What scanning 600 stores taught us about our own scanner
Running AgentScore on 600 real stores exposed three bugs in our own scanner, and one run that looked perfect because almost nothing was tested. What we found, fixed and changed.
Blog
Notes from the agent web
News, research and opinion on how AI agents use websites, from the team behind Ghost Agent Labs and Ghost Inspector.
We scanned 234 online stores with AgentScore. Here's what trips up AI agents
Most online stores let AI agents in, but many trip them up once inside: unnamed buttons, missing product data, and prices agents can't see. Results from 234 stores.
What an AI agent sees when it visits your store
One product page, three views: the raw HTML an assistant reads, the rendered page a browser agent sees, and the accessibility tree it acts on.
Getting agent-ready before the holiday rush
Bot rules, sale prices, stock, promo pop-ups and code freezes: what to check before peak season so AI agents can still find, price and buy.
Agent readiness for software companies: pricing, sign-up and docs
For software companies, the pricing page is the product page and sign-up is the checkout. How to get pricing, trials, docs, llms.txt and MCP right.
How to explain agent readiness to your board
A one-page way to explain agent readiness to your board: what's changing, the risks, what to measure and what to ask for, without hype or invented numbers.
Seven agent readiness mistakes to avoid
Seven common agent readiness mistakes, from blocking AI assistants with training crawlers to measuring agents with JavaScript analytics, and how to avoid each.
How AgentScore renders your pages in a real browser
Which pages AgentScore opens in a headless browser, with what settings and safeguards, how it looks for WebMCP tools, and what it never does.
Reading your AgentScore report: what to fix first
What each part of an AgentScore report means, from the verdict and statuses to severity and score impact, and how to turn it into a fix list.
Agent traffic isn't bot traffic
Lumping AI agents in with scrapers hides customers. Why agent traffic needs its own categories, rules and reports, and how to start separating it.
SEO got you found. Agent readiness gets you chosen
SEO decides whether AI agents find you. Agent readiness decides whether they can use your site and choose you. What carries over, and what's new.
How AgentScore works: what's behind the 100 points
How AgentScore turns its checks into a score out of 100: the four categories, how points are earned, which pages it visits, and what isn't scored yet.
Ghost Agents: testing your site with real AI agents
Ghost Agents are real AI agents that run your checkout, search and sign-up journeys on a schedule, with pass rates, step-by-step replays and alerts.
Accessibility work is agent readiness work
Many browser agents read pages through the accessibility tree. Where WCAG and agent readiness overlap, where they differ, and how to make fixes pay twice.
Why our scanner sometimes wears other agents' names
AgentScore requests a few pages as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Googlebot, unsigned, to see how your site treats them. Here's exactly what and why.
Should you block AI crawlers? A decision guide for leaders
Blocking AI crawlers is several decisions, not one. How to decide on training crawlers, AI search and assistants, and how to enforce the policy.
A 90-day agent readiness plan for e-commerce teams
A practical three-phase plan: let AI agents in, make pages readable and usable, then prove agents can finish checkout, mapped to AgentScore checks.
Who owns agent readiness?
Agent readiness spans e-commerce, SEO, developers, security and legal. Who usually fixes what, and how to give the work one clear owner.
Your next customer won't be human
AI agents now read, compare and buy on people's behalf. Most websites can't see them, don't know if they succeed, and were never built for them. Here's what's changing.
Why we sign every request our agents send
Anyone can copy a user agent. Here's how Ghost Agent Labs signs its scanner and Ghost Agent traffic with Web Bot Auth, and why every well-behaved agent should.
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