- Visibility2
- Citations0
- Sentiment50
- Site quality27
- AI readiness29
AI assistants rarely name H-E-B in their answers, with just 1 of 60 answers mentioning the company. H-E-B's overall score is 17 out of 100, ranking 2,039th of 2,047 companies. Its website passes 2 out of 14 technical checks for AI tool readiness.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the retail market: none named H-E-B. AI assistants named it in 1 of 60 answers (1.7%). The typical retail company is named in 6.7% of answers. By how often it is named, H-E-B ranks 431 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
“Where can I find fresh produce and household essentials with curbside pickup near me?”
Many grocery stores offer curbside pickup for fresh produce and household essentials. Here are some popular options:
Giant Eagle: Giant Eagle offers convenient curbside pickup where you can order groceries online and their trained shoppers will bring them directly to your vehicle. They also offer home delivery through Instacart or DoorDash. Curbside pickup is free with a $35 order minimum and can be ready in as fast as 3 hours. You can earn and redeem myPerks rewards with these orders.
Hy-Vee: Hy-Vee provides online grocery ordering with options for both pickup and delivery. …
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.
Not by itself. H-E-B 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%SitemapNot met
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 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 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 CatalogCould not check
List public APIs in a linkset at /.well-known/api-catalog.
- study: 11.8%OAuth discoveryCould not check
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 19 of 100 · 83% of checks could run · checked on October 5, 2026 · www.heb.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 NRF Top 100 retailers. Number 16 on the NRF Top 100 Retailers 2026 list, ranked by US retail sales.
- Where to find Mexican-inspired flavors and specialty foods for delivery?
- What are the best grocery delivery services for busy families in the US?
- Are there ways to save on bulk grocery orders with curbside pickup?
- Best grocery service for last-minute dinner ingredients in urban areas
- How do grocery delivery fees compare to traditional in-store shopping costs?
- How to resolve payment issues with online grocery purchases
- How do in-store grocery shopping and online grocery delivery compare for quality and selection?
- Is curbside grocery pickup worth it for weekly shopping?
- Grocery delivery services versus meal kit subscriptions: what are the key differences?
- What should I do if items are missing from my grocery delivery order?
- Best places to shop online for everyday groceries in the United States
- Curbside pickup vs home delivery: which grocery service is more convenient for families?
- Alternatives to traditional supermarkets for convenient grocery shopping
- Are grocery delivery memberships cost-effective for large households?
- Where can I find fresh produce and household essentials with curbside pickup near me?
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.