The Crane Index™ · Newsroom
Everything to run the story. The Crane Index™ measures how cleanly a machine can read and represent the leading organisations in an industry. Every figure below is a first-party measurement, free to quote and republish with attribution, and re-runnable live in about a minute.
Headline findings
- The FTSE 100 (measured 6 August 2026). Of Britain's largest companies, 79 were approached and 40 could be read by a machine at all, and not one reached the Strong band of 70 out of 100. The field is led by Whitbread at 58. Budget bought none of them legibility.
- The UK's biggest online retailers (measured 6 August 2026). Of 142 major storefronts, only 79 could be read by a machine, and retail's identity read collapsed to a median of 18. The list is topped not by a giant but by Riverford at 62.
- The programme. Nineteen benchmarks, from the FTSE 100 to seventeen industries, re-scored on the first of each month so the movement becomes public record. The industry benchmarks join from August 2026.
The one-line story is the same in every cohort: the machine-readable web is early, structure decides rank rather than size or spend, and the top of every table is unclaimed territory.
A quote you may use
“The web spent thirty years being optimised for people. Almost none of it has been optimised for the machines that now stand between a business and its customers. The Crane Index™ measures that gap in public, one industry at a time, and the striking part is that budget does not close it. Structure does.”
Nic Crane, founder, The Crane ConsultancyDownloads
Reports refresh on the first of each month. For the full method behind every figure, see the methodology.
Licence and how to cite
Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence: free to quote, chart and republish with attribution. Please cite as:
The Crane Index™, the AI visibility benchmark. The Crane Consultancy. thecraneconsultancy.com/research/
Press contact
For interviews, a specific industry cut, or a figure checked before you publish, write to hello@thecraneconsultancy.com. We are glad to run a bespoke cohort for a story on request.
Questions about the Crane Index
What does the Crane Index measure?
How readable and well-optimised a site is for AI, drawn live from its real pages across three deterministic reads: whether an AI engine can retrieve and cite it, whether an agent can act on it, and whether it is described accurately. Each is scored out of 100, and the composite is the Crane Index.
Why does AI readability matter now?
Because discovery is moving. In 2026, Google reported that its AI Mode in Search had passed a billion monthly users. What an assistant can read of an organisation comes down to the machine-readable layer of its site, the structured data Google Search Central documents.
How often is it re-run?
Every month, on the first, so the movement is a matter of public record rather than a single snapshot. Every constituent is named, ranked and archived, and each score can be re-run live against the site as it stands today.
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
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