
| Software or subscription business | The pricing page |
| Neither found anywhere | Not tested |
If AgentScore only found your key pages through the sitemap or a common address, the check gives a warning: the pages exist, but an agent reading your home page wouldn't have been led to them. The same pages are then used for other checks, such as whether AI agents can open them and whether prices are readable, so linking them clearly helps more than one result.
Why links go missing
Most sites that get a warning here do have links to their products and pricing. People can see them. The links just aren't where agents look.
- Menus built by JavaScript. A mega menu or mobile menu that's fetched and drawn after the page loads isn't in the HTML at all.
- Buttons pretending to be links. A "Shop now" that's a
<button>or<div>with a click handler goes nowhere for an agent that reads links. So doeshref="#"with a script. - Vague link text and addresses. "Discover", "Explore the range" or "See what it costs", pointing to
/landing/q4-campaign, gives neither people nor agents much to go on. - Product links only in a carousel that's loaded after the page renders, or only inside a search box.
- A cart icon with no link. A cart drawer that opens with a script, with no link to a cart page behind it.
What a good home page links to
Think of the questions people ask AI assistants about businesses like yours, and make sure the answer is one link away from the home page.
| Type of site | Link to from the home page |
|---|---|
| Online store | Main categories, a few bestselling products, the cart, shipping, returns, contact |
| Software company | Pricing, sign-up, product overview, docs, contact sales |
| Service business | Services and prices, booking, locations and hours, contact |
Footer links count. A plain footer with "Pricing", "Shipping" and "Returns" is often the most reliable route an agent has, because it's on every page and rarely depends on JavaScript.
What the HTML should look like
The fix is ordinary links, present in the HTML your server sends, with clear text:
<!-- Hard for agents: no link in the HTML, vague text -->
<div class="nav-item" onclick="openMenu('shop')">Discover</div>
<span class="cart-icon" onclick="openCart()"></span>
<!-- Easy for agents: real links, plain names -->
<nav aria-label="Main">
<a href="/collections/coffee">Coffee</a>
<a href="/collections/equipment">Brewing equipment</a>
<a href="/pricing">Pricing</a>
<a href="/cart" aria-label="Cart"><svg aria-hidden="true">…</svg></a>
</nav>- Use
<a href>with a real address for anything that goes to another page. A cart drawer is fine, as long as the cart icon is also a link to a cart page. - Render the main menu on the server. If your platform or theme builds the menu in the browser, ask your developer to output at least the top-level links in the HTML.
- Name links for what's behind them. "Pricing" beats "See what it costs"; "Shop coffee" beats "Discover".
- Keep addresses readable.
/pricing,/cartand/products/house-blendtell an agent what a page is before it opens it. - Make menus open on click, not only on hover, and make the top-level items real links too, so there's always a route in.
How to check your own home page
- View the source. In most browsers, right-click the page and choose "View page source" (not "Inspect", which shows the page after JavaScript has run). Search for
href="/cart",/pricingor/products/. If they're not there, agents that read HTML can't see them. - Turn JavaScript off in your browser's settings and reload the home page. Whatever navigation is left is what those agents get.
- Click through with the keyboard. Tab from the top of the page to a product and the cart. If you can't, browser agents may not either.
- Run AgentScore. It tells you whether your products, cart or pricing were linked from the home page, or only turned up another way, such as through the sitemap.
Your sitemap is a safety net, not a substitute. A good XML sitemap helps crawlers find every page, and llms.txt can point AI straight to your most important ones. But plenty of agents never read either. Links on the home page are the route every agent can follow.
Once agents can reach your key pages, the next questions are whether they can read them and act on them. See prices AI agents can read, buttons, links and forms agents can use and site search and filters AI agents can use.