# Agent-friendly pages — audit reference (May 2026) The next wave of AI search is not summarization — it's **agents** acting on the user's behalf (search, compare, buy, book). Google's AI optimization guide and the linked web.dev article describe three channels through which agents interpret your site: 1. **Screenshots + vision model** — interprets visual hierarchy, button prominence, layout. Slow and token-expensive. 2. **Raw HTML / DOM** — nesting, IDs, classes, data attributes. 3. **The accessibility tree** — the browser-native semantic distillation (roles, names, states). The cleanest signal of the three. Modern agents combine all three. Optimizing for the **accessibility tree** is the single highest-leverage move; if your accessibility tree is broken, no amount of visual polish saves you. **Primary sources:** - Google AI optimization guide: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide - web.dev (referenced from the guide above): article on building agent-friendly websites ## Audit checklist ### 1. Use real interactive elements | Pass | Fail | |---|---| | `