Question 1

Is my website ready for AI agents?

Accepted Answer

Start with the 18-question self-check: it scores five areas (find, read, act, pay, trust) in your browser and stores nothing. Then ask your web team to run a free public scanner. Ora reported an average score of 44 out of 100 across 145,922 sites on 5 Nov 2026, with 7 percent at B or above, so most sites have gaps.

Question 2

Do AI agents actually visit business websites?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and the volume is rising fast. Cloudflare reported on 30 September 2026 that daily requests from AI agents on its network grew by more than 1,700 percent in a year, and that more than half of Internet traffic this year was not human.

Question 3

Should I block AI bots from my website?

Accepted Answer

Treat it as four decisions: training crawlers, AI search crawlers, assistants fetching a page for a person, and agents acting for a customer. On Cloudflare, 17 percent of sites block training but fewer than 1 percent block search (30 Sep 2026). Blocking assistants and agents turns away customers' requests.

Question 4

Can ChatGPT buy from my store?

Accepted Answer

Mostly not inside the chat any more. OpenAI's docs say Instant Checkout is available to approved partners; since March 2026, Shopify products in ChatGPT are typically bought on the merchant's own storefront. ChatGPT still finds and compares your products, so readable prices matter.

Question 5

What happens if an agent cannot read my site?

Accepted Answer

It answers anyway from other sources. Ora's lab found (8 Oct 2026) that in about 99 percent of journeys that hit a dead end, the agent answered from elsewhere, and those answers were 3.7 times as likely to miss every fact the buyer asked for.

Question 6

How do AI agents see my pricing?

Accepted Answer

Most read the page as your server first sends it. If prices load by script, sit in an image or appear only at checkout, the agent may report them as missing. Ora's lab found pricing answers built from the business's own pages were right 60 percent of the time against 37 percent from other sources (8 Oct 2026).

Question 7

What are the two things that most often break an agent?

Accepted Answer

In Ora's 19-configuration experiment, only two changes stopped an agent getting the answer: hiding it in JavaScript (fails a plain fetch) and returning 403 to agent user agents (fails every client). llms.txt, JSON-LD, sitemaps and markdown mirrors changed nothing in that test.

Question 8

Does being mentioned in AI answers mean agents can buy from me?

Accepted Answer

No. Being mentioned happens inside someone else's AI answer; completing a task happens on your site. Track them separately. Ora's lab found agents clearly recommended agent-ready businesses in 20 percent of answers against 11 percent for others, matched on brand fame (8 Oct 2026).

Question 9

Which shopping agents can complete a purchase today?

Accepted Answer

Google AI Mode and Gemini through UCP for integrated merchants, Microsoft Copilot Checkout, Perplexity with PayPal merchants, Amazon's Buy for Me for eligible products on brand sites, and Meta's Muse with user approval where merchants allow it. Each has its own rules and dates.

Question 10

Why did Amazon block Meta's Muse?

Accepted Answer

Amazon said Meta had not told it Muse would access its store and that Muse did not identify itself while browsing, and it told users that continued access by an unauthorised AI agent breached its conditions of use (reported 22 September 2026).

Question 11

Is my Shopify store already selling through AI agents?

Accepted Answer

Possibly. Shopify keeps direct checkout through Meta and Muse on by default for eligible stores, and Microsoft enrols Shopify merchants in Copilot Checkout after an opt-out window. Check Sales channels, Agentic in your admin.

Question 12

Who is the merchant of record when an agent buys?

Accepted Answer

Usually you. Google's AI Mode hotel booking keeps the hotel or platform as merchant of record, Microsoft says merchants stay merchant of record in Copilot Checkout, and OpenAI says it is not the merchant of record under ACP.

Question 13

What is the difference between AEO and agent experience?

Accepted Answer

AEO tracks whether AI answers mention and cite you. Agent experience is whether a customer's agent can read your site, get in and finish the task. They need different tools and owners. An AEO tool such as Scrunch starts at 250 US dollars a month billed annually (read 4 Nov 2026).

Question 14

Do I need an llms.txt file?

Accepted Answer

It is a decision, not a requirement. Ora's experiment found llms.txt did not change whether an agent retrieved the answer, but when agents did read llms.txt, 86 percent arrived by a link. If you publish one, link it from every page.

Question 15

Do I need an MCP server?

Accepted Answer

Only if you want agents to finish tasks directly, such as booking or ordering. AgentReady makes an MCP server or a CLI a MUST in that case. In the network crawl of 4 Nov 2026, 2.1 percent of sites published any act discovery file, so you would be early.

Question 16

What did Cloudflare change for AI bots in 2026?

Accepted Answer

On 1 July 2026 every plan got separate controls for Search, Agent and Training traffic. From 15 September 2026 new domains block Training and Agent bots on pages with ads by default, and a Disallow AI Training setting keeps search crawling while refusing training.

Question 17

Can an AI agent book an appointment at my clinic?

Accepted Answer

Yes, through networks that accept agents. Zocdoc opened booking to registered agents on 28 October 2026, with Gemini, Amazon Health AI and Instinct connected, and requires explicit patient consent before an agent books, changes or cancels.

Question 18

Can an agent book a hotel room?

Accepted Answer

In the US, Google began rolling out hotel booking inside AI Mode on 27 August 2026 with partners such as Booking.com, Expedia, Hilton and Marriott, paid with Google Pay. AI Mode does not buy flights; those finish on the airline's site.

Question 19

Can Google call my business on a customer's behalf?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Google can call nearby stores to ask about stock, price and promotions, and for categories such as home repair, beauty and pet care it can call for pricing and availability. Businesses control this through Business Profile settings.

Question 20

What should I ask my web team first?

Accepted Answer

Ask two things: which of our page templates show their main text without JavaScript, and whether our CDN or bot protection blocks AI agents. Those match the only two changes that broke an agent in Ora's experiment.

Question 21

How much does an agent readiness check cost?

Accepted Answer

The main public scanners are free: Cloudflare's isitagentready.com, is-agentic.com built by Vercel with Ora, and Ora's own scan, which needs no key or signup (read 4 Nov 2026). Fixing the findings is web team time.

Question 22

Is Ora the only way to check my site?

Accepted Answer

No. Cloudflare's scanner is free and public, is-agentic.com targets content sites, and others exist. Ora's scan is free; its fixing product is behind a waitlist with no published price on 4 Nov 2026.

Question 23

What is AgentReady.org?

Accepted Answer

An open, MIT-licensed list of what a product should implement so agents can find, read and act, launched 19 October 2026 by Ora with Vercel, Stripe, Auth0, Mintlify, Tavily, Google, Elementor and MIT. It names practices with identifiers and does not score anyone.

Question 24

Should publishers charge AI crawlers?

Accepted Answer

It is a trade between revenue and reach. Cloudflare argues a recipe site could charge a fraction of a cent per fetch, but operators that decline to pay stop reading and citing you. Test on one section first and measure both.

Question 25

How do I know an agent is who it says it is?

Accepted Answer

Ask your CDN or bot vendor whether it checks signatures. Cloudflare said operators including OpenAI, Google and AWS sign their agents' requests with Web Bot Auth, and it sees more than 500 billion verified bot requests a week (30 Sep 2026).

Question 26

What should our fraud team do about agent purchases?

Accepted Answer

Agree a written position first: allowed, allowed within limits, or handed back to the customer. Then set fraud rules to match. Ora's lab found agents paying through Stripe Link got 92.3 percent of test checkouts right (733 of 794 runs in a cloud browser, October 2026), so payment-level checks exist.

Question 27

Does my sector need a different self-check?

Accepted Answer

The 18 core questions apply everywhere; each sector variant swaps in sector examples and adds two questions. For clinics, for example, the extra questions cover patient consent and booking networks.

Question 28

Can an AI agent sign up for our software trial?

Accepted Answer

It can if your signup allows it. Since 30 April 2026, agents using Stripe Projects can create a Cloudflare account, start a paid plan and get an API token, with a default 100 US dollar monthly limit per provider.

Question 29

What do financial services firms do with agents today?

Accepted Answer

Mostly quotes and comparisons inside assistants that hand off to the firm's own site. Experian's ChatGPT app compares card offers then sends users to Experian (27 Aug 2026); Aviva's ChatGPT quotes pre-fill its online application.

Question 30

How often should we review agent readiness?

Accepted Answer

Quarterly, and after any redesign, checkout change or CDN change. Platform defaults change too: Cloudflare changed new-domain defaults on 15 September 2026 and Shopify switched on Meta checkout by default in September 2026.

AI agents and your website: common questions

In short

Getting started