- Visibility9
- Citations1
- Sentiment50
- Site quality73
- AI readiness21
AI assistants rarely name Merrill, with the company mentioned in 2 of 60 answers, or 3.3% of the time. Merrill's overall score is 27 out of 100, ranking 1,538th of 2,047 companies in the study. Its website passes 3 of 14 technical checks for AI tool readiness.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the finance market: none named Merrill. AI assistants named it in 2 of 60 answers (3.3%). The typical finance company is named in 3.3% of answers. By how often it is named, Merrill ranks 87 of 205 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.
205 companies in this sector. The line on each bar is the typical company.
An answer that names the company
“Self-directed investment platforms as an alternative to wealth management”
I'll search for current information about self-directed investment platforms and how they compare to traditional wealth management.Based on current information, here's a comprehensive overview of self-directed investment platforms as an alternative to traditional wealth management:
Key Differences
Control & Cost Advantage
Self-directed investing empowers individuals to control their assets directly using modern financial platforms to research, build, and execute their own strategy. Self-directed investing generally has lower costs than investing with an advisor, but it requires you t …
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
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.txtCould not check
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 CardCould not check
Offer an MCP server and publish its server card under /.well-known.
- study: 0.1%A2A Agent CardCould not check
Publish an agent card at /.well-known/agent-card.json.
- study: 0.2%Agent SkillsCould not check
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 manifestCould not check
Publish an ai-catalog.json listing every agent interface.
Score 37 of 100 · 66% of checks could run · checked on October 5, 2026 · www.ml.com · 2,047 companies scanned
3 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%
- 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 Large private companies.
- How can financial advisory services help with multi-generational wealth planning?
- Retirement planning steps for affluent individuals in the US
- Best wealth management strategies for high-net-worth families
- How to identify gaps in your current retirement savings plan
- Is professional wealth management worth the cost for affluent individuals?
- Are personalized financial planning services necessary for successful retirement?
- Difference between fee-based and commission-based financial advisors
- Self-directed investment platforms as an alternative to wealth management
- How to choose a financial advisory firm for personalized retirement planning
- Average minimum investment required for full-service financial advisory accounts
- Ways financial advisors support clients through major life transitions
- What to do if your financial advisor is not meeting your expectations?
- Alternatives to traditional face-to-face financial advisory services
- Typical fee structures for wealth management services in the United States
- Wealth management vs. investment advisory: What’s the right fit for comprehensive planning?
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.