The Crane Index™ · Research
The site leading each UK industry for AI readability, measured monthly. One name per benchmark: the highest Crane Index™ composite of every readable site in its field, re-measured on the first of each month, and verifiable live on the same scanners that scored it.
19 benchmarks. 19 authorities.
Ranked by composite score, so the leader of the whole field comes first. Each name links its full industry benchmark, and every score can be checked live on the same scanners that set it, exactly as published.
A monthly public record.
Every edition is archived on the date it was measured, so the names above are a series, not a snapshot.
September 2026 (current edition)·August 2026
Read once, watched daily, or measured as a field of your own.
Every score in this research comes from the same three deterministic reads: can AI search find you, can an agent act on you, can a machine confirm who you are. The instrument behind it is available at three depths.
Free
all three scanners, on demand- All three scanners on every scan: can AI search find you, can an agent act on you, can a machine confirm who you are. The same three reads as this research.
- Up to three different sites a day; re-scan any one of them as often as you like while you make changes.
- A dated score for the day you ran it.
£1,600
per domain, per year, ex VAT- Your competitive field, watched every morning: the competitors you choose read daily from their public pages, on exactly the same basis as your own, and we flag a movement only once it holds beyond a set band, so you hear about the shifts that matter and not the day-to-day noise
- Your domain read daily on all three scanners, for twelve months
- The full dated archive kept, so every rise and fall is a matter of record
- Your own dashboard login, your score beside your rivals on one screen, every read
Every watched domain, yours and the competitors you name, is approached daily. A reading depends on the site admitting our scanner: a day a domain blocks or fails to serve it is recorded as missing, never estimated. If your own domain is the one refusing, we tell you exactly what to unblock.
A field of your own
custom cohort, by arrangement- A private benchmark of the brands you name: your portfolio, your market, your dealer or franchise network
- Multi-brand: every domain in the group measured and archived on the same three reads
- The same deterministic methodology as the public programme, reported to your board on your cadence
Named. Measured. Re-run.
Each industry authority is simply the top of its Crane Index™ benchmark: the same three deterministic reads, can AI search find you, can an agent act on you, can a machine confirm who you are, applied to every constituent, with unreadable sites reported as unmeasured rather than scored. Read the full methodology, or run the free scanners against your own site.
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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