What's your Crane Index?
One score for how legible your business is to AI. Enter your URL and we run all three reads at once, whether AI can find and cite you, whether an agent can act on you, and whether a machine can confirm who you are, then combine them into a single Crane Index™.
One URL · all three reads · one score
Free · No sign-up · Up to three sites a dayWe could not read that site
A page an automated reader cannot open is usually a page AI engines and agents cannot open either, which is itself a finding. Speak with Nic and we will help you open the door.
thecraneconsultancy.com/crane-index-scan
All three reads, measured live · retrieval, execution and representation
Three reads, one number.
As AI shifts from answering questions to taking actions, being legible to the machine splits into three. Your Crane Index™ is the composite of all three, measured live on your own page. Each has its own scanner if you want the full itemised detail.
Retrieval
Can an AI engine find, read and cite you? The entity it can trust, the structured data it can parse, the answers it can lift. The AI Search Readiness scanner →
Execution
Can an automated agent act on your site? Whether it is admitted, and whether the pages give it a clean surface to operate on. The Agent Readiness scanner →
Representation
Can a machine confirm from your own pages who you are? Identity, disambiguation, credentialed authorship and rights. The Brand Representation scanner →
Legible to the machine is the new front page.
AI answers reach buyers at the point of decision, and the brands a model can already read and trust are the ones it surfaces. Most businesses have never measured whether AI can see them at all. We hold the Index to the whole market too: our Crane Index™ Research ran the FTSE 100 and the UK's biggest online retailers through the same three reads, and nearly half could not be read by a machine at all.
See what the Index measures across the market. Explore the research →
Crane Index questions.
What is the Crane Index?
A single score out of 100 for how legible your site is to AI, built from three live reads: whether AI can retrieve and cite you, whether an agent can act on you, and whether a machine can confirm who you are. One number tells you where you stand.
How is it worked out?
We read your live page server-side the way a model or agent does, score it on all three reads, and take the mean. Every read is deterministic, and the composite is only reported when all three complete, never estimated.
What is a good Crane Index?
Seventy or above means a machine can read you well. In our research, nearly half of the sites measured could not be read by a machine at all, so a strong score is rarer than most boards assume.
Is it free, and do you store my results?
Free, up to three different sites a day, re-scannable as often as you like. There is no sign-up and nothing is kept against your URL beyond an anonymised log.
Can I see the detail behind each read?
Yes. Each read has its own scanner that itemises every check and what to change. Your result links straight through to all three, pre-filled with your URL.
A scanner finds the obvious. The audit finds the rest.
Your Crane Index reads what is visible on a single page. A forensic AI visibility audit goes deeper across all three layers: the schema and entity work that makes you retrievable and identifiable, the surface an agent needs, and the authority signals that keep your story in your own words. One senior practitioner holds the whole engagement.
Speak with NicPrefer to run one read at a time? Start with AI Search Readiness, or see the whole AI Visibility suite.
The shift, on the record
The move to AI answers is documented, not a hunch. In 2026, Google reported that its AI Mode in Search had passed a billion monthly users. What those users can be shown of you comes down to the machine-readable layer of your site, the structured data Google Search Central documents. The question is no longer whether a buyer asks an AI about your market, but whether it can read you, and represent you accurately, when they do.
The senior read,
once a week.
Most marketing newsletters are noise on a schedule. This is not that. Once a week I send a short, considered read on the shifts that actually change what you should do, across the AI shift, PPC, technical SEO and analytics. Filtered, weighted and signed off by me before it goes out. The judgement is mine, and now you can hear every edition in my own voice.
Nic CraneFounder, The Crane Consultancy
Join readers of The Crane Standard.