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News & media AI readiness statistics

In November 2026, we could only place a site in an industry where our scanner could read the page, so this page covers News & media sites we could read and says nothing about how many turned our scanner away.

Updated 11:07 UTC · November 2026

Based on the sites Bot Appétit has scanned. Most of these sites come from lists we scan for research. Not a random sample of the web.

All sites on the State of the Web

See the News & media leaderboard

How News & media sites land

Every page we read gets a score out of 100, the number at the top of its report (how scoring works). Each row is a range of scores. Where too few sites score in the lowest ranges, they are joined into one row.

Not enough sites yet There are not enough sites yet to split them by score.

An industry is only known for a page our scanner could read, so these shares are of the News & media sites we could read.

Based on the sites Bot Appétit has scanned. Most of these sites come from lists we scan for research. Not a random sample of the web.

Better or worse

Not enough history yet.

Based on the sites Bot Appétit has scanned. Most of these sites come from lists we scan for research. Not a random sample of the web.

AI access

  • robots.txt disallows some AI crawlers 34%
  • robots.txt disallows major AI crawlers 14%
Show as a table
What we foundShare of sites
robots.txt disallows some AI crawlers34%
robots.txt disallows major AI crawlers14%

Based on the sites Bot Appétit has scanned. Most of these sites come from lists we scan for research. Not a random sample of the web.

What News & media sites get right and wrong

Passed more often than on the average site: “Author / publisher is clear” (69%, against 38% of all sites); “Structured data is present” (74%, against 45% of all sites); “A machine-readable published / updated date” (40%, against 13% of all sites). Least often passed: several checks that no News & media site we could read passed.

Every check, News & media against all sites

Share of sites that pass each check, over the sites the check applies to. The Gap column is the difference in percentage points between the two shares; a dash means not enough sites yet.

Check News & media sites All sites Gap (points)
Served over a secure HTTPS connection 100% >99% Level
HTTP redirects to HTTPS 85% 88% −3 points
No mixed (insecure) content 100% 99% +1 point
Core security headers are set 14% 15% −1 point
Not flagged for malware or phishing 100% 100% Level
No server version leakage 77% 90% −13 points
security.txt is published 5% 6% −1 point
Reached without a redirect chain 100% 98% +2 points
Caching or validation headers are set 89% 92% −3 points
The site settles on one host (www vs non-www) 89% 86% +3 points
robots.txt is present and not over-blocking 89% 79% +10 points
Not accidentally set to noindex 100% 99% +1 point
This page declares its canonical URL 85% 64% +21 points
Mobile viewport is set 91% 85% +6 points
Has a title tag 100% 99% +1 point
Title fits a search snippet 46% 42% +4 points
Has a meta description 95% 82% +13 points
Description fits a search snippet 75% 55% +20 points
The page has an H1 38% 63% −25 points
Logical heading order 63% 60% +3 points
Topic is consistent across title, H1 and description 28% 47% −19 points
Images have descriptive alt text 83% 82% +1 point
Your page's HTML isn't oversized 95% 97% −2 points
Open Graph tags for sharing 55% 48% +7 points
Twitter/X card tags 68% 62% +6 points
XML sitemap is present and referenced 80% 60% +20 points
Missing pages return a real 404 88% 85% +3 points
Images are optimised 27% 22% +5 points
Language and charset declared 95% 94% +1 point
hreflang for language variants — 99% —
Analytics is installed 80% 61% +19 points
Search Console / Bing verification 89% 68% +21 points
A favicon is set 98% 89% +9 points
No meta-refresh redirect 100% 99% +1 point
Your content survives without JavaScript 95% 89% +6 points
Your answer is in the HTML 97% 86% +11 points
Buttons, links and fields have names 42% 50% −8 points
Semantic HTML landmarks 72% 53% +19 points
Content is scannable in self-contained chunks 94% 78% +16 points
Claims come with figures, quotes or sources 51% 51% Level
Section headings are phrased as questions 43% 22% +21 points
Reading the page is affordable for a machine 72% 84% −12 points
No hidden text written for an AI model 100% 100% Level
Sitemap dates tell a machine what changed 78% 57% +21 points
The links in llms.txt resolve — 93% —
Author / publisher is clear 69% 38% +31 points
A machine-readable published / updated date 40% 13% +27 points
llms.txt is present and valid 12% 15% −3 points
Clean content for agents (Markdown) 0% 9% −9 points
Structured data is present 74% 45% +29 points
Structured data is valid 100% 97% +3 points
FAQ / Q&A schema — 36% —
Organization schema with sameAs 35% 16% +19 points
Right schema type for the page 61% 69% −8 points
Schema facts also appear in the page text — 53% —
Breadcrumb structured data — 13% —
AI crawlers aren't blocked 63% 83% −20 points
Automated visitors can reach your pages — — —
Engines are allowed to quote the page 87% 99% −12 points
Your page arrives quickly 96% 94% +2 points
AI bot rules are explicit and intentional 35% 19% +16 points
Content usage preferences declared 2% 5% −3 points
Resource-discovery Link headers 2% 2% Level
No broken links 86% 89% −3 points
Links don't point at redirects 88% 85% +3 points
Descriptive anchor text 100% >99% Level
Sensible internal/external link mix 98% 88% +10 points
Links are real links 71% 81% −10 points
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — — —
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — — —
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — — —
Page weight and render-blocking — — —
MCP Server Card 0% 1% −1 point
AI catalog 0% 1% −1 point
A2A Agent Card 2% 1% +1 point
WebMCP tools in the page 0% 2% −2 points
AI usage preferences (Content-Usage) 0% <1% Level
Licensing terms for AI (RSL) 0% <1% Level
Text-and-data-mining reservation (TDMRep) 0% <1% Level
Markdown version linked from the page 2% 1% +1 point
Content signals agree everywhere — — —
Agent Skills index 2% 1% +1 point
API catalog 0% 1% −1 point
OAuth authorization-server metadata 0% 4% −4 points
OAuth protected-resource metadata 0% 4% −4 points
OpenID Connect discovery 0% 4% −4 points
Web Bot Auth (operates a signed bot) 0% <1% Level
Universal Commerce Protocol manifest — — —
Auth.md agent registration 0% 1% −1 point
AI discovery via DNS 0% <1% Level

Based on the sites Bot Appétit has scanned. Most of these sites come from lists we scan for research. Not a random sample of the web.

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