- Visibility5
- Citations0
- Sentiment75
- Site quality73
- AI readiness14
AI assistants rarely name Cato, mentioning it in 2 of 60 answers. In those answers, they also name Torrid, Rainbow Shops, and Ashley Stewart. Cato's overall score is 30 out of 100, ranking 1,241st of 2,047 and 412th of 640 retail companies. Its website passes 2 of 14 technical checks for AI tool readiness.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the retail market: none named Cato. AI assistants named it in 2 of 60 answers (3.3%). The typical retail company is named in 6.7% of answers. By how often it is named, Cato ranks 392 of 640 in its sector.
Named fewer than three times in total. Read this as a sign that AI assistants rarely bring this company up, not as an exact comparison with its rivals.
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
“Are there stores with free ship-to-store options for women's clothing?”
Yes. Several women’s clothing retailers offer free ship-to-store options, including Cato Fashions and Nordstrom Rack.
Cato Fashions says online orders can be shipped to a local store for free by selecting “Free Ship to Store” at checkout.
Nordstrom Rack lists Free Ship to Store / Ship to Store for eligible online orders picked up in-store, though availability is limited to merchandise available at the selected store.
JCPenney says some purchases may also be eligible for free ship to store.
H&M lists Free Shi …
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 0: Not yet agent-ready. Agents struggle to find basic information about the site.
- 2 of robots.txt, Sitemap, Link headers
Some checks could not run. With them, up to level 1 would be possible.
The website turns away requests that do not come from a browser. AI agents that say what they are meet the same refusal.
Not by itself. Cato 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
- MPPCould not check
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%SitemapCould not check
Serve an XML sitemap and reference it from robots.txt.
- study: 0.3%Link headersCould not check
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 negotiationCould not check
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 rulesPartly met
Add explicit robots.txt groups for the main AI crawlers.
- 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.mdCould not check
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 23 of 100 · 70% of checks could run · checked on October 5, 2026 · catofashions.com · 2,047 companies scanned
2 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%
- Not metXML 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%
- Not metExplicit 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 no rules for any AI crawler by name, like 84% of the websites whose rules we could read. Every AI crawler follows its general rules.
- GPTBotpartly
- ClaudeBotpartly
- Anthropic-AIpartly
- Google-Extendedpartly
- Applebot-Extendedpartly
- Meta-ExternalAgentpartly
- FacebookBotpartly
- Bytespiderpartly
- CCBotpartly
- Diffbotpartly
- Omgilibotpartly
- OAI-SearchBotpartly
- Claude-SearchBotpartly
- PerplexityBotpartly
- Applebotpartly
- Amazonbotpartly
- YouBotpartly
- ChatGPT-Userpartly
- Claude-Userpartly
- Perplexity-Userpartly
- 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 Consumer brands.
- Why is my order from an online women's value fashion retailer delayed?
- What other US-based retailers focus on affordable plus size fashion for women?
- Where can I shop for inclusive women's fashion beyond major department chains?
- How do I return an item to a budget-friendly women's clothing store?
- Are there stores with free ship-to-store options for women's clothing?
- What are the best affordable women's fashion stores for plus sizes in the US?
- Plus size fashion at value retailers vs traditional boutiques—what's the main difference?
- How do department store women's apparel sections compare to specialty value fashion retailers?
- Is it worth shopping at value fashion stores for everyday women's apparel?
- Do affordable women's clothing stores offer good quality for the price?
- What are some good places to buy casual outfits for women on a tight budget?
- Where can I find stylish and budget-friendly clothes for women of all shapes and sizes?
- What is the average shipping cost for ordering from budget women's fashion sites?
- Where can women find trendy accessories without spending a lot?
- What are some alternatives to online-only women's apparel retailers with physical store locations?
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.