# Connectively Agent Readiness Report, November 2026

- Published: 2026-11-02
- Author: [Featured](https://press.featured.com/author/featured.md)
- Topics: [Research](https://press.featured.com/research.md)
- About: [Connectively](https://connectively.us), [Agentic Score](https://is-agentic.com)
- Based on: [Is Agentic methodology](https://is-agentic.com/methodology), Is Agentic
- Based on: [AgentReady: the open specification for agent readiness](https://agentready.org/), AgentReady
- Based on: [Ora research](https://ora.ai/research), Ora
- Based on: [Featured AI Citation Report, June-August 2026](https://press.featured.com/research/ai-citation-report-august-2026/), Featured, 2026-08-24
- Based on: [The New Readers: The State of News Publishing in the Age of AI Search and Agents](https://higoodie.com/blog/publishers-and-ai-search-study/), Goodie, 2026-07-28
- Based on: [Which News Sites Block AI Crawlers in 2025?](https://www.buzzstream.com/blog/publishers-block-ai-study/), BuzzStream, 2025-12-18
- Based on: [How many news websites block AI crawlers?](https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/how-many-news-websites-block-ai-crawlers), Reuters Institute, 2024-02-22
- Source: https://press.featured.com/research/agent-readiness-report-october-2026/
- Publisher: Featured Press Room

We scored **908 publications** that post journalist questions on Connectively for AI agent readiness between October 22 and November 2, 2026, and matched them against Moz Domain Authority and Ahrefs Domain Rating. Here is what agent readiness looks like across the publications experts pitch.

**0.08** is the correlation between Domain Authority and Agentic Score across 906 publications. Authority does not predict agent readiness.

> The publications experts pitch for authority are no more ready for AI agents than the ones they skip. Across 906 publications, Domain Authority showed almost no relationship to agent readiness.

## Key points

- 908 publications on Connectively carry an Agentic Score, a 0 to 100 measure of how ready a website is for AI agents, from Is Agentic, a free agent-readiness tool from Vercel, with scans run by Ora.
- The average score is 39.1, the median is 37, 57.5% score below 40, and 5.2% score 70 or higher.
- The correlation between Domain Authority and Agentic Score is 0.08 across 906 publications. Domain Authority and Domain Rating correlate with each other at 0.87.
- Publications with a Domain Authority above 70 average 39.9. Publications below 20 average 36.9.
- Of the 143 publications with a Domain Authority of 60 or higher, 79 (55.2%) score below 40.
- The figures exclude 44 publications owned by Featured, which are scored on the same basis but were removed so that our own sites do not shape the result.

## Key definitions

- **Publication.** A website that posts questions to experts on Connectively, identified by its domain.
- **Agentic Score.** A 0 to 100 measure of how ready a website is for AI agents: whether an agent can find the site, read its pages, and act on what it finds. It comes from [Is Agentic](https://is-agentic.com), a free agent-readiness tool from Vercel, with scans run by Ora, and is scored against the open [AgentReady](https://agentready.org/) standard. Connectively refreshes it every 15 days.
- **Domain Authority (DA).** Moz's 0 to 100 score for how well a site is likely to rank in search. A third-party SEO metric, not something AI engines use themselves.
- **Domain Rating (DR).** Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score for the strength of a site's backlink profile.
- **Agent-ready.** In this report, a publication scoring 70 or higher. **Not agent-ready:** a publication scoring below 40. These are Connectively's working thresholds. Is Agentic does not publish grade bands, and it describes every score as a snapshot rather than a promise about what an agent can do on a site.

## Five findings

### 57.5% — More than half of publications are not ready for AI agents

Of 908 scored publications, 522 (57.5%) score below 40. The average is 39.1 and the median is 37. Only 47 publications (5.2%) score 70 or higher, and 9 score 80 or higher. This is close to the web as a whole: [Ora](https://ora.ai/research) reports an average of 43 across 127,521 scanned sites, with 59% at a D or F.

### 0.08 — Domain Authority does not predict agent readiness

Across 906 publications with a Domain Authority, a Domain Rating, and an Agentic Score, the correlation between Domain Authority and Agentic Score is 0.08. Domain Rating does no better at 0.10. By contrast, Domain Authority and Domain Rating correlate with each other at 0.87. The two authority metrics measure the same thing, and neither measures this.

### 55.2% — Half of high-authority publications are not agent-ready

Of the 143 publications with a Domain Authority of 60 or higher, 79 (55.2%) score below 40. These are the outlets at the top of most media lists. Whether the site is ready for an AI agent depends on checks that Domain Authority never looks at: whether the site blocks AI crawlers, whether the article loads without JavaScript, and whether it sits behind a login or paywall.

### 55.7% — Of publications posting questions right now, more than half are not agent-ready

Of the 192 publications with questions open on Connectively on November 2, excluding Featured's own, 107 (55.7%) score below 40 and 22 (11.5%) score 70 or higher. An expert answering questions without the Agentic Score column has no way to tell which group a question comes from.

### 0.10 — Backlink strength does not predict it either

Publications with a Domain Rating of 40 to 69 average the highest Agentic Score of any band, at 42.6. The top band, DR 70 to 100, averages 40.0. The bottom band, DR 0 to 19, averages 36.3. The correlation between Domain Rating and Agentic Score is 0.10.

## How ready publications are

The distribution **peaks in the 30s**. Nearly a third of all 908 publications sit in that one band, and **57.5%** score below 40. Only 5.2% reach 70.

![Bar chart of the share of 908 publications in each Agentic Score band. 0 to 9: 3.5%. 10 to 19: 9.0%. 20 to 29: 14.2%. 30 to 39: 30.7%. 40 to 49: 16.2%. 50 to 59: 12.8%. 60 to 69: 8.4%. 70 to 79: 4.2%. 80 to 89: 0.6%. 90 to 100: 0.4%.](https://featured-com-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/featured-sites/press.featured.com/uploads/2026/11/agent-readiness-report-distribution-106b27c9.webp)

- **39.1** average Agentic Score across 908 publications
- **37** median Agentic Score
- **5.2%** of publications score 70 or higher
- **55.2%** of publications with DA 60 or higher score below 40

## Authority and agent readiness

Publications with a Domain Authority above 70 average **39.9**. Publications below 20 average **36.9**. The spread between the top and bottom bands is three points on a 100-point scale, and the correlation is **0.08**.

![Bar chart of average Agentic Score by Domain Authority band. DA 0 to 19 (355 publications): 36.9. DA 20 to 39 (265): 39.7. DA 40 to 69 (177): 42.2. DA 70 to 100 (110): 39.9.](https://featured-com-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/featured-sites/press.featured.com/uploads/2026/11/agent-readiness-report-by-domain-authority-4c204d89.webp)

| Domain Authority band | Publications | Average Agentic Score | Score 70+ | Below 40 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DA 0–19 | 355 | 36.9 | 2.5% | 64.2% |
| DA 20–39 | 265 | 39.7 | 3.4% | 55.5% |
| DA 40–69 | 177 | 42.2 | 11.3% | 50.8% |
| DA 70–100 | 110 | 39.9 | 8.2% | 51.8% |

Average Agentic Score by Moz Domain Authority band. One publication has no Domain Authority and is left out of the bands.

![Bar chart of average Agentic Score by Domain Rating band. DR 0 to 19 (312 publications): 36.3. DR 20 to 39 (200): 39.0. DR 40 to 69 (201): 42.6. DR 70 to 100 (194): 40.0.](https://featured-com-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/featured-sites/press.featured.com/uploads/2026/11/agent-readiness-report-by-domain-rating-250ffe61.webp)

| Domain Rating band | Publications | Average Agentic Score | Score 70+ | Below 40 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DR 0–19 | 312 | 36.3 | 1.9% | 65.4% |
| DR 20–39 | 200 | 39.0 | 6.0% | 57.5% |
| DR 40–69 | 201 | 42.6 | 6.0% | 51.7% |
| DR 70–100 | 194 | 40.0 | 8.8% | 51.0% |

Average Agentic Score by Ahrefs Domain Rating band. One publication has no Domain Rating and is left out of the bands.

## Why do high-authority sites score low?

The Agentic Score is built from checks that a publication's SEO never touches. The Essential checks, worth 80 of the 100 points, ask whether the site blocks AI agents, whether content is available without JavaScript or a login, whether redirects resolve cleanly, whether error pages are readable by an agent, and whether the site publishes an API spec and Markdown versions of its pages. Large publishers fail the first group more often than small ones for reasons that have nothing to do with editorial quality.

First, crawler blocking. [BuzzStream's December 2025 audit](https://www.buzzstream.com/blog/publishers-block-ai-study/) of the top 50 US and UK news sites found that 79% block at least one AI training bot and 62% block GPTBot. The [Reuters Institute](https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/how-many-news-websites-block-ai-crawlers) found that 79% of the most-used US news sites blocked OpenAI's crawlers by the end of 2023. A site that disallows AI user agents in robots.txt, or blocks them at the CDN, fails the first Essential check outright.

Second, paywalls and logins. Content that requires a subscription or an account fails the sign-in check.

Third, JavaScript rendering and bot management. Sites that load the article body through scripts, or that serve a challenge page to non-browser traffic, return pages an agent cannot parse. These are common on large commercial sites and rare on small editorial ones.

Not every check carries the same weight in practice. [AgentReady's](https://agentready.org/) own tests found that two changes broke an agent: hiding the answer behind JavaScript, and blocking access. Content negotiation and Markdown endpoints did not change whether agents succeeded, yet Markdown negotiation is an Essential check. A site that agents can read can still score low on it.

## Does a low score mean AI will not cite the publication?

No. The score measures readiness, not citations. [Goodie's July 2026 study](https://higoodie.com/blog/publishers-and-ai-search-study/) of 31 million AI citations found that Forbes holds 33% of all news citations while scoring 45% on Goodie's readiness audit. The same study found that The New York Times, which blocks all 13 major AI user agents, received zero citations from ChatGPT and Gemini, and that the block did not stop Grok, Google AI Overviews, or Perplexity. Blocking works on the agents that honor it, and authority and reach still decide a great deal of what gets cited.

The [Featured AI Citation Report](https://press.featured.com/research/ai-citation-report-august-2026/), which analyzed 22,881 citations returned by Perplexity across 405 GEO audits, found that 34.5% of citations pointed to domains with a Domain Authority under 40 and 31.2% to domains at DA 80 and above. Both tails are large. The agent readiness data adds one reason the low-authority tail exists: many of those sites are open to agents, while many high-authority sites are not.

## What this means for PR

The practical change is to stop treating Domain Authority as the only filter. A question from a publication with a DA of 20 and an Agentic Score of 85 comes from a site that AI agents can reach. A question from a publication with a DA of 80 and an Agentic Score of 15 comes from a site that reaches readers and search engines but turns agents away. Both are worth answering. They do different jobs. To see which publications AI engines already cite in a category, Featured's [GEO Audit](https://press.featured.com/press-release/featured-launches-geo-audit/) ranks them from live answers.

On Connectively, the Agentic Score sits next to Domain Authority and Domain Rating on the Questions page. Journalists use Verification Signals to check an expert. Experts can now check a publication the same way. The [step-by-step guide](https://blog.connectively.us/how-to-see-domain-rating-and-agentic-score-in-connectively/) is on the Connectively blog.

## Method notes

- **Publications.** 908 publications on Connectively with an Agentic Score as of November 2, 2026, after removing 44 publications owned by Featured, which are scored on the same basis but were removed so that our own sites do not shape the result. Connectively began scoring on October 22, 2026 and prioritised publications with an active publisher account. New publications are picked up on each 15-day refresh.
- **Agentic Score.** Pulled from Is Agentic's public report API for each publication's domain. The figure used is the Is Agentic score (Essential checks share 80 points, Recommended checks share 20, bonus signals add up to 5), not Ora's full ranker. Is Agentic groups checks run and scored by Ora against the AgentReady specification. Is Agentic describes each score as a snapshot and makes no promise about what an agent can use on a site.
- **Domain Authority and Domain Rating.** Moz and Ahrefs scores held on the publication record and refreshed on the same 15-day cycle. 906 of the 908 publications carry all three scores; one lacks a Domain Authority and one lacks a Domain Rating. Correlations are Pearson correlations across the 906.
- **Scope.** Publications on Connectively skew toward trade, niche, and digital-first outlets that accept expert contributions. The sample is not a random sample of the web or of news media. Open-question figures count questions with status In Progress or Scheduled on November 2, 2026, by distinct publication. No publication is named in this report.

## Frequently asked questions

### What is an Agentic Score?

An Agentic Score is a 0 to 100 measure of how ready a website is for AI agents: whether an agent can find the site, read its pages, and act on what it finds. It comes from Is Agentic, a free agent-readiness tool from Vercel, with scans run by Ora, scored against the open AgentReady standard.

### Does Domain Authority predict agent readiness?

No. Across 906 publications on Connectively, the correlation between Domain Authority and Agentic Score is 0.08. Publications with a Domain Authority above 70 average 39.9 and publications below 20 average 36.9.

### What is a good Agentic Score?

Is Agentic does not publish grade bands. In Connectively's data, 70 or higher means the site passes most Essential checks, and only 5.2% of publications reach it. Below 40 means the site fails most Essential checks, which cover blocking agents, content behind JavaScript or a login, redirects, error pages, and API documentation.

### Does a low Agentic Score mean AI will not cite the publication?

No. Forbes scored 45% on Goodie's readiness audit and holds a third of all news citations. The score measures readiness, not citations.

### How often does the score change?

Connectively refreshes every publication's Agentic Score every 15 days. Is Agentic re-scans a site when a report is requested and its cached result is older than six hours.

## Sources

- [Is Agentic methodology](https://is-agentic.com/methodology), Is Agentic, read November 2, 2026.
- [AgentReady, the open specification for agent readiness](https://agentready.org/), read November 2, 2026.
- [Ora research](https://ora.ai/research), Ora, read October 29, 2026.
- [Featured AI Citation Report, June-August 2026](https://press.featured.com/research/ai-citation-report-august-2026/), Featured, August 24, 2026.
- [The New Readers: The State of News Publishing in the Age of AI Search and Agents](https://higoodie.com/blog/publishers-and-ai-search-study/), Goodie, July 28, 2026.
- [Which News Sites Block AI Crawlers in 2025?](https://www.buzzstream.com/blog/publishers-block-ai-study/), BuzzStream, December 18, 2025.
- [How many news websites block AI crawlers?](https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/how-many-news-websites-block-ai-crawlers), Reuters Institute, February 22, 2024.
- Connectively publication data, November 2, 2026.

## See the score on every question

Open the Questions page on Connectively, click the sliders button, and tick Agentic Score and Domain Rating. Both columns sort on a click and refresh every 15 days.

<p class="button"><a href="https://blog.connectively.us/how-to-see-domain-rating-and-agentic-score-in-connectively/">How to turn on the columns</a></p>