- Visibility42
- Citations6
- Sentiment76
- Site quality73
- AI readiness29
AI assistants name Best Buy in 51.7% of answers, much more often than the typical company in the retail sector at 6.7%. Its overall score is 44 out of 100, ranking 123rd of 2,047 companies. The website passes 4 of 14 technical checks for AI tool readiness.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the retail market: none named Best Buy. AI assistants named it in 31 of 60 answers (51.7%). The typical retail company is named in 6.7% of answers. By how often it is named, Best Buy ranks 17 of 640 in its sector.
Every dot is a company in the study. Hover one to see it; click to open its report.
This companySame sectorEvery other companyNever named
Five parts, each scored out of 100.
How often AI assistants name the company
How often AI uses the company's own website as a source
How positively AI describes the company
How well built the website's own pages are
How easily AI tools can read and use the website
Visibility is calculated from the answers on this page. How the score is built.
640 companies in this sector. The line on each bar is the typical company.
An answer that names the company
“Is it better to buy home appliances from a specialty retailer or a general electronics store?”
For home appliances, a specialty retailer is usually the better choice if you want stronger product expertise, a deeper selection, and better help with delivery, installation, and warranty issues. A general electronics store can still be a good option if you want convenience, broad shopping in one place, or a strong return/policy setup from a national chain.
Specialty retailers focus on a narrow product category and typically offer more expertise and a deeper assortment of appliances, including premium options.
General electronics stores …
The AI’s answer as we received it, shortened and not checked for accuracy.
How the mentions in these answers were split between this company and its rivals
Answers naming it, out of answers received
What this website publishes for an AI agent to read, use and buy from, on a scale of six levels.
- 0
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
Level 1: Basic web presence. Two of robots.txt, a sitemap and Link headers are in place.
- Content Signals
Not by itself. Best Buy publishes none of the purchase protocols we look for. An agent would have to click through the checkout like a person.
- UCPNot present
- ACPNot present
- AP2Not present
- x402Not present
- MPPNot present
Show every check, for your technical teamHide the checks
- study: 92.0%robots.txtPassed
A valid robots.txt with crawl rules at the site root.
- study: 86.8%SitemapPassed
An XML sitemap listing the pages, ideally referenced from robots.txt.
- study: 0.3%Link headersNot met
Send Link headers such as rel="api-catalog" or rel="describedby" on the homepage.
- study: 5.5%DNS for AI DiscoveryNot present
Advertise agent endpoints with SVCB records under _agents.
- study: 1.9%Markdown negotiationNot met
Return a markdown version when asked with Accept: text/markdown, for example at the CDN.
- study: 25.1%llms.txtNot met
Publish an llms.txt with a short summary and the key links.
- study: 93.4%AI bot rulesPassed
Explicit robots.txt rules for AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot.
- study: 1.4%Content SignalsNot met
Add a Content-Signal line for search, ai-input and ai-train to robots.txt.
- study: 0.2%Web Bot AuthNot present
Only relevant if you run your own agents or crawlers: publish a signing key directory.
- study: 0.3%API CatalogNot met
List public APIs in a linkset at /.well-known/api-catalog.
- study: 11.8%OAuth discoveryNot met
Publish OpenID Connect or OAuth server metadata under /.well-known.
- study: 10.3%OAuth Protected ResourceNot met
Serve protected resource metadata at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource.
- study: 0.0%auth.mdNot met
Publish an auth.md describing how agents sign in.
- study: 0.2%MCP Server CardNot met
Offer an MCP server and publish its server card under /.well-known.
- study: 0.1%A2A Agent CardNot met
Publish an agent card at /.well-known/agent-card.json.
- study: 0.2%Agent SkillsNot met
Publish a skills index with the main tasks agents can do.
- study: 33.7%WebMCPCould not check
Register key actions such as search or cart as WebMCP tools.
- study: 0.1%ARD manifestNot met
Publish an ai-catalog.json listing every agent interface.
Score 32 of 100 · 97% of checks could run · checked on October 5, 2026 · www.bestbuy.com · 2,047 companies scanned
4 of 14 passed. This list is for your technical team. The percentage is how many companies in the study pass each check.
These 14 checks ran during the audit and are what the AI readiness part of the overall score counts. The scan above ran later and is stricter on Link headers and Markdown, so a check can pass here and not there.
Show the 14 checksHide them
- Passedrobots.txt publishedstudy: 85.0%
- PassedXML sitemapstudy: 73.2%
- Not metHTTP Link headers (RFC 8288)study: 29.0%
- Not metMarkdown content negotiationstudy: 8.3%
- Not metllms.txt publishedstudy: 21.7%
- PassedToken budget (page weight)study: 95.2%
- PassedExplicit AI bot rulesstudy: 13.0%
- Not metAPI Catalog (.well-known/api-catalog)study: 0.2%
- Not metOAuth Authorization Server discoverystudy: 10.1%
- Not metOAuth Protected Resource discoverystudy: 9.3%
- Not metMCP Server Cardstudy: 0.0%
- Not metA2A Agent Cardstudy: 0.0%
- Not metWebMCP toolsstudy: 4.2%
- Not metAgent Skills declaredstudy: 0.0%
This website sets rules for 13 AI crawlers by name. All others follow its general rules.
- GPTBot*partly
- ClaudeBot*partly
- Anthropic-AI*partly
- Google-Extended*partly
- Applebot-Extendedpartly
- Meta-ExternalAgentpartly
- FacebookBotpartly
- Bytespider*partly
- CCBot*partly
- Diffbotpartly
- Omgilibotpartly
- OAI-SearchBot*partly
- Claude-SearchBotpartly
- PerplexityBot*partly
- Applebot*partly
- Amazonbot*partly
- YouBotpartly
- ChatGPT-User*partly
- Claude-User*partly
- Perplexity-User*partly
- DuckAssistBotpartly
- MistralAI-Userpartly
Read from the website’s own rules file (robots.txt). An asterisk marks a crawler the file names. The rest follow its general rules. “Partly” means only some pages are blocked.
How many times each website was listed as a source in these answers
In the study as S&P 500. Number 18 on the NRF Top 100 Retailers 2026 list, ranked by US retail sales.
- Is it better to buy home appliances from a specialty retailer or a general electronics store?
- Are US electronics retailers worth it for buying the latest smartphones or should I wait for holiday sales?
- Where can I find the best deals on electronics and appliances in the US?
- Big-box electronics stores vs smaller independent tech shops—what are the pros and cons?
- Alternatives to shopping at large electronics retailers for tablets and laptops
- Which categories of tech products are usually cheapest during seasonal sales at electronics retailers?
- Where can I purchase gaming consoles with same-day pickup in the US?
- Top-rated places to shop for computers and tablets online
- Best US stores for affordable home audio and speaker deals
- How do electronics and appliance stores typically handle product returns and exchanges?
- What should I do if my new laptop from a tech retailer arrives with a broken screen?
- How do prices for large kitchen appliances differ between online and physical stores?
- Best places to get advice on setting up a smart home system
- Where else can I find new gadgets besides big tech stores?
- How do in-store electronics retailers compare to online-only electronics marketplaces?
Columns, left to right: OpenAI, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini. The AI assistants often disagree. Across the study, on 40% of the questions where a company is named, only one of the four names it.
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<a href="https://aeo-audit.rezolve.com/us/bestbuy.com"><img src="https://aeo-audit.rezolve.com/us/badges/bestbuy.com.svg" alt="Overall score 44 of 100, US AI Visibility Study 2026" width="280" height="64"></a>