The hosting industry is not ready for AI search. We tested 500 sites.

# The hosting industry is not ready for AI search. We tested 500 sites. Last week I crawled the top 500 hosting company websites in our directory and measured every signal that determines whether an LLM (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Mode) is likely to cite a page when someone asks "what's the best hosting for X." The numbers are worse than I expected. Of the 437 sites that were reachable, **zero scored 6 or 7 out of 7 on a basic AI-readiness checklist**. Only four scored 5. The median host hits 2. To put that in context: this is the most-trafficked category-defining industry of the modern web, and almost nobody is ready for the way buyers are starting to actually shop. ## What I measured Seven signals, each binary, each well-documented as a citation lever in published Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) research: 1. **`llms.txt`** at the root domain. The Jeremy Howard proposal from September 2024 that gives LLMs a structured map of your site, written in their grammar. 2. **JSON-LD structured data** anywhere on the homepage. The single biggest signal AI engines use to extract facts. 3. **`FAQPage` schema** specifically. Every paper on GEO since 2024 ranks this as a top-3 citation driver. 4. **`Organization` schema** with founding-date, sameAs, knowsAbout. The "who are you" signal. 5. **`BreadcrumbList` schema**. Helps AI engines understand site hierarchy without re-crawling everything. 6. **`SpeakableSpecification` schema**. The voice-and-AI surface that lets engines quote your passages verbatim. 7. **Named statistics in body copy**. Specific numbers ("99.9% uptime", "4.8/5 from 12,000 reviews", "20 years hosting"). The most-cited research on Princeton's GEO study showed this single thing lifts citation rate by 30 to 40%. All seven are public, free, and shippable in a weekend. None require buying anything from anyone. ## The headline numbers From a sample of 437 reachable sites in the hosting industry, ordered by HostScore (so we are sampling the *better* end of the long tail, not random small operators): | Signal | Sites with it | Percentage | |---|---|---| | Has any JSON-LD schema | 327 | 74.8% | | Names statistics in body copy | 260 | 59.5% | | Has `Organization` schema | 212 | 48.5% | | Has `BreadcrumbList` schema | 164 | 37.5% | | Has `llms.txt` | 111 | 25.4% | | Mentions AI crawlers in robots.txt | 38 | 8.7% | | Has `FAQPage` schema | 21 | 4.8% | | Has `SpeakableSpecification` schema | 2 | 0.5% | | Has `DefinedTerm` schema | 0 | 0.0% | A few of these deserve their own sentence. **Only 4.8% of hosting sites have FAQPage schema.** This is the lowest-effort, highest-yield AI signal you can ship. Most hosts already have an FAQ on their pricing page. Wrapping it in `

The hosting industry is not ready for AI search. We tested 500 sites.

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