# AI readiness of nytimes.com > Measured on the home page. Overall grade: Poor. Score 47/100, grade Poor. Measured 2026-09-04T15:06:03.623+00:00, engine ax-audit@3.6.0. ## Checks ### LLMs.txt — 0/100 - **FAIL** /llms.txt not found HTTP 404 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/llms-txt#not-found ### Robots.txt — 7/100 - **PASS** /robots.txt exists - **PASS** All 8 core AI crawlers explicitly configured - **WARN** 31 AI crawler(s) explicitly blocked anthropic-ai, Applebot-Extended, AwarioRssBot, AwarioSmartBot, Bytespider, CCBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, Claude-Web, cohere-ai, Diffbot, DuckAssistBot, FacebookBot, FirecrawlAgent, Google-CloudVertexBot, Google-Extended, GPTBot, ImagesiftBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, meta-externalagent, Meta-ExternalFetcher, meta-externalfetcher, OAI-SearchBot, omgili, omgilibot, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Timpibot, YouBot These crawlers have "Disallow: /" rules. If you want AI agents to access your site, change to "Allow: /" for each blocked crawler. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/robots-txt#explicitly-blocked - **WARN** 1 AI crawler(s) have partial path restrictions Amazonbot These crawlers have Disallow rules on specific paths. For full AI access, use only "Allow: /" and let the wildcard User-agent: * handle path restrictions. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/robots-txt#partial-restrictions - **PASS** Sitemap directive present - **WARN** 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/robots-txt#missing-content-signals - **PASS** 30/48 known AI crawlers have explicit rules ### Agent Card (A2A) — 0/100 - **FAIL** /.well-known/agent.json not found HTTP 404 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/agent-json#not-found ### Security.txt — 75/100 - **PASS** /.well-known/security.txt exists - **PASS** Required field "Contact" present - **FAIL** Required field "Expires" missing (RFC 9116) Add "Expires:" to your security.txt. Use an ISO 8601 date, e.g., Expires: 2026-12-31T23:59:59.000Z https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/security-txt#missing-field - **PASS** 1/5 optional fields present ### Meta Tags — 46/100 - **WARN** No AI meta tags (ai:*) found Add AI meta tags to your HTML : , , . https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/meta-tags#no-ai-meta - **WARN** No rel="alternate" link to llms.txt in HTML Add to your : https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/meta-tags#no-llms-alternate - **WARN** No rel="alternate" link to agent.json in HTML Add to your : https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/meta-tags#no-agent-alternate - **WARN** No rel="me" identity links found Add rel="me" links to verify your identity across platforms: , . https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/meta-tags#no-rel-me - **PASS** OpenGraph required tags present (og:title, og:description, og:url, og:type) - **WARN** OpenGraph recommended tags missing: og:site_name Add these for richer previews: og:site_name. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/meta-tags#og-recommended-missing - **WARN** Twitter Card required tags missing: twitter:card, twitter:title, twitter:description Add these meta tags: , , . https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/meta-tags#twitter-required-missing ### OpenAPI Spec — 0/100 - **FAIL** /.well-known/openapi.json not found HTTP 404 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/openapi#not-found ### MCP (Model Context Protocol) — 0/100 - **FAIL** /.well-known/mcp.json not found HTTP 404 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/mcp#not-found ### Sitemap — 100/100 - **PASS** Sitemap located: https://www.nytimes.com/sitemaps/new/news.xml.gz - **PASS** Content-Type is XML (text/xml) - **PASS** 717 URL(s) declared - **PASS** 100% of URLs have - **PASS** Newest is recent (0 day(s) ago) ### TLS / HTTPS — 100/100 - **PASS** Site is served over HTTPS - **PASS** HTTP requests redirect to HTTPS - **PASS** HSTS max-age=63072000 - **PASS** HSTS includes subdomains - **PASS** HSTS preload-eligible ### AI Well-Known — 0/100 - **WARN** 0/5 emerging AI discovery files published - **WARN** ai.txt not found Tried: /.well-known/ai.txt 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/well-known-ai#ai-txt - **WARN** genai.txt not found Tried: /.well-known/genai.txt Publish /.well-known/genai.txt declaring your generative-AI usage policy. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/well-known-ai#genai-txt - **WARN** ai-plugin.json not found Tried: /.well-known/ai-plugin.json, /ai-plugin.json Publish /ai-plugin.json (legacy ChatGPT plugin manifest). Schema: name_for_model, description_for_model, api.url. Still consumed by some agents. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/well-known-ai#ai-plugin - **WARN** agents.json not found Tried: /agents.json, /.well-known/agents.json Publish /agents.json describing your site as a callable agent (OpenAgents / Wildcard emerging spec). Includes name, description, and operations[]. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/well-known-ai#agents-json - **WARN** nlweb.json not found Tried: /.well-known/nlweb.json, /nlweb.json Publish /.well-known/nlweb.json (Microsoft NLWeb) so agents can interact with the site through a natural-language interface. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/well-known-ai#nlweb ### Content Negotiation — 0/100 (reports, does not score) - **FAIL** Homepage does not serve Markdown via content negotiation Got text/html (HTTP 200) for "Accept: text/markdown" 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/content-negotiation#not-supported - **WARN** No fallback found on the homepage If you cannot enable content negotiation, advertise a Markdown version with so agents can discover it. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/content-negotiation#no-alternate ### RSL License — 0/100 (reports, does not score) - **FAIL** No RSL license discovery found Checked robots.txt License directive, Link header, and 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. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/rsl#not-found ### Agent Access — 100/100 (reports, does not score) - **PASS** GPTBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "GPTBot" - **PASS** ClaudeBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "ClaudeBot" - **PASS** ChatGPT-User blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "ChatGPT-User" - **PASS** Claude-SearchBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "Claude-SearchBot" - **PASS** PerplexityBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "PerplexityBot" - **PASS** OAI-SearchBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "OAI-SearchBot" - **PASS** CCBot blocked at the server — consistent with its robots.txt Disallow HTTP 403 for User-Agent containing "CCBot" ### Structured Data — 90/100 - **PASS** 2 JSON-LD block(s) found - **PASS** @context references schema.org - **WARN** No @graph array (single-entity only) Use an @graph array to define multiple entities in one JSON-LD block: { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [...] } https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/structured-data#no-graph - **PASS** Key types found: Organization, WebSite - **WARN** No BreadcrumbList found Add a BreadcrumbList entity to help AI agents understand your site navigation hierarchy. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/structured-data#no-breadcrumb ### HTTP Headers — 85/100 - **PASS** 6/7 security headers present - **WARN** No Link header for AI discovery (llms.txt, agent.json) Add a Link response header pointing to your AI discovery files: Link: ; rel="alternate"; type="text/plain", ; rel="alternate"; type="application/json" https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/http-headers#no-link-header ### HTML Rendering — 85/100 - **PASS** Server-rendered content detected (1399 words, 8482 chars of visible text) - **WARN** Low text-to-markup ratio (0.6%) Recommended minimum: 5% A very low text-to-markup ratio is a typical SPA-shell symptom. Inline more content directly into the HTML response. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/html-rendering#low-ratio - **PASS** Semantic landmarks present (main, article, section, header, footer, nav) - **PASS** Single

heading: "New York Times - Top Stories" - **WARN** Only 48/55 tags have alt attributes Add descriptive alt="" to every . Agents use alt text to understand images they cannot process visually. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/html-rendering#missing-alt ### SEO Basics — 95/100 - **PASS** length 66 chars: "The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos" - **WARN** Meta description is long (267 chars) Trim to 70-160 characters; longer descriptions get truncated. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/seo-basics#long-description - **PASS** Canonical URL: https://www.nytimes.com - **PASS** <html lang="en"> - **PASS** UTF-8 charset declared - **PASS** Viewport meta present: "width=device-width, initial-scale=1" ### Crawl Efficiency — 95/100 (reports, does not score) - **PASS** Response compressed with gzip Brotli (br) typically compresses text 10–20% smaller — consider enabling it. - **PASS** Cache validator present (Last-Modified) - **PASS** Conditional request returns 304 Not Modified - **WARN** Homepage is on the large side (1.5 MB decompressed) Consider trimming inlined payloads to reduce crawl cost. https://lucioduran.com/projects/ax-audit/guides/crawl-efficiency#large-page --- Markdown representation of https://axrush.com/report/nytimes.com