US Counties
counties
Every US county and county equivalent.
Median score
33
across 3016 sites
Middle half
28–33
spread around the median
Full range
13–74
lowest to highest
Gated
2636 of 3016
block AI crawlers outright
Middle of 14 cohorts. All cohorts 50 · best cohort 58.
Where this list came from
The source, and how we filtered it
| Source | US counties and county equivalents, Census Vintage 2025, US Census Bureau, with CISA and Wikidata (2025-vintage) |
|---|---|
| License | No restriction on the combined list. The roster is a work of the US federal government and carries no copyright, the CISA .gov registry is public domain, and Wikidata is CC0 1.0 Universal; the cohort goes out under the Census's CC BY-SA 4.0 like the rest. |
| How we filtered it | The roster is every row of the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates (sub-est2025.csv) with SUMLEV 050, which is 3,144 counties and county equivalents. Each county's address was looked up in the CISA .gov registry first, then in Wikidata (P856, official website, joined on the FIPS code in P882) where the registry had nothing, then resolved by hand for the remainder; every hand-resolved row was confirmed by loading the site. 57 rows carry no address, each with the reason: 27 county equivalents with no general-purpose county government, 6 South Dakota counties that maintain no website, and 24 that are unresolved and want a manual pass. |
| Built | 2026-10-11 |
The filtering is ours and is disclosed as ours. The source published a list; the decision about which rows of it belong in a cohort was a judgment call, and it is written down so somebody can disagree with it.
Distribution
Where the 3016 sites land
| Grade | Share of the cohort | Sites | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adequate | 110 | 3.6% | |
| Not ready | 2507 | 83.1% | |
| Weak | 399 | 13.2% |
By dimension
What the cohort earns, dimension by dimension
The mean share of each dimension’s available points that this cohort earned. Low here means the whole sector is weak on it, not that one site dragged an average down. The per-site spread is in the dataset.
| Dimension | Mean share earned | Mean |
|---|---|---|
| #1 · Reach
These parameters determine the fundamental ease of access that AI has to your site information. |
50% | |
| #2 · Read
AI generally turns off JavaScript. Does your site information survive without it? |
25% | |
| #3 · Understand
Does a machine know who and what you are? |
20% | |
| #4 · Act
Sitemaps, redirects, 404s, licensing terms, and not wasting the crawl budget. |
67% |
How much of each site we read
The cap is 32 URLs and it is a ceiling, not a promise. A portal whose every link points at a different host yields one page; a university yields the full sample. The median here is 1, the range 1–32, published so that "we sampled 32 URLs per site" cannot become a claim the data does not support.
93 sites in this cohort served a certificate we could not verify. They were read anyway and scored normally, because reporting no response for a site every browser loads would describe our TLS stack rather than the site, and each one carries the finding in its row.
Where this cohort fails
12 tests almost nobody in this cohort passes
Universal — nobody passes these
| Test | What it asks | Failing | Of | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EXT-11 | Have you marked the part of a page that answers a spoken question? | 3016 | 0 | |
| EXT-12 | Do you tell search engines the moment a page changes? | 3016 | 0 | |
| EXT-14 | Does your site offer its actions to AI browsers as tools? | 2169 | 0 | |
| EXT-16 | Do you publish a card or a skills list for the agents you run? | 3016 | 0 | |
| EXT-17 | Do you list your agents in your domain's DNS records? | 2655 | 0 | |
| EXT-18 | Do you tell AI shoppers how they can pay? | 7 | 0 | |
| EXT-2 | Do you list your APIs and agent tools where agents look for them? | 72 | 0 | |
| EXT-7 | If you run real question-and-answer pages, are they marked as such? | 22 | 0 | |
| RED-10 | Do you offer a plain-text (Markdown) copy of your pages? | 357 | 2 | |
| RED-12 | If a machine asks for Markdown, does your site give it? | 3016 | 2 | |
| UND-2 | Does your site use the page labels that search engines still read for what you publish? | 3016 | 3 | |
| UND-9 | If a page is behind a paywall, does it say so? | 1 | 2 |
Near-universal — 95% and above
| Test | What it asks | Failing | Of | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UND-1 | Does your site say clearly who you are? | 3016 | 2 | |
| UND-10 | Does your page code link to your official profiles elsewhere? | 3016 | 2 | |
| PST-2 | Have you posted a Content Signals statement about what AI may do with your content? | 3016 | 0 | |
| EXT-1 | Do you publish an llms.txt file for coding assistants? | 3016 | 0 | |
| RED-5 | Do your PDFs and images have their own rules for search and quoting? | 357 | 1 | |
| MSR-7 | Are you set up in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and do you read their AI reports? | 3016 | 0 | |
| UND-6 | Are your published and updated dates honest and visible? | 3016 | 6 | |
| EXT-13 | Can an assistant ask your site a question directly? | 3016 | 0 | |
| PST-4 | Have you reserved your text and data mining rights in a form machines can read? | 3016 | 0 | |
| RCH-3 | Does each page say which web address is the real one? | 3016 | 2 | |
| EXT-4 | Can an AI assistant connect to your site as a tool? | 3016 | 0 | |
| EXT-5 | Is your page code one connected description of your organization? | 3016 | 0 | |
| UND-5 | Does the author label in your page code point to that person? | 287 | 1 | |
| RED-13 | Is the page built from real page parts, like header, main and navigation? | 3016 | 1 |
Common — 90 to 95%
Coral bars mark tests worth 2 points or more, the failures that actually move a score.
Every site
Every 3,144, named, with a report for each
Whether or not it has been scanned. Rows with no website on record, sites that were unreachable and sites that turned us away stay in the table with the reason on them, and none of them enters an average: dropping them would shrink the population to the part that was easy to measure. A few points between two neighbors is noise. The box filters every row in the cohort, not only the page you are on; click a header to sort the rows on this page by name or by score.
Showing 3,101–3,144 of 3,144 · page 32 of 32
| Site | Score | Gated | Pages read | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Racine County, Wisconsin racinecounty.govregistered as Racine County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Richland County, Wisconsin richlandcountywi.govregistered as Richland County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Rock County, Wisconsin rockcountywi.govregistered as County of Rock in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Rusk County, Wisconsin ruskcountywi.govregistered as Rusk County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| St. Croix County, Wisconsin sccwi.govregistered as St. Croix County Wisconsin in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Sauk County, Wisconsin saukcountywi.govregistered as Sauk County MIS in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Sawyer County, Wisconsin sawyercounty.govregistered as Sawyer County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Shawano County, Wisconsin shawanocountywi.govregistered as Shawano County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Sheboygan County, Wisconsin sheboygancountywi.govregistered as Sheboygan County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Taylor County, Wisconsin co.taylor.wi.usweb address from Wikidata (P856), not the .gov registry | 36 | Gated | 23 | |
| Trempealeau County, Wisconsin trempcountywi.govregistered as Trempealeau County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Vernon County, Wisconsin vernoncountywi.govregistered as Vernon County in the .gov registry; this is the elections office's site, not the county's main site | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Vilas County, Wisconsin vilascountywi.govregistered as Vilas County Wisconsin in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Walworth County, Wisconsin walcowi.govregistered as Walworth County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Washburn County, Wisconsin co.washburn.wi.usblockedweb address from Wikidata (P856), not the .gov registry; not measured: HTTP 403 | — | No | — | |
| Washington County, Wisconsin washcowi.govregistered as Washington County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Waukesha County, Wisconsin waukeshacounty.govregistered as Waukesha County Government in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Waupaca County, Wisconsin waupacacounty-wi.govregistered as Waupaca County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Waushara County, Wisconsin wausharacountywi.govregistered as Waushara County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Winnebago County, Wisconsin winnebagocountywi.govregistered as Winnebago County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Wood County, Wisconsin woodcountywi.govregistered as County of Wood in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Albany County, Wyoming albanycountywy.govregistered as Albany County Government in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Big Horn County, Wyoming bighorncountywy.govregistered as Big Horn County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Campbell County, Wyoming campbellcountywy.govregistered as Campbell County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Carbon County, Wyoming carboncountywy.govregistered as Carbon County, WY in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Converse County, Wyoming conversecountywy.govregistered as Converse County in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Crook County, Wyoming crookcounty.wy.govweb address from Wikidata (P856), not the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Fremont County, Wyoming fremontcountywy.govregistered as Fremont County Government in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Goshen County, Wyoming goshencountywy.govregistered as County of Goshen in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Hot Springs County, Wyoming hotspringscountywy.govregistered as Hot Springs County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Johnson County, Wyoming johnsoncowy.govregistered as Johnson County Wyoming in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Laramie County, Wyoming laramiecountywy.govregistered as Laramie County Government in the .gov registry | 33 | Gated | 1 | |
| Lincoln County, Wyoming lincolncountywy.govregistered as Lincoln County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Natrona County, Wyoming natronacounty-wy.govregistered as Natrona County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Niobrara County, Wyoming niobraracounty.orgweb address from Wikidata (P856), not the .gov registry | 62 | No | 1 | |
| Park County, Wyoming parkcounty-wy.govregistered as Park County Government in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Platte County, Wyoming plattecountywyoming.comweb address from Wikidata (P856), not the .gov registry | 46 | No | 32 | |
| Sheridan County, Wyoming sheridancountywy.govregistered as Sheridan County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Sublette County, Wyoming sublettecountywy.govregistered as Sublette County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Sweetwater County, Wyoming sweetwatercountywy.govregistered as Sweetwater County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Teton County, Wyoming tetoncountywy.govregistered as Teton County Wyoming Government in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Uinta County, Wyoming uintacountywy.govregistered as Uinta County Wyoming in the .gov registry; this is the elections office's site, not the county's main site | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Washakie County, Wyoming washakiecountywy.govregistered as Washakie County in the .gov registry | 28 | Gated | 1 | |
| Weston County, Wyoming westongov.comweb address from Wikidata (P856), not the .gov registry | 57 | No | 32 |
Scores are for the population, not for ranking two named sites against each other. A few points between neighbors is noise. See what these numbers can and cannot support. Data: sites.csv · checks.csv · summary.json