How to build an agent-friendly website, per Google.
Browser agents now fill forms and click buttons for people. Google's web.dev team published what makes a site easy for them to use. Most of it is accessibility you should already have.
An agent-friendly website is one an AI agent can operate without guessing: it can find the button, read the label and finish the task. Google's web.dev guide, updated in April 2026, sets out how to build one.
How AI agents see a page
According to the guide, agents combine three views. Screenshots let a vision model find elements, though Google notes that is slow and expensive. The HTML DOM shows structure, such as which button belongs to which product. The accessibility tree is the browser's summary of roles, names and states, which Google calls a high-fidelity map that ignores visual noise.
Build agent-friendly websites: Google's seven practices
- Avoid ghost elements. Transparent overlays on top of controls can make agents discard them.
- Use semantic HTML. Real
<button>and<a>elements, or a properroleandtabindexif you can't. - Label every input with a
<label for>so its purpose is explicit. - Use CSS cues such as
cursor: pointeron actionable elements. - Meet a minimum size. Controls needed for a task should be visible and larger than 8 square pixels.
- Keep the layout stable. Keep controls like "Add to cart" in the same place across pages.
- Offer WebMCP tools to agents that support them.
The guide also calls complex hover states functionally broken for agents. If an action only appears on hover, give it a visible alternative.
What about WebMCP?
WebMCP is a proposed standard that lets a page declare tools, such as "search products" or "book a table", in JavaScript or HTML. Google says it is in active development, available to try in Chrome through an origin trial, and suggests asking the user to confirm sensitive actions like purchases. See WebMCP explained.
How to test an agent-friendly website
- Open Chrome DevTools and inspect the accessibility tree for your key flows: sign-up, pricing, checkout, contact.
- Run the agent form checker on your forms and the agent pricing checker on your pricing page.
- Check your server logs for agent traffic with the AI agent log analyzer.
This is the practical core of assistive agent optimization. We audit it as part of our AAO service.
Questions people ask
What is an agent-friendly website?
A site that AI browser agents can read and operate reliably, because its controls are semantic, labelled, visible and stable across pages.
How do AI agents read a website?
Google describes three views: screenshots read by a vision model, the HTML DOM, and the browser's accessibility tree. Modern agents combine them.
Does making a site agent-friendly hurt human users?
No. Google says everything it suggests to make a site agent-ready also makes it better for humans; most of it is standard accessibility.
Do I need WebMCP to be agent-friendly?
No. WebMCP is experimental. Semantic HTML, labelled inputs and stable layouts matter first.
Want this mapped onto your product?
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