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- Talk to AI Like a Pro: Make Your Website Agent-Ready in 2025
Talk to AI Like a Pro: Make Your Website Agent-Ready in 2025
The rise of agentic web means your site needs to speak AI.
Torsten Sandor & Peter Benei
May 23, 2025
In partnership with
Customers are moving away from traditional search. Instead, they ask AI tools for brand and product recommendations — and increasingly, to make purchases directly from those tools.
Some AI assistants already support one-click buying right from the chat window. The rest are rolling it out soon.
If AI doesn’t “see” your site, there goes your revenue.
| The Problem: Websites are built for humans, not AI
We intuitively understand how to navigate websites — how to find products, filter results, and complete a checkout.
AI agents don’t.
They can’t guess which menu leads where. They don’t scroll or skim like we do. They need structured data and accessible pathways, or they just click around blindly, trying to guess their way through.
And if they can’t figure your site out, they’ll skip it.
So how do you make your website agent-ready?
You might think: “That’s a dev thing.” But that’s not good enough in 2025. You don’t need to code — but you do need to understand where the industry is going.
This is a technical shift. Most marketing folks shy away from writing about it.
We don’t.
PS: This is a special edition of AI Ready CMO, entirely dedicated to agentic search.
 Peter Benei | Co-author Consultant at Anywhere Consulting |  Torsten Sandor | Co-author Senior Director of Marketing at Appen |
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Start with something familiar: Website search
Let’s rewind. Think about your own website’s search function.
You’ve seen the frustration: people bouncing after failed search attempts, or your sales team complaining that leads can’t find product specs.
Most website search sucks.
It either relies on outdated tools that return irrelevant results — or it uses over-complicated filters and keyword logic that frustrate the user.
Now imagine an AI agent trying to use your site the same way.
AI agents visit your site like awkward human users. They “click” through your nav, trying to guess what leads where.
It’s brittle. Any change in layout, structure, or naming can break the agent’s flow.
That’s why AI tools prefer a different approach entirely — one where they ask questions and get structured, relevant answers.
Example:
“What blue summer dresses do you have under $100 that are in stock?”
Not all AI tools can handle that today. But very soon, they will.
And unless your content is structured in a way they can read — you’ll be invisible to them.
Ok, but what about AI search plugins?
There are dozens of “AI search” tools you can plug into your site.
They mostly work for humans — not agents.
They're good at searching through static content (like FAQs) but stumble on dynamic content like product catalogs. Even worse: they don’t expose anything to external AI agents.
So while you might think your website is “AI-ready,” it likely isn’t.
The Fix: NLWeb
At Microsoft Build this week (which we will cover in next week’s issue in detail), an open-source tool called NLWeb launched — and it quietly changed everything.
NLWeb is an AI-native layer that solves both major problems:
AI search for users without complex setups
AI agent access without hacks or workarounds
And it does it using standards your website probably already supports:
RSS feeds — to list new content in structured formats
Schema markup — to label the parts of your site that AI cares about
RSS (Really Simple Syndication): A structured feed that lists your latest content. Most CMS platforms already support this, even if you’ve never touched it.
Schema: Structured data that labels your site’s content (product name, price, stock status, etc.) so AI tools can interpret what’s on the page.
Once you connect NLWeb to your site’s RSS and Schema, it can power a full AI interface — one that works across:
Website search
Support bots
Internal tools
External AI agents like ChatGPT or Perplexity
It’s close to plug-and-play. And it’s free.
The Next Layer: AI talking to AI
NLWeb also includes something called Model Context Protocol (MCP) — a standard for how AI agents talk to your content without “using” your site the traditional way.
Instead of guessing through your site layout, the agent asks your content server directly.
“I’m looking for summer dresses under $100 in blue. Anything in stock?”
MCP responds with a structured, accurate answer instantly.
No menus. No guessing. No missed opportunities.
This protocol is already supported by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. It’s quickly becoming the foundation of the agentic web — a web where AI is a first-class visitor.
If your brand isn’t part of it, it won’t get recommended. Or found. Or bought.
What to do next
This isn’t a someday problem. It’s a NOW problem.
» Send this article to your Head of Product and CTO.
AI moves fast, and even technical leaders might have missed Microsoft’s NLWeb announcement. This tool bridges marketing, product, and engineering — everyone needs to be aligned.
» Audit your site for RSS and Schema usage.
Ask your dev team: “Do we expose RSS feeds?” and “Do we use Schema markup on our product pages or content?” If the answer is no or unsure, that’s your first to-do.
» Start small: open a subset of your site to the agentic web.
Pick a slice of your content, like your FAQ, support docs, or one product category, and test what it takes to make it agent-ready using NLWeb. Low risk, high learning.
» Add “agentic web readiness” to your roadmap.
Include it in your next quarterly planning session. This isn’t a fad—it’s a new layer of accessibility like mobile responsiveness was 10 years ago.
» Benchmark competitors.
Are your competitors already speaking “AI”? Check if they’re using Schema (you or someone on your dev team can inspect their HTML) or if any pages are already discoverable by tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT.
This is not about future-proofing. It’s about now-proofing.
You don’t need to rebuild your website. You need to make it readable — not for people, but for the next generation of AI visitors.
Because if AI can’t find you, your customers won’t either.
» If you have any questions on this topic, feel free to hit REPLY.
» Ready to rethink your stack, strategy, or team? We can help.
See you on Tuesday with our regular edition next week,
Torsten and Peter
One more thing!
Make sure to check out our resources for AI-driven marketers
» Want to check how AI-ready is your team and organization?
We have a free assessment that gives you a radar chart on gaps, and tailored recommendations, and it is customized only for marketers and marketing teams.
It is free and takes 5 minutes to take. Do the assessment here.
» Need a roadmap on how to adapt AI into your org?
We have that covered with our AI Roadmap 101 guide. It gives a straightforward journey for CMOs on how to transform their marketing team from AI-aware to AI-ready.
It is free and it is available for subscribers as a PDF. Get it here.
» Not sure which AI tools? We collected, scored, and ranked the best.
We reviewed around 200 AI tools for marketers. We collected them, scored them on 10 different factors, and ranked them. We update the list every month.
It’s not just free but publicly available for everyone here.
» Speaking of tools, how do you source them? We have help there too.
AI tools are new and they need rigorous checks on how to source them. We use a vendor checklist for that (we used this to collect the list of tools as well).
The checklist is available for subscribers in a quick PDF here.
» AI search and brand visibility? We got that covered too.
We wrote a full guide on how to make your content AI-friendly and boost the citations and mentions of your brand by LLMs. To get this guide, click the refer a friend button below. Refer just 1 new subscriber and we will send you the guide