Does AI read JavaScript, or only the HTML?

It varies by system and you cannot rely on it. Search crawlers render JavaScript with a delay; several AI crawlers take the HTML as delivered and no more. Anything that only exists after a script has run is content you are hoping will be seen rather than content you have published.

Is text in an image really invisible?

To a machine reading the page, yes. Alt text is the exception and it is the point of alt text: it is where the words in a picture become words in the document. A menu, a price list or a service list set as a graphic with no alternative is absent.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

It is worth having because it is cheap, not because it is required. It is a proposal rather than a standard, and adoption is growing rather than universal. It gives an assistant a short, curated account of what is on the site.

Will an assistant use my meta description?

Often, and that is the argument for writing one. Where none exists something is extracted from the page instead, and the sentence chosen is rarely the one you would pick to be quoted on.

How often is my site read again?

There is no published schedule and it differs by system. Treat a change as something that takes effect over weeks rather than immediately, which is a reason to fix the structural things once rather than to tune copy repeatedly.

Is this just SEO with a new name?

It overlaps and it is not the same. Search engine optimisation aims at a position in a list of results. This aims at being understood well enough to be named in an answer, so clarity, structure and stated facts count for more than keyword placement.

My site is bilingual. Does that change anything?

Yes, and it adds a problem this page does not cover: the two language versions have to declare each other, both ways, or one of them is read as a near duplicate rather than as a version. There is a separate guide for that.

What an AI assistant actually reads on your website

Open your homepage and read it the way a machine does: no pictures, no layout, no idea what your logo means. What is left is a few hundred words and some markup. If your services live in a carousel and your phone number is part of a graphic, what is left does not say what you do.

The page it reads is not the page you see

You see a design. An assistant is handed a document: a title, a heading structure, some paragraphs, some attributes. Everything that makes the page feel like your business to a person - the photography, the spacing, the typeface - is invisible to it.

That gap is where most of the trouble lives. A page can look complete and confident and still say almost nothing in the only form a machine can use.

Same page, both times. Only one of them contains your services.

The five things it looks for first

A title that names the business and what it does, rather than one word or a slogan. One main heading that states the subject of the page. A description written for the page, rather than the first sentence it happened to find. The services named in prose. The facts a customer needs, which is where you are and how to reach you.

None of this is exotic. All five are the things a person would also want in the first ten seconds, which is why a page that reads well to a machine usually reads well to a customer.

The same five things a customer wants in the first ten seconds.

Where businesses lose it

Services in a picture. A menu, a price list or a list of what you do, set as an image because it looked better that way. A person reads it. A machine gets a filename.

A homepage that opens with "Welcome". It is warm and it says nothing. The first heading is the strongest statement of what the page is about, and spending it on a greeting spends the strongest thing you have.

Contact details in a graphic, or loaded after the page arrives. If the phone number is drawn rather than written, it is not a phone number as far as anything reading the page is concerned.

A description the site generated. When no description is written, something takes the first sentence it finds, and that is rarely the sentence you would have chosen to be quoted on.

Stating the facts, so nothing has to be inferred

Structured data is a small block in the page head that states, in a fixed vocabulary, what the page already shows a person: the name, what kind of business it is, where it is, when it is open, what it sells. It removes the guessing.

It is not a ranking trick and it does not make a weak page strong. What it does is stop a machine having to infer facts you could simply state, and inference is where a business gets described as something it is not.

How to check yours in five minutes

Ask first. Open an assistant and type what a customer would type - your trade and your town, not your business name. Vary the phrasing each time, the way a customer would. If competitors appear and you do not, you have your answer before you look at any markup.

Then look at the page as a document. Turn off styles, or read the source, and ask whether the five things above are present as text. Anything you cannot find there, a machine cannot find either.

Or run the free assessment on this site, which does the second half for you, names what is missing, and says what each fix is worth.

Frequently asked questions

Does AI read JavaScript, or only the HTML?: It varies by system and you cannot rely on it. Search crawlers render JavaScript with a delay; several AI crawlers take the HTML as delivered and no more. Anything that only exists after a script has run is content you are hoping will be seen rather than content you have published.
Is text in an image really invisible?: To a machine reading the page, yes. Alt text is the exception and it is the point of alt text: it is where the words in a picture become words in the document. A menu, a price list or a service list set as a graphic with no alternative is absent.
Do I need an llms.txt file?: It is worth having because it is cheap, not because it is required. It is a proposal rather than a standard, and adoption is growing rather than universal. It gives an assistant a short, curated account of what is on the site.
Will an assistant use my meta description?: Often, and that is the argument for writing one. Where none exists something is extracted from the page instead, and the sentence chosen is rarely the one you would pick to be quoted on.
How often is my site read again?: There is no published schedule and it differs by system. Treat a change as something that takes effect over weeks rather than immediately, which is a reason to fix the structural things once rather than to tune copy repeatedly.
Is this just SEO with a new name?: It overlaps and it is not the same. Search engine optimisation aims at a position in a list of results. This aims at being understood well enough to be named in an answer, so clarity, structure and stated facts count for more than keyword placement.
My site is bilingual. Does that change anything?: Yes, and it adds a problem this page does not cover: the two language versions have to declare each other, both ways, or one of them is read as a near duplicate rather than as a version. There is a separate guide for that.

See what an assistant can read on your site

A free assessment of one address. The score first, the findings with their evidence, and three files generated from your own page.

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