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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 13:07 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 51%
  • robots.txt disallows major AI crawlers 20%
Show as a table
What we foundShare of sites
robots.txt disallows some AI crawlers51%
robots.txt disallows major AI crawlers20%

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: “AI bot rules are explicit and intentional” (56%, against 14% of all sites); “Open Graph tags for sharing” (61%, against 23% of all sites); “Section headings are phrased as questions” (57%, against 22% 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 86% 95% −9 points
No mixed (insecure) content 98% 99% −1 point
Core security headers are set 21% 9% +12 points
Not flagged for malware or phishing 100% 100% Level
No server version leakage 78% 94% −16 points
security.txt is published 8% 5% +3 points
Reached without a redirect chain 100% 99% +1 point
Caching or validation headers are set 94% 95% −1 point
The site settles on one host (www vs non-www) 88% 87% +1 point
robots.txt is present and not over-blocking 93% 91% +2 points
Not accidentally set to noindex 100% 99% +1 point
This page declares its canonical URL 86% 59% +27 points
Mobile viewport is set 86% 94% −8 points
Has a title tag 100% >99% Level
Title fits a search snippet 41% 59% −18 points
Has a meta description 98% 91% +7 points
Description fits a search snippet 59% 64% −5 points
The page has an H1 45% 87% −42 points
Logical heading order 59% 64% −5 points
Topic is consistent across title, H1 and description 28% 65% −37 points
Images have descriptive alt text 81% 96% −15 points
Your page's HTML isn't oversized 90% 99% −9 points
Open Graph tags for sharing 61% 23% +38 points
Twitter/X card tags 79% 75% +4 points
XML sitemap is present and referenced 79% 76% +3 points
Missing pages return a real 404 82% 93% −11 points
Images are optimised 30% 13% +17 points
Language and charset declared 98% 85% +13 points
hreflang for language variants — 99% —
Analytics is installed 78% 76% +2 points
Search Console / Bing verification 94% 82% +12 points
A favicon is set 99% 99% Level
No meta-refresh redirect 98% >99% −2 points
Your content survives without JavaScript 95% 97% −2 points
Your answer is in the HTML 96% 96% Level
Buttons, links and fields have names 33% 32% +1 point
Semantic HTML landmarks 64% 50% +14 points
Content is scannable in self-contained chunks 92% 94% −2 points
Claims come with figures, quotes or sources 47% 56% −9 points
Section headings are phrased as questions 57% 22% +35 points
Reading the page is affordable for a machine 49% 92% −43 points
No hidden text written for an AI model 100% >99% Level
Sitemap dates tell a machine what changed 63% 68% −5 points
The links in llms.txt resolve — 84% —
Author / publisher is clear 73% 51% +22 points
A machine-readable published / updated date 42% 11% +31 points
llms.txt is present and valid 13% 29% −16 points
Clean content for agents (Markdown) 0% 4% −4 points
Structured data is present 76% 56% +20 points
Structured data is valid 98% 97% +1 point
FAQ / Q&A schema — 47% —
Organization schema with sameAs 56% 33% +23 points
Right schema type for the page 78% 95% −17 points
Schema facts also appear in the page text — 57% —
Breadcrumb structured data — 28% —
AI crawlers aren't blocked 45% 92% −47 points
Automated visitors can reach your pages — — —
Engines are allowed to quote the page 82% 99% −17 points
Your page arrives quickly 92% 97% −5 points
AI bot rules are explicit and intentional 56% 14% +42 points
Content usage preferences declared 5% 4% +1 point
Resource-discovery Link headers 2% 2% Level
No broken links 82% 87% −5 points
Links don't point at redirects 78% 92% −14 points
Descriptive anchor text 99% 99% Level
Sensible internal/external link mix 99% 96% +3 points
Links are real links 82% 92% −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 0% <1% Level
WebMCP tools in the page 0% <1% Level
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 0% 1% −1 point
Content signals agree everywhere — — —
Agent Skills index 0% 1% −1 point
API catalog 1% 1% Level
OAuth authorization-server metadata 1% 2% −1 point
OAuth protected-resource metadata 1% 2% −1 point
OpenID Connect discovery 0% 2% −2 points
Web Bot Auth (operates a signed bot) 0% <1% Level
Universal Commerce Protocol manifest — 7% —
Auth.md agent registration 0% <1% Level
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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