AI Visibility
AI Visibility Statistics 2026: What We Found Auditing Real Business Websites
Last updated: August 2026. Every number on this page we measured ourselves. No borrowed stats, no estimates. Each figure lists its sample size, so you can trust it and cite it. We update this page every year and keep older figures further down as history.
Specularis audits whether AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI) can actually find, read, and cite a business website. These are the results across the markets we’ve studied so far.
The headline numbers (measured by Specularis)
- 44% of Tampa real estate websites are effectively invisible to AI answer engines. (n=45, Specularis, 2026)
- 63% of Miami real estate websites are effectively invisible to AI answer engines. (n=51, Specularis, 2026)
- 24% of Tampa real estate websites actively block GPTBot, the crawler that feeds ChatGPT. (n=45, Specularis, 2026)
- 25% of Miami real estate websites actively block GPTBot. (n=51, Specularis, 2026)
- 42% of Tampa real estate websites publish no structured data at all. (n=45, Specularis, 2026)
- 57% of Miami real estate websites publish no structured data at all. (n=51, Specularis, 2026)
- Only 11% of Tampa real estate websites use RealEstateAgent schema. (n=45, Specularis, 2026)
- Only 8% of Miami real estate websites use RealEstateAgent schema. (n=51, Specularis, 2026)
- 13% of Tampa and 18% of Miami real estate websites have an llms.txt file. (n=45 / n=51, Specularis, 2026)
Crawler access: can AI even read the site?
- A quarter of real estate websites in both markets block GPTBot: 24% in Tampa (n=45) and 25% in Miami (n=51). The rate is almost identical across two separate markets, which points to an industry-wide default rather than a local quirk. (Specularis, 2026)
- Most of these blocks weren’t a choice. They come from a default in a security product or CDN, often Cloudflare, not a decision the business made. (Specularis, 2026)
- Blocking AI crawlers does nothing for security. Bad bots ignore robots.txt. Only the well-behaved AI crawlers obey it. (Specularis analysis, 2026)
Identity: can AI tell what the business is?
- 42% of Tampa sites and 57% of Miami sites publish zero structured data, so AI has no reliable way to tell what the business is. (n=45 / n=51, Specularis, 2026)
- Fewer than 1 in 8 use industry-specific schema: 11% in Tampa and 8% in Miami use RealEstateAgent schema. (Specularis, 2026)
Emerging signals
- Adoption of the new llms.txt standard is still in the low teens: 13% in Tampa and 18% in Miami. (Specularis, 2026)
- Only about a quarter of sites’ robots.txt files mention AI crawlers at all (27% in Tampa). (n=45, Specularis, 2026)
What “fixed” looks like
- A Miami brokerage went from an AI-visibility score of 14/100 to 70/100 after crawler access, schema, and off-site work. (Specularis client, 2026)
- Our own website scored 20/100 before we fixed it. It’s at 74/100 and climbing now, audited monthly and published on our site. (Specularis, 2026)
Methodology
We pull every business of a given type from Google Maps in a market. That’s a neutral sample, with no pre-filtering for AI visibility. We dedupe to unique domains, then request each homepage as OpenAI’s GPTBot user-agent. A 403 or a refused connection, while a normal browser gets through, counts as blocked. We also check the page source for structured data. Sites that are down for every user agent, including a normal browser, are excluded as broken. We do not count those as blocking AI.
Full methodology and the raw CSVs are published with each market study:
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FAQ
What percentage of businesses are invisible to AI?
In our audits of real estate websites, 44% in Tampa (n=45) and 63% in Miami (n=51) were effectively invisible to AI answer engines. That means they either block the AI crawler or publish nothing a machine can use to identify them. (Specularis, 2026)
How many websites block ChatGPT's crawler?
About a quarter of the real estate websites we audited block GPTBot: 24% in Tampa and 25% in Miami. Most did not do it on purpose. It's usually a default security setting. (Specularis, 2026)
Where do these statistics come from?
All figures are original data measured by Specularis with a repeatable method: sample from Google Maps, request each homepage as GPTBot, and check for structured data. Raw CSVs are published with each study.
How often is this page updated?
Once a year. We re-run the audits, add new markets, and update the figures. Older numbers stay lower on the page as history.
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