AI Readiness: The Checklist, the Research and the Free Tools
Updated October 28, 2026 · The checklist's sources re-checked October 28, 2026
TL;DR
AI readiness is whether AI search engines and AI agents can reach, index, read, understand and use your site, and whether you can see what they do with it. Start with the checklist below; the research on this page is where its numbers come from, and the guides go deeper on each layer.
- The AI readiness checklist has 50 checks, each with its source and an evidence level, and it is re-checked against its sources every night.
- Studies marked Measured are my own tests of what top sites actually serve, with the method written out.
- Optional files such as llms.txt are covered honestly: fine to publish, no effect shown.
Start here: the AI Readiness Checklist
50 checks in 6 layers, Reach, Index, Read, Understand, Act and Measure, plus the optional files. Each check says what passing looks like, which engines it applies to and where the rule comes from. Tick them off as you go.
Latest changes to the checklist
- October 28, 2026: First version: 50 checks in 7 groups, each tied to its SEO ProCheck check ID, its sources and an evidence level.
Reach and read
Can AI crawlers get a real page back, and can they read it without running JavaScript?
MeasuredCan AI Crawlers Actually Read Your Site? I Measured 400 of the Biggest
What 400 of the most visited sites serve to GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot compared with a browser, and how often robots.txt and the server disagree.
GuideJavaScript SEO: How Search Engines and AI Crawlers Render Your Pages
How Googlebot renders in 2 passes, and why most AI crawlers only ever see the first one.
GuideSSR vs CSR: Why Rendering Decides Whether AI Can Read Your Site
Server-side or client-side rendering: the choice that decides whether AI crawlers see your content.
Understand
Do machines know who you are and what each page is about?
MeasuredMost Top Sites Never Say Who They Are in Structured Data
109 of 180 of the most visited homepages publish no JSON-LD at all, and what the rest say about themselves.
GuideEntity HTML: How to Become a Machine-Readable Brand (Knowledge Graph, sameAs & the Entitymap)
Organization and Person markup, sameAs and the Knowledge Graph, step by step.
GuideEntity SEO: Helping Search Engines and AI Understand Who You Are
How search engines and AI systems map brands as entities, and how to make yours unambiguous.
GuideFAQ Schema: Why You Still Keep It After Google Retired the Rich Result
Why FAQ markup stays after Google ended the FAQ rich result on May 7, 2026: Bing and AI assistants still read it.
Agents
Can an AI agent click, fill in and finish a task on your site, safely?
GuideIs Your Site Agent-Ready? The Lighthouse Agentic-Browsing Audit and How to Pass It
What Lighthouse's experimental agentic browsing audit checks, and how to pass it.
GuideWebMCP, Explained: How Your Site Hands AI Agents a Menu of Actions
WebMCP, the proposed browser API that lets a site hand agents a list of actions.
GuideMCP vs WebMCP for Non-Developers: A Plain-English Comparison
MCP and WebMCP compared in plain English, for people who do not write code.
GuidePrompt Injection and Agent Security for Websites
Prompt injection: what changes when agents read and act on your pages, and how to protect the tools you expose.
Measure and get cited
Are you in AI answers, are you described correctly, and can you prove it?
GuideMonitoring Your AI Search Visibility
Visibility, accuracy and attribution are 3 separate questions. How to measure the 2 that can be measured today.
GuideGoogle AI Overviews: How to Optimize for AI Overview Citations
How Google picks the pages it cites in AI Overviews.
GuideChatGPT SEO: How to Optimize for ChatGPT and SearchGPT Citations
How ChatGPT search finds and cites pages.
GuidePerplexity AI Optimization: Citation Strategy Guide
How Perplexity chooses its citations.
GuideHow LLMs Process and Cite Web Content
How language models process web pages and decide what to cite.
Optional files
llms.txt, llms-full.txt, AGENTS.md: what they are, who serves them, and what they do not do.
MeasuredWho Actually Serves an llms.txt? 184 Top Sites Measured
31 of 184 top sites serve llms.txt, 6 serve llms-full.txt and 1 serves AGENTS.md. Who they are.
GuideAGENTS.md vs llms.txt vs llms-full.txt: Which Agent File Does What
AGENTS.md, llms.txt and llms-full.txt: which file is for which reader.
robots.txt, llms.txt, schema, WebMCP and entity signals: what each one does and how well it is supported.
Background
The terms, and the quality bar for AI-assisted content.
GuideSEO vs AEO vs GEO: What Each One Means and How They Actually Differ
SEO, AEO and GEO: what each term means and where they overlap.
GuideThe Pre-Publish Quality Gate for AI-Assisted Content
The 5 checks an AI-assisted draft must clear on this site before it is published.
Free tools
Run in your browser, no account.
AI Content Readiness: paste a page and get a first-pass check of structure, markup and sourcing. It spots words and tags rather than reading for meaning, so read its notes on false passes.
Entity Clarity Checker: how clearly a page says who or what it is about.
LLMs.txt Generator: build the optional file if you decide to publish one.
Every GEO and AI visibility tool on the site.
This hub grows with the site: new articles, studies and tools on AI search and agents are added here when they are published.