We scored 419 Norwegian trade websites. 8% are ready for AI.
Plumbers and electricians from the Brønnøysund Register Centre, with the same 35 tests on every site. This is the third wave, after 447 in July and 449 on 10 September. AI can reach most of these sites. Far fewer make sense to it.
522 businesses on the list, 419 websites scored.
The population comes from the Brønnøysund Register Centre: Norwegian businesses in plumbing and electrical installation with five or more employees. That gave 522 businesses, crawled on 28 September 2026. We excluded 66 unreachable websites. Since wave 3, a website shared by several businesses, or listed under both plumbing and electrical, counts once. There were 37 such duplicates. That left 419 websites: 121 plumbing and 298 electrical.
Scores use methodology v0.4.1. It changes no points or thresholds, only how a few checks read the page. For example, a copyright year ("© 2025") no longer counts as a postal address, and an "Org.nr: NO … MVA" line now counts as an organisation number. Wave 2 used v0.4 and the July wave used v0.2, whose firewall test checked a single crawler, so read the trend below as a rough guide. The crawl covers the automated categories A–F, worth 95 of the 103 points. Category G, what AI assistants say when asked, is tested by hand for each client. Here it scores zero for everyone, so the highest possible score in this dataset is 92.
Most sites sit in the 60s and 70s.
329 of 419 sites score between 60 and 79. They have a good foundation with gaps, and a few targeted fixes would be enough to move them into the AI-ready band. 34 websites (8%) are already there. That's the same share as on 10 September, up from 4% in July. 5 score below 40, which means AI assistants barely see them.
Number of websites per score band (419 websites, 28 September 2026). No website scored below 30; one scored above 89.
AI can get in. It can't tell what it's looking at.
AI crawlers can reach almost every site. But structured data earns a third of its points, and content structure less than half.
Category G (live AI answers) isn't measured in the bulk crawl. See "About the data" above.
The top of the list is the good news: Norwegian trade websites are open to AI. Robots.txt files almost never block AI crawlers (98% of category-A points earned), and the content is overwhelmingly readable without JavaScript (91%). Hardly anyone is locked out on purpose. The exception is firewalls. 18% of websites block at least one of the nine AI crawlers we test. It's almost always a single bot, and almost always a hosting or CDN default that nobody chose.
The bottom of the list is where it goes wrong. Structured data, the machine-readable layer that tells an AI assistant who the business is, what it does and where, earns just 33% of its points. Content structure (question-shaped headings, FAQ sections that match how customers ask) earns 49%. Both have moved by about one point since July. The door is open, but nothing inside has a label.
Eight easy fixes most sites haven't made.
Share of the 419 sites that have each one in place. The last figure is the share that blocks AI at the firewall.
The number that stands out: only 9 of 419 websites (2%) ship FAQ structured data. It's the cheapest way to give AI assistants ready-made answers about your services, area and prices. In July it was 2 sites. Two thirds still don't publish their organisation number in page content, which leaves AI to guess which legal entity owns the website. And 18% block at least one AI crawler at the firewall. In July we tested far fewer crawlers, so there's no fair comparison with the first wave.
Plumbers edge out electricians.
Slowly getting better.
| Wave | Crawled | Method | Scored | Median | AI-ready | Below 40 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wave 1 | July 2026 | v0.2 | 447 | 68 | 4% | 8 |
| Wave 2 | 10 Sept 2026 | v0.4 | 449 | 69 | 8% | 6 |
| Wave 3 | 28 Sept 2026 | v0.4.1 | 419 | 70 | 8% | 5 |
Each wave used a different method version, so compare with care. Waves 1 and 2 counted every business on the list, which means a website shared by several businesses was counted more than once. Wave 3 counts each website once.
The bar is low.
With a median of 70 and only 8% of the market AI-ready, it doesn't take much to stand out. Add structured data, write pages that answer the questions customers ask, and make it obvious which company you are. Do that and AI assistants will notice you well before your competitors catch up. None of it needs a redesign. These are small changes to the site you already have, and each one can be tested.
Free to cite with attribution.
AppSynth, "AI Readiness Benchmark 2026", wave 3, 28 September 2026, methodology v0.4.1, appsynth.eu/benchmarkEarlier waves: July 2026, 447 businesses, methodology v0.2, and 10 September 2026, 449 businesses, v0.4. We run the benchmark again whenever the methodology version changes, so medians stay comparable within a version. Every check category and the scoring model are documented on the methodology page.
Find out what AI sees on your website.
Enter your domain and get a first AI Readiness Score right away.