- Visibility23
- Citations1
- Sentiment58
- Site quality80
- AI readiness14
AI assistants name Kroger in 23.3% of answers, much more often than the typical company in the retail sector. Kroger's overall score is 34 out of 100, ranking 882nd of 2,047 companies. Its website passes 2 of 14 technical checks for how ready it is for AI tools.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the retail market: none named Kroger. AI assistants named it in 14 of 60 answers (23.3%). The typical retail company is named in 6.7% of answers. By how often it is named, Kroger ranks 126 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
“Best options for online grocery shopping when supermarket delivery slots are full?”
If supermarket delivery slots are full, the best backup is usually platform-based grocery delivery like Instacart or Shipt, because they aggregate inventory from multiple local stores and may have availability when a single supermarket’s own service is booked out. The next best options are curbside pickup, another retailer’s delivery service such as Walmart, Amazon Fresh/Whole Foods, Kroger, or Albertsons, and same-day delivery from nontraditional stores like convenience stores through DoorDash or similar platforms.
Practical ways to improve your chances …
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
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. Kroger 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 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.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 25 of 100 · 97% of checks could run · checked on October 3, 2026 · www.kroger.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%
- 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%
- Not metToken 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 S&P 500. Number 4 on the NRF Top 100 Retailers 2026 list, ranked by US retail sales.
- Best options for online grocery shopping when supermarket delivery slots are full?
- What are the best supermarkets for fresh produce in the US?
- Supermarkets vs big box stores for weekly grocery shopping—what’s the difference?
- How do supermarket prices compare to local farmers markets for common staples?
- Grocery delivery services vs in-store pickup—pros and cons?
- Is it better to buy store brand or name brand everyday essentials at supermarkets?
- What’s the average weekly cost to feed a family of four using US supermarkets?
- Are loyalty programs at grocery stores worth signing up for?
- Where can families find a wide selection of organic groceries near me?
- What to do if a supermarket charges you twice for the same grocery purchase?
- How do you resolve missing items from a curbside grocery pickup order?
- Where else can I find household essentials if supermarket shelves are empty?
- Which grocery retailers are best for large family shopping trips?
- Where can I find supermarkets that offer extended pharmacy services and prescriptions?
- What are alternatives to traditional supermarkets for grocery shopping in the US?
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.
A badge of this result that you can show on your own website. Copy the code below.
<a href="https://aeo-audit.rezolve.com/us/kroger.com"><img src="https://aeo-audit.rezolve.com/us/badges/kroger.com.svg" alt="Overall score 34 of 100, US AI Visibility Study 2026" width="280" height="64"></a>