---
title: "Associated Press: the 360 check | Agent Ready Crawlers"
description: "Associated Press on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 20 of 100, grade F. The door, what agents can read and do, the fixes worth most."
canonical: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/apnews-agent-readiness
site: "Agent Ready Crawlers"
last_updated: 2026-11-09
date: 2026-11-09
section: "360 checks"
---

# Associated Press: the 360 check | Agent Ready Crawlers

> Associated Press on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 20 of 100, grade F. The door, what agents can read and do, the fixes worth most.

Source: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/apnews-agent-readiness
Site: Agent Ready Crawlers
Last reviewed: 2026-11-09
Agent endpoints: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/llms.txt (index), https://agentreadycrawlers.com/openapi.json (API), https://agentreadycrawlers.com/mcp (MCP server), https://agentreadycrawlers.com/ask (search)
Access: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/auth.md (no key). Pricing: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/pricing.md (free).

360 check, 9 November 2026

# Associated Press: the 360 agent-readiness check

In short

Associated Press scores 20 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, an F, read 9 November 2026. At the door, bot management challenged ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot. 3 of 62 applicable checks pass; the gap worth most is MCP server / manifest, about 6.3 points by Ora's estimate. The wire that feeds most newsrooms lets its WAF speak for its policy.

Associated Press is the cooperative wire service that licensed its archive to OpenAI in 2023. On 9 November 2026 its public site scored **20 of 100** on [Ora's](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) agent-readiness scan, an F, in Ora's News & Intelligence category. Ora probes a site the way an agent would: it requests pages with the agents' own user agents, reads robots.txt, looks for the files agents read, and tries the API, MCP and payment surfaces. The check below walks through all 132 of its checks for this one domain, grouped the way an agent meets them. Ora's one-line summary: AP News offers a public API with reachable endpoints, but lacks an OpenAPI specification for agent discovery.

## The score

| Layer | Asks | Points | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Discovery | Can agents find and recommend it | 6 of 11 | 55% |
| Access | Can agents read it | 1 of 43 | 2% |
| Usability | Can agents use it | 7 of 42 | 17% |
| Payments | Can agents pay | 0 of 0 | none apply |
| Total | Grade F | 20 of 100 | 20% |

**

3 checks pass, 12 are partial, 47 fail and 70 do not apply to this site. Every check is defined in [Ora's catalog](https://ora.ai/api/checks?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) (read 2026-11-05); the result for each one is in the groups below, with what Ora saw where it said.

## At the door

What the site answers when a request arrives with an agent’s user agent, and what robots.txt says to the crawlers in the Index. 3 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

Agents named in Ora's results, with their Index rows: [ChatGPT-User](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/chatgpt-user/), [OAI-SearchBot](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/oai-searchbot/), [Claude-User](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/claude-user/), [PerplexityBot](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/perplexitybot/), [Perplexity-User](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/crawlers/perplexity-user/).

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Not blocked by bot detection | Partial | 0 of 2 | Bot management challenged ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot. A challenge is an identity check that verified crawlers pass, |
| Agent crawler reachability | Partial | 0 of 2 | Bot management challenged ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot - a challenge is an identity check verified crawlers pass, so reachability is undetermined rather than blocked (ChatGPT-User: challenged, |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy | Partial | 1 of 2 | AI search crawlers: allowed in 1 of 3 checks (3 crawlers on 1 page). AI training crawlers: allowed in 0 of 2 checks (2 crawlers on 1 page), not scored. robots.txt restricts 2/3 evaluated search page/crawler pairs. |
| robots.txt agent-user policy | Partial | 1 of 2 | robots.txt restricts 1/3 evaluated page/crawler pairs. Checked 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page. Restricted: claude-user at https://apnews.com/ (Disallow: /, |
| Web Bot Auth directory | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory found |

## What an agent can read

Whether the text is in the first response, what the site publishes for agents, and how it describes itself to them. 4 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Content without JavaScript | Partial | 0 of 3 | Homepage blocked by WAF/security challenge - content not accessible to agents |
| Sitemap exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No sitemap found |
| llms.txt exists | Fail | 0 of 1 | No llms.txt found at /llms.txt or /.well-known/llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting | Fail | 0 of 2 | No llms.txt found to evaluate quality |
| Markdown agent docs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Missing markdown content negotiation. Homepage returned text/html when probed with Accept: text/markdown (expected text/markdown), and none of the well-known root paths (/llms.md, /auth.md, /agents.md, /developers.md, |
| Markdown URL fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://apnews.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). |
| Agent mode view | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent mode view detected at ?mode=agent (optional) |
| JSON-LD structured data | Partial | 0 of 4 | Homepage blocked by WAF - cannot check structured data |
| Organization schema completeness | Partial | 0 of 2 | Homepage blocked by WAF - cannot check Organization schema |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) | Partial | 0 of 2 | Homepage blocked by WAF - cannot check entity linking |
| Schema type breadth | Partial | 0 of 2 | Homepage blocked by WAF - cannot check schema types |
| Metadata completeness | Partial | 0 of 2 | Homepage blocked by WAF - cannot check metadata |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use | Fail | 0 of 3 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |

## What an agent can do

The surfaces an agent acts on: an API it can find and call, an MCP server, an agent card, a command line. 4 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Public API with reachable endpoints | Pass | 7 of 7 | GraphQL endpoint at https://apnews.com/graphql is reachable; introspection requires authentication (API key / OAuth), which is expected for agent access. Best-of-protocols score: 7/7. |
| Public API/docs linked from homepage | Partial | 0 of 3 | Homepage blocked by WAF - cannot check for docs links |
| OpenAPI spec published | Fail | 0 of 7 | No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727) |
| MCP server / manifest | Fail | 0 of 6 | No MCP server or manifest found |
| MCP well-known discovery | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server URL discovered |
| A2A / agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Agent discovery file | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent discovery file found |
| OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728) |
| auth.md exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| WebMCP support | Fail | 0 of 5 | No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint | Pass | 1 of 1 | NLWeb /ask endpoint exists but requires authentication (HTTP 403, via GET) |
| Rate limit response headers | Fail | 0 of 2 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no header convention documented on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| Idempotency-Key support | Fail | 0 of 3 | GraphQL introspection auth-gated and no idempotency documentation found on GraphQL-tagged pages |
| JSON error responses | Fail | 0 of 4 | API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected) |

## Found and recommended

Whether an assistant can find the company by name, confirm what it is, and see it in the registries agents read. 3 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out.

| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Brand name discoverability | Pass | 3 of 3 | apnews.com ranks #5 for "apnews" (searched your brand name alone: we could not read a product term from your site) |
| Wikipedia / Wikidata entity presence | Partial | 2 of 4 | Wikidata Q40469 (Associated Press) verified - draft a Wikipedia page with cited references to complete knowledge graph coverage |
| Developer resource discoverability | Fail | 0 of 3 | Agent searched for "apnews" developer resources but found nothing relevant |
| ChatGPT app listed | Fail | 0 of 2 | Not found in ChatGPT app directory |
| Listed on skills.sh | Fail | 0 of 1 | No official skills self-published on skills.sh (1 community skill with potential relation to this domain found, but only self-published official skills count) |
| ARD discovery | Fail | 0 of 1 | No /.well-known/ard.json, no same-site rel="ard" link, and no legacy /.well-known/ai-catalog.json |

## The fixes worth most points

Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for Associated Press, with what Ora observed. The wording of each fix is Ora's job; the links go to the check in its catalog.

MCP server / manifest

Fail, 0 of 6, about 6.3 points to gain. Ora saw: No MCP server or manifest found

Developer resource discoverability

Fail, 0 of 3, about 6.1 points to gain. Ora saw: Agent searched for "apnews" developer resources but found nothing relevant

OpenAPI spec published

Fail, 0 of 7, about 5.4 points to gain. Ora saw: No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found

WebMCP support

Fail, 0 of 5, about 5.3 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found

JSON error responses

Fail, 0 of 4, about 4.2 points to gain. Ora saw: API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected)

## Our read

The AP licensed its archive to OpenAI in 2023 and the public site reads like a company that deals by contract: bot management challenged all four of Ora's test agents, the home page sits behind the challenge, and there is no sitemap. robots.txt is less strict than the wall, restricting one of three user-triggered agents and letting one search crawler through. Behind it a GraphQL endpoint at apnews.com/graphql answers but requires a key for introspection, and that is the whole of the developer surface Ora found. The Wikidata item is verified while no Wikipedia page is tied to the domain, which costs Discovery points a wire service of this standing should not be losing. An F at 20 for the cooperative that feeds most other newsrooms is the price of letting the WAF speak for the policy.

## Check your own door

The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at [ora.ai](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) and read the same four layers for your own site, then compare the door with the [Block Rate Report](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/block-rates/) for sites of your rank and kind. Our [guide to testing whether agents can reach your site](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/test-whether-ai-agents-can-reach-your-site/) has the curl commands for a manual check, and the [robots.txt builder](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/robots-builder/) writes a policy file from the Index. Payments did not apply to this site; a site that sells would read that layer against the [vendors at the door](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/vendors/ranking/).

[Scan your own domain on Ora](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)

[All 360 checks](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/). One company a day; corrections to [the corrections page](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/corrections/).

**

The check we recommend

[Ora](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) scans a public URL: 16 Discovery checks and 42 Access checks, read from its catalog on 2026-11-05. Its Journey sends a real agent to the site. [How to run it](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/test-whether-ai-agents-can-reach-your-site/).

**Limits.** Ora reads public URLs only, and what it records as blocked comes from its own network. It says the same scan run twice converges within a couple of points ([Ora's Deep Scan post](https://ora.ai/blog/introducing-deep-scan?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)), and the pages we read give no repeat-scan figures. Its fixing product is behind a waitlist ([Ora's home page](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)).

## Sources

-   [Ora's scan of apnews.com, GET /api/score (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/score/apnews.com?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-09
-   [Ora's check catalog, GET /api/checks (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/checks?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-05
-   [Associated Press home page](https://apnews.com/) read 2026-11-09
-   [How to test whether AI agents can reach your site (this site)](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/test-whether-ai-agents-can-reach-your-site/) read 2026-11-04
-   [Ora: Deep Scan v2 (vendor)](https://ora.ai/blog/introducing-deep-scan?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-05
-   [Ora home page, waitlist (vendor)](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-05

Last reviewed 2026-11-09