What an AI summary does to clicks
Google still sends most search traffic
StatCounter measures where visits to the websites it tracks come from. In September 2026, Google sent 89.94% of the visits that came from a search engine, and Bing sent 5.29%.
AI chatbots send visits too, and StatCounter counts them separately. ChatGPT sent 80.48% of the visits that came from an AI chatbot, and Gemini 10.91%. Those are shares of a much smaller pool. They show which chatbot sends the most visits, not that chatbots have replaced Google.
People click less, though. Pew Research Center followed the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. When a Google results page showed an AI summary, people clicked a link 8% of the time. Without one, they clicked 15% of the time. In a 2026 study posted to SSRN, Agarwal and Sen hid from part of a group of 1,065 US users. On searches where an AI Overview appeared, clicks to other websites fell by 38%.
What an AI agent does on your website
An is an AI tool that uses a web browser for someone. Ask one to find a family lawyer nearby with evening appointments, and it searches, opens websites, reads them, compares them and can fill in a contact form.
It doesn’t look at your design. It reads the page’s structure: headings, the labels on form fields, the names of buttons and links. The browser keeps that structure in the , the same map a screen reader uses. Google’s guide to the Agentic Browsing test calls it the agent’s “primary data model”.
If your “Book now” button is an icon with no name, a person can still guess what it does. An agent reading the accessibility tree sees “button” and nothing else.
Google now tests your site for AI agent readiness
PageSpeed Insights has a section called Agentic Browsing, next to Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices and SEO. There is no score out of 100. Google says the standards are still being set, so it shows how many checks your page passes.
On a site that doesn’t use , PageSpeed runs 4 checks:
Accessibility tree
Pass
- What it tests Every button, link and form field has a name.
- For your customers The agent can tell your “Call us” button from your “Directions” button.
What an agent reads on my home page
button "Check my site — free"
textbox "Your website (required)"Pass
- What it tests Nothing moves while the page loads.
- For your customers The agent clicks what it meant to click.
My home page, today’s mobile test
Cumulative Layout Shift: 0
Google wants 0.1 or lessPass
- What it tests A plain-text guide to your site at yoursite.com/llms.txt.
- For your customers The agent finds your main pages without reading every page.
The top of my llms.txt
# AJR Web Design
> WordPress development, SEO analysis and performance fixes…ai-catalog.json
Pass
- What it tests A small file that points agents to your guides.
- For your customers The agent knows where to start.
In my ai-catalog.json
"url": "https://ajrwebdesign.com/llms.txt"The other 3 checks are for WebMCP, a new way for a site to offer its forms to an agent as ready-made tools. They only run on sites that use it.
A 2/2 result is not a pass. When a site has no llms.txt and no ai-catalog.json, PageSpeed marks those 2 checks “not applicable” and leaves them out of the count. The page reads 2/2 while an agent finds no guide at all.
On my own site, AJR Core, my plugin, writes llms.txt and ai-catalog.json from the published pages and keeps them current. You can see mine at ajrwebdesign.com/llms.txt.
Structured data, AI agents and Markdown for AI sit in the same plugin as the site’s business details, so the facts an agent reads come from one place.
Cloudflare, Yoast and Rank Math are building for agents too
Google isn’t the only company getting ready. In April 2026, Cloudflare launched an Agent Readiness score, free to run at isitagentready.com. It runs up to 21 checks in 5 groups, from your robots.txt file to payments made by agents.
Cloudflare then scanned the 200,000 most visited domains. 78% had a robots.txt, but most were written for search engines, not AI agents. 4% had stated how AI tools may use their content. Only 3.9% sent a version of a page when an agent asked for one.
Most of the 21 checks are for apps, APIs and online shops. For a business website, 6 matter:
Discoverability
3 checks
Helps an agent find your pages.
- robots.txt Tells bots which parts of your site they may visit.
- Sitemap Lists every page you want found. robots.txt points to it.
- Link headers Tell software where the Markdown version of a page lives.
In my robots.txt
Sitemap: https://ajrwebdesign.com/sitemap.xmlContent
1 check
Helps an agent read your pages.
- Markdown When an agent asks for Markdown, the page sends Markdown, which takes far less effort to read than a full web page.
An agent asks my home page
Accept: text/markdown
→ 200 text/markdownBot access control
2 checks
Lets you set the rules.
- AI bot rules robots.txt names the AI crawlers that may visit.
- Content Signals robots.txt says how AI may use your content: search, AI answers, AI training.
In my robots.txt
Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=yes
WordPress SEO plugins have moved too. Yoast SEO added llms.txt in June 2025, free for everyone, and refreshes the file on its own. Rank Math has an LLMS Txt module: switch it on in the Rank Math dashboard, then choose which post types go in the file.
Google, Cloudflare, Yoast and Rank Math are all building for the same files. If your site has none of them, an AI agent gets less to work with on your site than on your competitors’.
AI tools check your business facts
An agent asked for “a psychologist in Franklin” also reads your Google Business Profile, your reviews and the directories you’re listed in. If your opening hours on Google say 9 to 5 and your website says 8 to 6, the agent has to pick one.
is how your website states those facts in a form software reads without guessing: name, address, phone number, opening hours.
Search rankings still matter here. Google says its AI features draw on its search index, so a page that ranks for what people type has a better chance of being linked from an AI summary.
Check your own site in 5 minutes
- Run PageSpeed Insights on your home page and find Agentic Browsing. 4/4 means every check ran and passed.
- Open yoursite.com/llms.txt. You should see a plain list of your main pages, not an error page.
- Use your contact form with the keyboard only. Press Tab to move between fields. If you lose track of which field you’re in, an agent will too.
- Search your business name on Google. Compare the Business Profile with your contact page: name, address, phone number and opening hours.
- Run Cloudflare’s free scan at isitagentready.com. Open Customize scan and tick the 6 checks in the cards above, so it skips the ones for apps and shops.
Before you trust the score
- Agentic Browsing is new. Google says the standards are still being set, and the checks will change. Passing them doesn’t guarantee that an AI tool will recommend you.
- Not every AI tool reads llms.txt yet. It takes minutes to add, and Google’s own test now looks for it.
- The traffic figures are referrals. StatCounter counts visits sent to websites, not searches made. No public dataset counts every search across Google and AI tools.
- Scores move between runs. Cloudflare’s scan gave my site different results 2 minutes apart. Run it twice before you change anything.
- Not every check applies to your site. Scanners score features many sites shouldn’t have, like agent payments, an API or code packages. Skip the checks a visitor wouldn’t expect your site to offer, and judge the score on the rest.
FAQ
Questions people ask
No. Google sent 89.94% of search engine visits to websites in September 2026, according to StatCounter. People click fewer results, because Google’s AI Overviews answer many questions on the results page.
How well an AI agent can read and use your website for a person: find your pages, understand what you offer, and fill in your forms. Google measures part of it in the Agentic Browsing section of PageSpeed Insights.
A plain-text file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that lists your main pages with a short description of each, so AI tools can understand your site without reading every page.
Much of the work overlaps. Clear labels and a stable layout help people using screen readers and help Google. Accurate schema helps Google and AI tools read your business details. llms.txt and ai-catalog.json are for AI tools.
Run the 5-minute check above. On WordPress the usual fixes are labelled forms and buttons, set image sizes so the layout doesn’t jump, and llms.txt, which Yoast SEO and Rank Math can both write for you.
How this post was made
I ran the tests and checked every number and link myself on 27 October 2026. I drafted the post with help from AI, then edited it.
