Research and Press

Research and Press

The State of AI Visibility 2026

Visibility Mesh measures how legible a website is to AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Our first public study scanned 216 live Shopify storefronts and scored how readable each one is to those systems.

In the news

The Internet Has a New Gatekeeper: Can AI Understand Your Business Well Enough to Recommend It?

Published by Things To Do in Dubai on , written by Omar Alhassan, and also featured on MSN. The article discusses the Visibility Mesh study of 216 live Shopify storefronts and the five gates (Find, Read, Follow, Quote and Trust) that decide whether an AI assistant can recommend a business.

This is independent coverage of our work. We did not write it.

Read the article at Things To Do in Dubai · Read it on MSN · The research behind it · The Five Gates method

Key findings

  • The median store scored 46 out of 100 on the AI Visibility Score.
  • Two thirds of stores scored below 50.
  • Only 27 of the 216 stores, one in eight or 12.5 percent, were fully legible to AI. Each of them passed all five measured layers.
  • The single highest scoring store of 216 reached just 71. None reached the top maturity band.
  • The product and brand data check was the weakest layer, and 72 percent of stores failed it. It covers the machine readable product and brand data that AI systems read.
These are not bad stores. They are invisible ones. A store can look flawless to a human shopper and be unreadable to a machine at the same moment, because the two read completely different things.

Margareta Petrovic, Founder of Visibility Mesh

Read the full study

State of AI Visibility 2026, the full research report

Methodology in brief

All scores come from live scans, not cached data. Of 229 stores scanned, 13 were automatically diagnosed as unreadable and excluded from scoring rather than counted as zeros. Visibility Mesh scores are repeatable but not identical: when we scan the same unchanged store twice, the two results often land within about 2 points of each other. Findings are a point in time snapshot. Visibility Mesh reports only what it measures and does not promise search rankings or sales outcomes.

The living benchmark

The 2026 study above is frozen, so its published figures never move. Behind it runs a benchmark that keeps growing as we scan. The per site scores are published as an open dataset, AI Legibility Scores (596 websites, CSV on GitHub, CC BY 4.0, refreshed with each release). These are its populations, stated separately, because they are not interchangeable and a number is only as good as the population it came from. All figures measured November 8, 2026.

The 596 websites in the open dataset are the websites published in that file as of its generated date, September 21, 2026, so that figure is a dated snapshot, while the scored to date count and the current benchmark count on this page describe the living benchmark as of the measurement date stated above.

  • 995 websites scored to date. Every distinct site our engine has completed a scored scan of, across all versions of the methodology. Our own sites and development stores are excluded from every figure on this page.
  • 798 websites in the live benchmark. The subset scored on the current methodology version, counted once each at their latest score. It mixes our research scans with scans that merchants ran through our Shopify app and a few deeper paid scans. This population spans ecommerce and non ecommerce websites.
  • 451 of those 798 are online stores, and 381 of the stores are on Shopify, by platform detected during the scan rather than assumed. Four sites could not be classified and are counted only in the 798.
  • 216 Shopify storefronts in the published study. The frozen press cohort above, and a separate population from the 381 detected stores in the live benchmark.
  • 44.5 median score across the whole 798. 65 percent score below 50, and the top 10 percent start at 58.8. The online store sub-cohort runs slightly lower: a median of 41.6, with 73 percent below 50.
  • Nothing in the Leading band. The highest any site in the benchmark has reached is 74. Leading starts at 80.

We name the population next to every number because the same engine produces all of them, and an ecommerce median and an all web median are different claims. Where we cannot separate a population cleanly, we say so rather than pick the flattering label.

Methodology, versions and limits

Every score comes from a live automated scan of public pages across five categories: whether AI can find a site, read it, follow it, quote it and trust it. The Visibility Mesh scan loads each page in a browser, with a plain fetch as a fallback, and checks the robots.txt rules for each crawler of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity separately. The total is the share of available points, from 0 to 100. The five metrics are specified in the AI Legibility Framework v1.0, and the four bands in the AI Visibility Maturity Model.

The live benchmark counts only sites scored on the current methodology version, one latest score per site. Each published study was measured once, on its own date and its own population, and is not revised when the method changes. A study figure and a benchmark figure are two separate measurements, so read them side by side rather than as a trend.

A score measures legibility: what AI systems can read and trust on public pages at the time of the scan. It does not measure rankings, traffic, or how often an assistant names a site, and it is not a promise of any of them. We publish our own score under the same method.

Published research

Independent product verification

The Visibility Mesh Shopify app is listed on the Shopify App Store. The listing names Amaretta LLC as the developer and shows that the app launched on July 10, 2026. Merchant ratings and reviews are collected and published by Shopify on that listing, so the listing is the source for any rating we quote, and its figures change as new reviews arrive. A listing on the Shopify App Store is not an endorsement by Shopify.

Founder columns

Margareta Petrovic, the founder of Visibility Mesh, writes for the Forbes Business Council on artificial intelligence, trust, and how businesses are read by the systems that now recommend them. These are member contributed columns that she wrote, not Forbes newsroom coverage of Visibility Mesh. Her background is on her author page and her Forbes Business Council profile.

Press release

Other references

OngoingAI, an independent Shopify app intelligence site, lists the Visibility Mesh app with its developer, pricing, rating and category positions. OngoingAI tracks those figures daily, so they change often, and its listing is not a review or an endorsement.

About Visibility Mesh

Visibility Mesh gives organizations a single AI Visibility Score out of 100, the specific gaps, and the steps to fix them. Visibility Mesh is a brand of Amaretta LLC, which operates this website, the web application and the Shopify app. Margareta Petrovic is the founder.

Media contact

Margareta Petrovic, Founder
press@visibilitymesh.com
High resolution charts and media assets available on request.

Get your own score

Any website owner can get a free AI Visibility Score at visibilitymesh.com.

Visibility Mesh is also listed on

Visibility Mesh has public profiles on the following sites, and each link below opens the profile itself.