AX Rush

AI readiness of apnews.com

Measured on the home page. Overall grade: Poor.

apnews.com

Poor · 32 passing checks, 26 warnings, 8 failures · 3.8s

ax-audit@3.6.0

LLMs.txt

  • /llms.txt not found

    Create a /llms.txt file at your site root following the llmstxt.org specification. It should be a Markdown file starting with "# Your Site Name" and include a description, sections, and links.

Agent Card (A2A)

  • /.well-known/agent.json not found

    Create a /.well-known/agent.json file following the A2A (Agent-to-Agent) protocol. It should include name, description, url, and skills fields describing your site's capabilities.

Security.txt

  • /.well-known/security.txt not found

    Create a /.well-known/security.txt file per RFC 9116. At minimum, include Contact: and Expires: fields. See https://securitytxt.org/ for a generator.

OpenAPI Spec

  • /.well-known/openapi.json not found

    Create a /.well-known/openapi.json file with your API specification following the OpenAPI 3.x standard. See https://swagger.io/specification/ for the spec.

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

  • /.well-known/mcp.json not found

    Create a /.well-known/mcp.json file describing your MCP server configuration. Include name, description, tools, and version fields. See https://modelcontextprotocol.io for the spec.

AI Well-Known

  • 0/5 emerging AI discovery files published

  • ai.txt not found

    Publish /.well-known/ai.txt declaring opt-in/opt-out signals for AI training. See https://site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt for the format.

  • genai.txt not found

    Publish /.well-known/genai.txt declaring your generative-AI usage policy.

  • ai-plugin.json not found

    Publish /ai-plugin.json (legacy ChatGPT plugin manifest). Schema: name_for_model, description_for_model, api.url. Still consumed by some agents.

  • agents.json not found

    Publish /agents.json describing your site as a callable agent (OpenAgents / Wildcard emerging spec). Includes name, description, and operations[].

  • nlweb.json not found

    Publish /.well-known/nlweb.json (Microsoft NLWeb) so agents can interact with the site through a natural-language interface.

Content NegotiationInformational

  • Homepage does not serve Markdown via content negotiation

    Serve a Markdown representation of your pages when agents request "Accept: text/markdown". Agents like Claude Code and Cursor ask for it, and Markdown cuts token usage by ~80% vs HTML. Cloudflare ("Markdown for Agents") and Vercel can enable this without code changes.

  • No <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"> fallback found on the homepage

    If you cannot enable content negotiation, advertise a Markdown version with <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="/index.md"> so agents can discover it.

RSL LicenseInformational

  • No RSL license discovery found

    Declare machine-readable licensing terms for your content with Really Simple Licensing. Add to robots.txt: License: https://your-site.com/license.xml — then publish the RSL document. See https://rslstandard.org.

Meta Tags

  • No AI meta tags (ai:*) found

    Add AI meta tags to your HTML <head>: <meta name="ai:summary" content="Brief description">, <meta name="ai:content_type" content="website">, <meta name="ai:author" content="Your Name">.

  • No rel="alternate" link to llms.txt in HTML

    Add to your <head>: <link rel="alternate" type="text/plain" href="/llms.txt" title="LLM-optimized content">

  • No rel="alternate" link to agent.json in HTML

    Add to your <head>: <link rel="alternate" type="application/json" href="/.well-known/agent.json" title="Agent Card">

  • No rel="me" identity links found

    Add rel="me" links to verify your identity across platforms: <link rel="me" href="https://github.com/yourname">, <link rel="me" href="https://twitter.com/yourname">.

  • OpenGraph required tags present (og:title, og:description, og:url, og:type)

  • Twitter Card required tags present (twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description)

  • Twitter Card recommended tags missing: twitter:image

    Add twitter:image for richer previews.

Robots.txt

  • /robots.txt exists

  • 5/8 core AI crawlers configured

    Add explicit User-agent entries for the missing crawlers with Allow: / for each one.

  • 12 AI crawler(s) explicitly blocked

    These crawlers have "Disallow: /" rules. If you want AI agents to access your site, change to "Allow: /" for each blocked crawler.

  • Sitemap directive present

  • No Content-Signal directive found (optional)

    Declare how crawlers may use your content after access with the Content Signals Policy, e.g.: Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-train=no. Known signals: search, ai-input, ai-train. Generate yours at contentsignals.org.

  • 12/48 known AI crawlers have explicit rules

HTTP Headers

  • Missing critical header: X-Content-Type-Options

    Add the X-Content-Type-Options response header to your server configuration. This is a critical security header.

  • Only 2/7 security headers present

    Add security headers like Strict-Transport-Security, X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Referrer-Policy to your server response.

  • No Link header for AI discovery (llms.txt, agent.json)

    Add a Link response header pointing to your AI discovery files: Link: </llms.txt>; rel="alternate"; type="text/plain", </.well-known/agent.json>; rel="alternate"; type="application/json"

HTML Rendering

  • Server-rendered content detected (9504 words, 61046 chars of visible text)

  • Low text-to-markup ratio (2.6%)

    A very low text-to-markup ratio is a typical SPA-shell symptom. Inline more content directly into the HTML response.

  • Semantic landmarks present (main, footer, nav)

  • No <h1> heading found

    Add a single <h1> describing the page. Agents and search engines treat the H1 as the primary topic indicator.

  • Only 43/82 <img> tags have alt attributes

    Add descriptive alt="" to every <img>. Agents use alt text to understand images they cannot process visually.

Structured Data

  • 2 JSON-LD block(s) found

  • @context references schema.org

  • No @graph array (single-entity only)

    Use an @graph array to define multiple entities in one JSON-LD block: { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [...] }

  • Key types found: Organization, WebSite

  • No BreadcrumbList found

    Add a BreadcrumbList entity to help AI agents understand your site navigation hierarchy.

Crawl EfficiencyInformational

  • Response compressed with Brotli (br)

  • Cache validator present (Last-Modified)

  • Conditional request returns 304 Not Modified

  • Homepage is very large (2.2 MB decompressed)

    Large documents inflate crawl cost and token usage. Trim inlined data, split content, or serve a Markdown representation to agents (see the content-negotiation check).

Sitemap

  • Sitemap located: https://apnews.com/ap-sitemap.xml

  • Content-Type is XML (text/xml)

  • Sitemap-index references 230 child sitemap(s)

  • 3/3 sample child sitemap(s) reachable

  • Sample yielded 3 URL(s) across 3 child(ren)

  • Newest <lastmod> is 569 days old

    Refresh <lastmod> on URLs that have changed. A stale sitemap signals to crawlers that nothing on the site has updated.

SEO Basics

  • <title> is too long (75 chars)

    Shorten the title to 20-70 characters. Many agents and search engines truncate beyond ~70.

  • Meta description length 148 chars

  • Canonical URL: https://apnews.com/

  • <html lang="en">

  • UTF-8 charset declared

  • Viewport meta present: "width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, minimum-scale=1.0 user-scalable=yes"

  • 2 hreflang alternate(s) including x-default

TLS / HTTPS

  • Site is served over HTTPS

  • HTTP requests redirect to HTTPS

  • HSTS max-age=31536000

  • HSTS includes subdomains

  • HSTS lacks the preload directive

    Add preload (and ensure max-age >= 31536000 + includeSubDomains) and submit the domain at https://hstspreload.org for browser-built-in HTTPS enforcement.

Agent AccessInformational

  • ClaudeBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow

  • Claude-SearchBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow

  • PerplexityBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow

  • CCBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow