The Small Business AI Readiness Index

Headline findings

What 2,000 sites told us

1. 58.5

   The average small business website scores 58.5 out of 100.

   Each site is scored on eight pass or fail checks that decide whether a customer asking an AI assistant can find it, read it and trust it. Most sites pass the basics: HTTPS, open to AI agents, a phone and a way to get in touch. The same few checks pull the average down.

   95% CI 57.4 to 59.7 · base: 1,830 sites with at least 5 of the 8 checks measurable

2. 11.3%

   Only 11.3% enforce DMARC on their email domain.

   DMARC at quarantine or reject is the setting that stops a stranger sending an invoice in the business name. It is the weakest of the eight checks. Another 21.5% publish DMARC but only monitor.

   95% CI 9.9 to 12.8 · base: 1,969 sites on their own domain

3. 24.7%

   Only 24.7% carry valid LocalBusiness markup.

   LocalBusiness structured data tells a machine the name, address, hours and phone without guessing. 32% have some; the difference is markup that fails validation.

   95% CI 22.5 to 27.1 · base: 1,512 sites whose homepage loaded

4. 47%

   47% of websites sit on a platform that is hard or locked to move.

   Where we could rate the website platform, nearly half would be hard to leave with the site intact. Domains look well kept, with 92.7% carrying a transfer lock. The lock-in sits in the website layer.

   95% CI 43.9 to 50.2 · base: 1,065 sites whose homepage loaded and whose platform was rated

5. 1.3%

   Access is not the gap: 1.3% block an AI search agent.

   Almost every small business lets ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity read the homepage. What those agents find when they arrive is the problem.

   95% CI 0.8 to 1.9 · base: 1,740 sites with a readable robots.txt answer

6. 17%

   17% of listed websites did not load at all.

   DNS failures, refused connections, timeouts, TLS failures and error pages. A customer, or an AI assistant sent on their behalf, meets the same dead end.

   95% CI 15.2 to 18.8 · base: 1,830 sites whose robots.txt let us read the homepage and that did not refuse automated readers

The Index measures what a business controls on its own site, its email domain and its registration. It does not measure how often any AI product names a business, and it makes no claim about placement.

The Index in one view

Eight checks, one number

Each site earns a point for each of eight checks that apply to it, and its score is the share passed, out of 100. The Index is the average of those scores with national weights. The weakest link nationally is DMARC enforced, passed by 11.3% of the sites it applies to.

Who may read the site

AI agents at the door

1.3% of sites with a readable robots.txt block at least one AI search or AI assistant agent, and 0.9% block every one we checked. 1.9% opt out of at least one training crawler, which OpenAI, Google and Apple document as separate from their search products.

Can a machine and a customer tell who you are

Structured data and contact paths

Trust: inboxes, browsers and registries

The quiet gaps

By trade

Readiness by trade

By state

Readiness by state

State samples are small, so states are listed alphabetically, not ranked. Read the interval under each figure.

Methodology

How I measured it

The full method, the eight-check definition and every metric's denominator are in the PDF report and the CSV.

Downloads and license

Take the data

• The report, 2026 Q4 (PDF, 5.4 MB)Findings, charts, trade and state tables, and the method.
• The aggregate data, 2026 Q4 (CSV, 248 KB)Every published estimate with its base, n, effective n and 95% interval, for the nation, 8 trades and 51 states.

Business listings © OpenStreetMap contributors. The aggregates are a derived database of OpenStreetMap and are released under the Open Database License 1.0: use them, share them and build on them with attribution, and keep derived databases open.

Cite this

Quote it, link it

Please cite the Index and link this page, so readers can check every number against its interval and base.

Modern Mustard Seed. (2026). Small Business AI Readiness Index, 2026 Q4 (Version 1) [Data set]. Published October 12, 2026. https://modernmustardseed.com/readiness-index

@misc{mms_readiness_index_2026q4,
  author    = {{Modern Mustard Seed}},
  title     = {Small Business AI Readiness Index, 2026 Q4},
  version   = {1},
  year      = {2026},
  month     = oct,
  note      = {Aggregate data under the Open Database License 1.0. Business listings (c) OpenStreetMap contributors},
  url       = {https://modernmustardseed.com/readiness-index}
}

Press

Questions about the numbers?

I answer press questions myself. Email sarah@modernmustardseed.com for a cut of the data by trade or state, the charts at full size, or the method behind any figure.

Sarah Scarano, founder, Modern Mustard Seed

Your own business

Run the same checks

Every check in the Index comes from a free connector anyone can add to Claude. Ask it whether your email can be faked, whether AI search can read your site, or who controls your domain, and get the fix with the answer.

Claude is a product of Anthropic. Modern Mustard Seed is an independent studio and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.