- Visibility16
- Citations2
- Sentiment75
- Site quality93
- AI readiness29
AI assistants name Paychex in 16.7% of answers, which is more often than the typical company in the industrial sector at 5%. Its overall score is 39 out of 100, ranking 474th of 2,047 companies. The company's website passes 4 out of 14 technical checks for readiness for AI tools.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the industrial market: none named Paychex. AI assistants named it in 10 of 60 answers (16.7%). The typical industrial company is named in 5.0% of answers. By how often it is named, Paychex ranks 42 of 246 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.
246 companies in this sector. The line on each bar is the typical company.
An answer that names the company
“What are some low-cost alternatives to full-service HR software for startups?”
Great question — startups usually don’t need (or can’t afford) full-service HR suites at first. You can cover the same core HR needs with a combination of low-cost tools, templates, and light human support. Below I’ve grouped practical alternatives by HR function, gave example tools you can mix-and-match, estimated cost ranges, plus a short rollout checklist and signals it’s time to upgrade.
1) Core approach (recommended)
Build a simple modular stack: one tool for payroll, one for people records & onboarding, one for time/attendance, one for job applications, and use shared docs for policie …
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.txtPassed
An llms.txt that tells language models what the site offers.
- 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 36 of 100 · 97% of checks could run · checked on October 5, 2026 · www.paychex.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%
- Passedllms.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 S&P 500.
- How can I fix payroll tax filing errors for my business?
- Do automated payroll services really save time for busy employers?
- What should I do if my HR compliance software stops syncing employee data?
- What are some low-cost alternatives to full-service HR software for startups?
- How can I streamline time and attendance tracking for a remote team?
- Professional employer organization vs in-house payroll—pros and cons
- Are there affordable HR platforms that include time tracking and compliance features?
- What features should US employers look for in a payroll and HR service provider?
- Top-rated employee benefits platforms for midsize companies
- Is an all-in-one payroll and HR platform worth it for a business with under 50 employees?
- How much do payroll solutions cost for businesses with fewer than 20 employees?
- Cloud-based payroll processing vs on-premise HR systems—what’s the difference?
- What are the best payroll and HR solutions for small businesses in the US?
- Alternatives to traditional in-house payroll processing
- Best way to manage employee onboarding and benefits enrollment through a single system
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/paychex.com"><img src="https://aeo-audit.rezolve.com/us/badges/paychex.com.svg" alt="Overall score 39 of 100, US AI Visibility Study 2026" width="280" height="64"></a>