Featured Research · October 2026
Connectively Agent Readiness Report, October 2026
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 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, a free agent-readiness tool from Vercel, with scans run by Ora, and is scored against the open AgentReady 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 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.
Below 40 — 57.4% of publications
40 and above — 42.6%
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.
| Domain Authority band | Publications | Average Agentic Score | Relative | 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% |
| Domain Rating band | Publications | Average Agentic Score | Relative | 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% |
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.
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.