- Visibility13
- Citations15
- Sentiment50
- Site quality80
- AI readiness14
AI assistants rarely name ShopLocal: it appears in 2 out of 60 answers. ShopLocal's overall score is 32 out of 100, ranking 1,089th of 2,047 companies. Its website passes 2 of 14 technical checks for readiness with AI tools.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about the retail market: none named ShopLocal. 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, ShopLocal 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
“How can I discover new shopping platforms that support small businesses near me?”
Great question — finding shopping platforms that support small, local businesses takes a mix of searching, asking your community, and evaluating platform features. Here’s a practical, step-by-step plan you can use right away, plus search phrases and a short outreach template if you want to contact platforms or sellers.
1) Start local (high impact)
Google Maps & Yelp: search terms like “local marketplace,” “handmade marketplace,” “small business marketplace,” or “shop local [your city]”. Look at business profiles and their websites to see if they sell through a platform.
City/town websites …
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
We could not tell. The website turned away our requests for the files an agent would read. An agent arriving by itself is turned away the same way.
- UCPCould not check
- ACPCould not check
- AP2Not present
- x402Not present
- MPPCould not check
Show every check, for your technical teamHide the checks
- study: 92.0%robots.txtNot met
Publish a valid robots.txt with crawl rules and a Sitemap line.
- study: 86.8%SitemapPartly met
Serve an XML sitemap and reference it 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 rulesNot 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 AuthCould not check
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 ResourceCould not check
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 13 of 100 · 53% of checks could run · checked on October 5, 2026 · shoplocal.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
- Not metrobots.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%
How many times each website was listed as a source in these answers
In the study as US retailers: listed as a retailer in Wikidata, a public database, and among the websites Cloudflare Radar ranks as visited.
- How can online services help me order products from small businesses in my town?
- What are the best websites for finding local deals online in the US?
- Online marketplaces vs. local brick-and-mortar stores—what are the main differences for US shoppers?
- Why might I have trouble accessing US-based local shopping platforms online?
- What alternatives exist for people wanting to shop locally without using big marketplaces?
- Are items more expensive on platforms focused on local US businesses compared to mainstream online stores?
- Where can I find curated lists of US-based independent stores that offer online shopping?
- How can I discover new shopping platforms that support small businesses near me?
- How do local shopping apps compare to national e-commerce platforms for variety and price?
- Is it worth switching to a community-focused online marketplace for everyday shopping?
- What are some ways to use online platforms to support local artisans in the US?
- What should I do if local deal websites aren't displaying correctly on my browser?
- Are apps that connect shoppers to neighborhood stores a good choice for organic groceries?
- How do local shopping sites determine delivery fees and taxes?
- Which non-traditional methods are available for finding neighborhood deals online?
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.