--- title: "The Times of India: the 360 check | Agent Ready Crawlers" description: "The Times of India on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 66 of 100, grade C. The door, what agents can read and do, the fixes worth most." canonical: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/timesofindia-agent-readiness site: "Agent Ready Crawlers" last_updated: 2026-11-09 date: 2026-11-09 section: "360 checks" --- # The Times of India: the 360 check | Agent Ready Crawlers > The Times of India on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 66 of 100, grade C. The door, what agents can read and do, the fixes worth most. Source: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/blog/timesofindia-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 # The Times of India: the 360 agent-readiness check In short The Times of India scores 66 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a C, read 9 November 2026. At the door, site accessible to 4 agent user-agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot). 20 of 59 applicable checks pass; the gap worth most is WebMCP support. Every door open and 33,563 characters of page, with no identity in the JSON-LD. The Times of India is the largest-circulation English-language daily in the world. On 9 November 2026 its public site scored **66 of 100** on [Ora's](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) agent-readiness scan, a C. 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: Times of India offers strong discovery and crawlable content, but lacks WebMCP support for agents to interact with the site. ## The score | Layer | Asks | Points | Share | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Discovery | Can agents find and recommend it | 10 of 11 | 91% | | Access | Can agents read it | 23 of 38 | 61% | | Usability | Can agents use it | 8 of 14 | 57% | | Payments | Can agents pay | 0 of 0 | none apply | | Total | Grade C | 66 of 100 | 66% | ** 20 checks pass, 3 are partial, 36 fail and 73 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. 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 | Pass | 2 of 2 | Site accessible to 4 agent user-agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot). | | Agent crawler reachability | Pass | 2 of 2 | Reachable to every agent we tested - ChatGPT-User: reachable, OAI-SearchBot: reachable, Claude-User: reachable, PerplexityBot: reachable | | robots.txt AI crawler policy | Pass | 2 of 2 | AI search crawlers: allowed in 18 of 18 checks (3 crawlers on 6 pages). AI training crawlers: allowed in 12 of 12 checks (2 crawlers on 6 pages), not scored. | | robots.txt agent-user policy | Pass | 2 of 2 | No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/. Declared policy only; | | Content behind auth | Pass | 2 of 2 | All 5 sampled pages are publicly readable (5 with substantive content) | | Homepage not hidden from search | Pass | 1 of 1 | No noindex on the homepage: no robots, googlebot or bingbot meta tag and no X-Robots-Tag header hides it from search. | | Redirect hygiene | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pages agents land on serve real content, not meta-refresh or JavaScript-only redirect stubs that strand non-JS agents | | 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. 1 check in this group does not apply to this site and is left out. | Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Content without JavaScript | Pass | 3 of 3 | Homepage: 33563 chars, semantic headings (1 H1 + 34 H2s + 2 H3s), 8.9% content ratio. 5 of 5 sampled inner pages have text without JavaScript. | | Page token budget | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 6 measured pages fit an agent context budget (largest ~8K tokens) | | Sitemap exists | Pass | 2 of 2 | Valid sitemap found at https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/sitemap/today with 780 entries | | Sitemap freshness (lastmod) | Pass | 1 of 1 | Dates in your sitemap tell agents what changed and when, so they reread fresh pages instead of guessing. We check lastmod dates parse and the newest is recent. | | llms.txt exists | Pass | 1 of 1 | Found the llms.txt at https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/llms.txt. | | llms.txt formatting | Partial | 1 of 2 | The llms.txt starts with a heading and has 70 lines, but it contains no markdown links. | | 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://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). | | Bot-UA markdown serving | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) receives markdown when requesting HTML. Optional: detect AI-bot UAs server-side and serve them a markdown representation directly. | | Agent mode view | Fail | 0 of 2 | ?mode=agent returns same content as homepage (no dedicated agent view) | | JSON-LD structured data | Partial | 1 of 4 | JSON-LD found (1 block(s)) but no identity type - use SoftwareApplication, Product, Organization, Person, or Article so agents can tell what this site is | | Organization schema completeness | Fail | 0 of 2 | No Organization type found in JSON-LD | | JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No sameAs entity linking in JSON-LD - agents cannot disambiguate your brand | | Schema type breadth | Fail | 0 of 2 | No extended schema types found - AI can only answer basic questions about this entity | | Metadata completeness | Pass | 2 of 2 | All metadata signals present: canonical URL, lang="en", og:image, og:type | | 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. 11 checks in this group do not apply to this site and are left out. | Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | API catalog (RFC 9727) | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /.well-known/api-catalog found (RFC 9727) | | 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 (scanned 1 of 1 same-origin script bundle(s) for modelContext registrations) | | NLWeb /ask endpoint | Fail | 0 of 1 | No NLWeb-conformant /ask endpoint found via GET or POST | ## Found and recommended Whether an assistant can find the company by name, confirm what it is, and see it in the registries agents read. 4 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 | timesofindia.indiatimes.com ranks #2 for "The Times of India News" and #3 for "The Times of India US News" | | Wikipedia / Wikidata entity presence | Pass | 4 of 4 | Wikipedia "Indiatimes shopping" and Wikidata Q46807 both verified - domain confirmed on both sources | | 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 | | 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 The Times of India, with what Ora observed. The wording of each fix is Ora's job; the links go to the check in its catalog. WebMCP support Fail, 0 of 5, about 15.9 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found (scanned 1 of 1 same-origin script bundle(s) for modelContext registrations) Agent auth discovery metadata Fail, 0 of 3, about 3.4 points to gain. Ora saw: Neither /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource nor /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server found. Probed: timesofindia.indiatimes.com, api.timesofindia.indiatimes.com. Agent-friendly 404s Partial, 1 of 2, about 3.2 points to gain. Ora saw: The nonexistent path https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/\_\_ora-404-probe-0fsasr6c correctly returns HTTP 404. Partial credit: no Markdown error body was detected. Agent instruction / when-to-use Fail, 0 of 3, about 2.6 points to gain. Ora saw: No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found JSON-LD structured data Partial, 1 of 4, about 2.6 points to gain. Ora saw: JSON-LD found (1 block(s)) but no identity type - use SoftwareApplication, Product, Organization, Person, or Article so agents can tell what this site is ## Our read The Times of India opens every door the checklist knocks on. All four test agents reached the home page, robots.txt allows the search and training crawlers in every one of 30 checks across six pages and states no restriction on the user-triggered agents, and five of five sampled pages read with substantive text. The home page gives 33,563 characters at an 8.9 percent text ratio with one H1 and 34 H2s, an llms.txt sits at timesofindia.indiatimes.com/llms.txt, and the sitemap for the day lists 780 entries. The JSON-LD block has no identity type, which is the one reading row left open. The act layer is empty, as for most newspapers, so the Usability layer has a maximum of 14 and the WebMCP estimate of 15.9 points means little. The Wikipedia match landed on Indiatimes shopping rather than the paper, and the domain ranks second for its own news term. An Organization block would finish the reading side. ## 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 timesofindia.indiatimes.com, GET /api/score (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/score/timesofindia.indiatimes.com?utm_source=agentreadycrawlers.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) read 2026-11-09 - [Ora's scoring rules, version 2 (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/ranker/releases/2/rules?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 - [The Times of India home page](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/us) 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