ORIGINAL DATA · MONTHLY
State of AI-readiness: October 2026
How 106 websites audited on SEO AI Audits in October 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 88/100 (up 1 from September 2026). 34% of sites scored 90 or more. The most common AI-related problem was “Few statistics per 1,000 words of content”, on 74% of sites.
AI-search problems, by how common they were
The share of websites with each problem on at least one page.
- 1Few statistics per 1,000 words of contentLow74%78 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 2Long pages with no figures or statisticsLow72%76 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 3Long pages (500+ words) with no author shownMedium68%72 of 106 sites
- 4Questions on the page without a direct answerMedium60%64 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 5Answers that are hard to quoteLow53%56 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 6Pages without structured data (schema)Low47%50 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 7Pages without JSON-LD structured dataMedium46%49 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 8No Organization schema on the homepageMedium44%47 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 9Q&A content without FAQ, QAPage or HowTo markupMedium44%47 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 10Articles without a named authorMedium30%32 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 11Organization schema without sameAs profile linksMedium30%32 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 12Text that only appears after JavaScript runsMedium22%23 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 13No structured data anywhere on the siteMedium21%22 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 14No question-and-answer content on the siteLow11%12 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 15Links that only appear after JavaScript runsMedium8%8 of 106 sites
- 16Main headings set only by JavaScriptLow7%7 of 106 sites
- 17Structured data added only by JavaScriptLow3%3 of 106 sites
- 18Titles set only by JavaScriptMedium2%2 of 106 sites
- 19AI search tools are blockedHigh1%1 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
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
- 1%Blocked AI assistants from fetching pages on request
- 1%Opted out of Gemini training and grounding (Google-Extended)
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 heightMedium80%85 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 2No Permissions-Policy headerLow78%83 of 106 sites
- 3Links with no link textMedium76%81 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 4Titles too long for Google’s resultsLow75%80 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 5Few statistics per 1,000 words of contentLow74%78 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 6Images that aren’t lazy-loadedLow74%78 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 7Thin pages (under 300 words)Medium74%78 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 8No “skip to content” linkLow72%76 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 9Long pages with no figures or statisticsLow72%76 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
- 10Skipped heading levels (e.g. H2 to H4)Low70%74 of 106 sitesHow to fix it
How we counted
- Websites audited on SEO AI Audits in October 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 October 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, 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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