- Visibility50
- Citations1
- Sentiment60
- Site quality80
- AI readiness29
AI assistants name Upwork in 63.3% of answers, much more often than the typical company in its group at 3.3%. Upwork earns an overall score of 44 out of 100, ranking 119th of 2,047 companies. Its website passes 4 out of 14 technical checks for readiness with AI tools.
We asked 15 unbranded questions about its market: none named Upwork. AI assistants named it in 38 of 60 answers (63.3%). The typical company in its group is named in 3.3% of answers. By how often it is named, Upwork ranks 1 of 61 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.
61 companies in this sector. The line on each bar is the typical company.
An answer that names the company
“What are good alternatives to using a freelance marketplace for hiring creative professionals?”
Yes—if you want to hire creative professionals without relying on a general freelance marketplace, the strongest alternatives are usually portfolio-first platforms, niche design communities, direct-hire job boards, and curated talent networks.
Good options include:
99designs for logos, branding, illustrations, and design contests, where multiple designers submit concepts and you choose a winner.
Dribbble for portfolio-based discovery of designers and other creatives, especially when you want to review work samples before reaching out. …
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
The website turns away requests that do not come from a browser. AI agents that say what they are meet the same refusal.
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 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 rulesPassed
Explicit robots.txt rules for AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot.
- 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.mdNot met
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%WebMCPNot met
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 47 of 100 · 68% of checks could run · checked on October 4, 2026 · upwork.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%
- Not metXML 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%
- PassedExplicit 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 rules for 8 AI crawlers by name. All others follow its general rules.
- GPTBotpartly
- ClaudeBotpartly
- Anthropic-AIpartly
- Google-Extended*allowed
- Applebot-Extended*allowed
- Meta-ExternalAgentpartly
- FacebookBotpartly
- Bytespiderpartly
- CCBotpartly
- Diffbotpartly
- Omgilibotpartly
- OAI-SearchBot*allowed
- Claude-SearchBot*allowed
- PerplexityBot*allowed
- Applebotpartly
- Amazonbotpartly
- YouBotpartly
- ChatGPT-User*allowed
- Claude-User*allowed
- Perplexity-User*allowed
- 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 US-listed.
- Best ways to source freelance motion editors besides online gig platforms?
- What are good alternatives to using a freelance marketplace for hiring creative professionals?
- Ways to hire data analysts for churn modeling through online freelance services?
- What is the average hourly rate for web developers on US-based freelance platforms?
- What to do if a freelancer misses a project deadline on a gig marketplace?
- Where to find freelance experts experienced in automating workflows for businesses?
- How can a small business find remote experts for support automation projects?
- Is it worth paying higher rates for AI-powered freelancers on online talent platforms?
- How does a general freelance marketplace differ from a specialized platform for design or IT jobs?
- Freelance gig sites vs dedicated job boards: which is better for hiring marketing talent?
- How can clients resolve disputes over project scope with freelancers on talent platforms?
- How do service fees work on online talent marketplaces for business clients?
- Should businesses use a subscription-based freelance marketplace or pay per project?
- What are the best freelance talent marketplaces for finding skilled developers in the US?
- Where can professionals find top freelance designers for brand identity projects?
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/upwork.com"><img src="https://aeo-audit.rezolve.com/us/badges/upwork.com.svg" alt="Overall score 44 of 100, US AI Visibility Study 2026" width="280" height="64"></a>