Botability standards
Standards for helping search engines and AI tools find, read, and understand your website.
| Indicators | Standard | Why | Guidance |
|---|---|---|---|
The site allows search engines and AI agents to index its pages. | Allows AI bots to find and index your pages, helping your content appear in search results and reach more people. | ||
The page's main content loads without requiring JavaScript. | Ensures search engines can read and index the content within a document, making it discoverable and improving visibility online. | ||
Homepage is marked up as an official government organization. | Identifies websites as official government agencies for AI systems and search engines to recognize automatically. | ||
The sitemap file loads and returns a successful response. | Confirms the sitemap is accessible, ensuring search engines can easily find and index all pages on the site. | ||
The sitemap file uses the required XML format. | Stores site structure in a readable format, helping search engines efficiently crawl and index all website pages. | ||
The site has a robots.txt file that guides search engines. | Guides search engines on which pages to crawl or avoid, ensuring important content is indexed and irrelevant pages aren't. | ||
The robots.txt file allows search engines and AI agents to crawl the site. | Permits search engines and web tools to access content, helping improve search visibility and gather relevant data. | ||
The robots.txt file links to the sitemap. | Helps search engines find the sitemap quickly, improving how they discover and index website pages. | ||
Each page declares a preferred URL so search engines show the right link. | Prevents duplicate content issues by telling search engines which version of a page is the main one. | ||
Links use descriptive text that tells users and search engines where they go. | Describes the link’s purpose clearly, helping users know where it leads and improving navigation for everyone. | ||
Pages declare their language and region for international users. | Indicates page language and region, helping users see the right version and improving search results in different countries. |