Last reviewed 19 October 2026.
We scanned 148 businesses across 20 cities in seven countries with our own extractability and crawler-access tools. Structured data is nearly universal. Heading architecture is close behind. And fewer than one site in six tells you who wrote the page or when.
That gap holds everywhere. It is not a developing-market problem or a small-business problem. New York, London and Sydney, three of the most expensive agency markets in the world, all sit at or below 17%.
How do local business websites score on AI readiness?
Fig. 1Pass rate by check, 148 sites, 20 cities
| Check | Pass rate |
|---|---|
| Three or more H2 sections | 90.5% |
| Structured data present | 85.1% |
| Lists or tables | 75% |
| Exactly one H1 | 70.3% |
| Question-form headings | 66.2% |
| Cites external sources | 62.8% |
| Direct answer near top | 41.2% |
| Author and dates declared | 16.2% |
Median extractability across the whole sample was 68 out of 100, well above the 45 median we recorded across 243 top global websites in our earlier study. These are professional service businesses (agencies, developers, clinics, hotels, jewellers) and they build better than the web average.
Which cities sign their work?
Of the eight checks charted above, six pass on most sites. A direct answer near the top passes on 41.2%. Attribution, a named author and publish dates, does not come close at 16.2%.
Fig. 2Sites declaring an author and dates, by city
| # | City | Country | Author + dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chennai | India | 43% |
| 2 | Bengaluru | India | 38% |
| 3 | Kolkata | India | 33% |
| 4 | Ahmedabad | India | 33% |
| 5 | Toronto | Canada | 29% |
| 6 | Singapore | Singapore | 29% |
| 7 | Gurgaon | India | 22% |
| 8 | Mumbai | India | 17% |
| 9 | London | UK | 17% |
| 10 | Delhi | India | 13% |
| 11 | Jaipur | India | 13% |
| 12 | New York | USA | 13% |
| 13 | Pune | India | 11% |
| 14 | Sydney | Australia | 11% |
| 15 | Lucknow | India | 0% |
| 16 | Indore | India | 0% |
| 17 | Noida | India | 0% |
| 18 | Bhopal | India | 0% |
| 19 | Chandigarh | India | 0% |
| 20 | Dubai | UAE | 0% |
Six cities recorded zero. Not one sampled site in Lucknow, Indore, Noida, Bhopal, Chandigarh or Dubai declares both an author and publish dates.
And the ranking runs against expectation. The top four markets on attribution are all Indian. Chennai at 43% and Bengaluru at 38% beat New York, London, Sydney and Dubai, markets with far higher median scores and vastly larger budgets.
Do Indian or international businesses score better?
Fig. 3India versus international markets, n = 148
| Region | Sites | Median score | Author + dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| India (14 cities) | 103 | 64 | 16.5% |
| International (6 cities, 6 countries) | 45 | 73 | 15.6% |
International markets lead on median score by nine points. On attribution they are practically identical: 15.6% against 16.5%. Whatever drives the score gap, it is not the willingness to sign your work. Nobody does that anywhere.
Do business websites open with a direct answer?
Mostly not. Only 41.2% of sites open with a paragraph between 25 and 90 words: long enough to contain an answer, short enough for a model to lift whole. This is the highest-weighted check in our model, because it determines whether extraction is possible before anything else is assessed.
Fig. 4Direct answer near the top, by city
| # | City | Direct answer near top |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kolkata | 67% |
| 2 | New York | 63% |
| 3 | Chennai | 57% |
| 4 | Ahmedabad | 56% |
| 5 | Delhi | 50% |
| 6 | London | 50% |
| 7 | Pune | 44% |
| 8 | Sydney | 44% |
| 9 | Noida | 43% |
| 10 | Bengaluru | 38% |
| 11 | Jaipur | 38% |
| 12 | Dubai | 38% |
| 13 | Mumbai | 33% |
| 14 | Indore | 33% |
| 15 | Bhopal | 33% |
| 16 | Chandigarh | 33% |
| 17 | Toronto | 29% |
| 18 | Singapore | 29% |
| 19 | Lucknow | 25% |
| 20 | Gurgaon | 22% |
Only two markets clear 60%: Kolkata at 67% and New York at 63%. Fourteen of twenty sit below half.
What do these businesses already do well?
It is worth being clear about what these businesses do well, because the picture is not one of general neglect. 90.5% use three or more H2 sections. 85.1% carry structured data, and in New York, London, Sydney and Singapore that figure is 100%. 75% include lists or tables. These are competent, well-built websites.
The technical layer is done. The editorial layer is not.
Do local businesses block AI crawlers?
Rarely. Nine of 148 sites block at least one AI crawler. Twenty-two name AI user-agents explicitly in robots.txt without blocking them. Pune had the highest deliberate engagement, with three of nine sites naming crawlers and two blocking.
That is a far lower blocking rate than the 20.6% we found among the world’s top 506 domains. Publishers block. Professional service businesses mostly do not: they want the visibility.
Why does author and date attribution matter for AI search?
Retrieval systems that cite prefer content they can attribute. A named author and a publish date are the cheapest signals available: a template change, not a strategy. They cost nothing and almost nobody has claimed them.
If you run a professional services business, this is the rare case where the competitive gap is genuinely trivial to close. Add a byline. Add a date. Open with the answer. Sakshi’s write-up, Only 16% of businesses sign their work, covers how to do it.
Methodology
Businesses were identified per city via Google Places across agencies, development firms and relevant local verticals. Each live homepage was scored with the nine weighted checks from our answer extractability study.
- Sample
- 148 professional service businesses in 20 cities across seven countries: India (14 cities, 103 sites), Canada, Singapore, the UK, the USA, Australia and the UAE (6 cities, 45 sites).
- Per city
- 6 to 9 sites. Domains that did not resolve were excluded rather than substituted.
- Checks
- Nine weighted structural checks, 110 raw points normalised to 100. Eight are charted on this page; no paragraph over 120 words is in the dataset.
- Crawlers
- robots.txt parsed separately for 14 AI crawlers.
- Excluded
- Hyderabad was scanned separately (13 sites) for its own city page; its rows are not in this pooled dataset.
Limitations
Corrected after publication
- Check and country counts were misstated. The first version said eight checks and five countries. The data supports nine scored checks (eight charted) and seven countries. Corrected 19 October 2026; no figure changed. Corrected.
- Small per-city samples. Six to nine sites shows the shape of a market, not a population figure. City-level percentages should be read as indicative.
- Homepages, not articles. A homepage is not primarily an answer page, so these scores understate what the same businesses achieve on editorial content.
- The weights are ours. They reflect our judgement about what matters for extraction, not a published standard. Per-check results are in the dataset so you can weight them differently.
- Business selection is not random. We used Places rankings, which favour businesses with strong review profiles. This likely biases the sample upward.
Can I download the data?
Yes. All 148 rows, with per-check results, opening paragraph length, heading counts and crawler verdicts, released under CC BY 4.0.
city-market-study-2026-07-27.csv148 rows, CC BY 4.0Per-city breakdowns are published on each city page, for example Chennai, London and Dubai.
How do I check my own site?
Run the AI Answer Extractability Checker. If you pass the author-and-dates check, you are already ahead of 84% of the professional service businesses we measured across seven countries.
Sources and standards
The checks in this study are grounded in published documentation rather than our own opinion. Structured data definitions follow Schema.org. Crawler directive parsing follows the Robots Exclusion Protocol as specified in RFC 9309. Heading and document-outline expectations follow the HTML Living Standard, and general crawling and indexing guidance follows Google Search Central.
Questions about this study
How many businesses declare an author and a date on their website?
16.2% of the 148 professional service businesses we scanned across 20 cities declare both an author and dates on their homepage. It is the least-met of the checks we report, and six of the 20 cities recorded zero.
Which cities scored best on author and date attribution?
Chennai led at 43%, followed by Bengaluru at 38%, and Kolkata and Ahmedabad at 33%: the top four markets are all Indian. New York, London and Sydney sit at or below 17%, and Lucknow, Indore, Noida, Bhopal, Chandigarh and Dubai recorded 0%. Each city sample is six to nine sites, so read city figures as indicative.
How many checks and countries does the study cover?
Each homepage was scored on nine weighted structural checks, the same model as our AI answer extractability study, and its robots.txt was parsed for 14 AI crawlers. The 20 cities are in seven countries: India, Canada, Singapore, the UK, the USA, Australia and the UAE.
Do Indian or international businesses score higher?
International sites lead on median score, 73 against 64 for the 103 Indian sites. On author and date attribution the two groups are practically identical: 15.6% for the 45 international sites and 16.5% for the Indian ones.
Do local businesses block AI crawlers?
Rarely. 9 of the 148 sites block at least one AI crawler, and 22 name AI user-agents in robots.txt without blocking them. That compares with 20.6% of the world's top 506 domains in our AI crawler access study.
Why is Hyderabad not in the pooled dataset?
Hyderabad was scanned separately, 13 sites, for its own city page. Its rows are not in the pooled 148-site CSV, so it is not ranked against the other 20 cities.
Can I reuse the data?
Yes. All 148 rows are published under CC BY 4.0, with per-check results, opening paragraph length, heading counts and crawler verdicts.