ORIGINAL DATA · MONTHLY
State of AI-readiness: September 2026
How 73 websites audited on SEO AI Audits in September 2026 look to AI search tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers: whether those tools can reach the pages, read them, and quote them.
The median AI-readiness score was 87/100. 27% of sites scored 90 or more. The most common AI-related problem was “Pages without structured data (schema)”, on 64% of sites.
AI-search problems, by how common they were
The share of websites with each problem on at least one page.
- 1Pages without structured data (schema)Low64%47 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 2Pages without JSON-LD structured dataMedium62%45 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 3Q&A content without FAQ, QAPage or HowTo markupMedium55%40 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 4Long pages (500+ words) with no author shownMedium47%34 of 73 sites
- 5No Organization schema on the homepageMedium47%34 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 6Few statistics per 1,000 words of contentLow40%29 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 7Questions on the page without a direct answerMedium38%28 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 8Long pages with no figures or statisticsLow36%26 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 9Organization schema without sameAs profile linksMedium25%18 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 10No structured data anywhere on the siteMedium19%14 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 11Text that only appears after JavaScript runsHigh18%13 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 12Main headings set only by JavaScriptLow8%6 of 73 sites
- 13Links that only appear after JavaScript runsMedium8%6 of 73 sites
- 14No question-and-answer content on the siteLow7%5 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 15AI search tools are blockedHigh4%3 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 16Structured data added only by JavaScriptLow3%2 of 73 sites
Choices sites made about AI
These are opt-outs, not problems: blocking AI training, for example, doesn’t stop a site from appearing in AI search. The share of websites that made each choice:
- 4%Blocked AI training crawlers
AI-readiness scores
AI-readiness is the average of a site’s Answer engines, Brand & entities and AI crawler access scores.
Median score by area
The 10 most common problems overall
Across every check, not only the AI ones. For the rolling 90-day picture, see what our SEO audits found.
- 1Images without width and heightMedium84%61 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 2Images that aren’t lazy-loadedLow84%61 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 3Pages missing from the XML sitemapMedium82%60 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 4Titles too long for Google’s resultsLow81%59 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 5Links with no link textMedium79%58 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 6Skipped heading levels (e.g. H2 to H4)Low78%57 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 7No Permissions-Policy headerLow77%56 of 73 sites
- 8No “skip to content” linkLow77%56 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 9Thin pages (under 300 words)Medium77%56 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
- 10Missing Open Graph (social sharing) tagsLow74%54 of 73 sitesHow to fix it
How we counted
- Websites audited on SEO AI Audits in September 2026. Each counts once, using its latest complete audit that month. These are sites people chose to audit here, not a random sample of the web.
- A problem counts once per website, however many of its pages have it.
- Audits that didn’t finish every check are left out, as are crawls a site blocked or cut short, and our own site.
- Notes about our own crawl and suggestions rather than problems are left out. So are checks whose logic changed after September 2026 began, because that month’s audits still used the old version: Pages with almost no internal links pointing in, Over-optimised link text, No sign of when pages were updated, Keyword stuffing, Articles with no publication or update date, No X (Twitter) card image, No X (Twitter) card title, No X (Twitter) card description, No social sharing image, Articles without a named author, Answers that are hard to quote, Pages with only one internal link, Structured data missing a required field.
- Only totals are published. No website is named, and nothing here can be traced back to a visitor.
You’re welcome to quote these figures. Please link to this page as the source. Every month of the study.
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