Research — Periodic Table of Digital Authority

Published — data collected, report available

In Progress — instrument exists, work underway

Planned — methodology defined, no execution date

Future — logical extension, no commitment

Flagship Research

The cross-market synthesis

Study 01 · Cross-MarketPublished17 June 2026 · v1.2

AI Crawler Access Across Four Markets: Policy, Infrastructure and Scale

The synthesis of the four country volumes on one frozen instrument. Headline rates, the policy/infrastructure mechanism split (the US denies at the edge; Great Britain and Singapore do not respond), the Googlebot-parity finding, and the organisational-scale effect, including Singapore's inversion of it.
Read the analysis →
40.2%
pooled block rate
2,239
domains approached
4
markets
21
AI crawlers tested

Published Country Volumes

Study 01 — AI Crawler Access, by market

US Vol 1Published17 June 2026 · v1.2

AI Crawler Access in the United States 2026

The United States volume: a structured sample of US business domains across 10 sectors, measured on the frozen v1.2 methodology. The US shows the series' highest rate of active edge denial.
Read the study →
42.2%
blocking ≥1 retrieval crawler
808
domains approached
619
with readable robots.txt policy
10
industry groups
AU Vol 1Published17 June 2026 · v1.2

AI Crawler Access in Australia 2026

What proportion of Australian business websites block the AI crawlers required for AI search discovery — and how much of that blocking is unintentional? A structured benchmark of 409 commercial operating entities across 10 industry groups.
Read the study →
42.4%
blocking ≥1 retrieval crawler
409
domains approached
314
with readable robots.txt policy
10
industry groups
GB Vol 1Published17 June 2026 · v1.2

AI Crawler Access in Great Britain 2026

AI crawler access across a structured sample of British business websites, on the frozen v1.2 methodology. Great Britain shows the largest number of unscannable domains in the series — infrastructure non-response rather than active denial.
Read the study →
38.8%
blocking ≥1 retrieval crawler
754
domains approached
536
with readable robots.txt policy
10
industry groups
SG Vol 1Published17 June 2026 · v1.2

AI Crawler Access in Singapore 2026

AI crawler access across a structured sample of Singapore business websites, on the frozen v1.2 methodology. As a concentrated city-state market, several sectors reflect the near-full population of citable named businesses.
Read the study →
33.3%
blocking ≥1 retrieval crawler
268
domains approached
174
with readable robots.txt policy
9
industry groups

Study 02 · Flagship

AI Accessibility & Machine-Readable Guidance

Study 02 · Cross-MarketPublished17 June 2026 · v1.3

Does llms.txt Mean a Business Is Open to AI?

A four-market study pairing llms.txt adoption with AI-crawler access on the same domains. Adoption is emerging (15.0%) and overwhelmingly valid when present (91.2%) — but it does not predict openness: adopters block AI crawlers at a statistically indistinguishable rate from non-adopters (36.0% vs 40.7%, p = 0.165). More than a third of adopters block the crawlers they publish guidance for. Independently reconfirms the Study 01 access numbers on the same frames.
Read the analysis →
15.0%
llms.txt adoption
91.2%
valid when present
36%
adopters who block AI
n.s.
adoption→openness link

Study 02 · Supporting Market Volumes

llms.txt adoption, by market (descriptive)

Study 02 · United StatesPublished17 June 2026 · v1.3

llms.txt Adoption in the United States

Adoption 17.0% · conformance 96.1% · contradiction 43.4%. Highest adoption volume and highest contradiction rate of the four. Descriptive market breakdown; inference in the cross-market flagship.
Read the volume →
Study 02 · AustraliaPublished17 June 2026 · v1.3

llms.txt Adoption in Australia

Adoption 12.7% · conformance 90.9% · contradiction 31.8%. Lower adoption, high conformance. Descriptive market breakdown.
Read the volume →
Study 02 · Great BritainPublished17 June 2026 · v1.3

llms.txt Adoption in Great Britain

Adoption 12.4% · conformance 84.0% · contradiction 32.4%. Lowest conformance of the four; higher infrastructure non-response narrows the paired sample. Descriptive market breakdown.
Read the volume →
Study 02 · SingaporePublished17 June 2026 · v1.3

llms.txt Adoption in Singapore

Adoption 19.4% · conformance 88.9% · contradiction 22.2%. Highest adoption and lowest contradiction; smallest adopter sample (36), so read descriptively. Market breakdown.
Read the volume →

In Progress

Instrument exists, work underway

AU Vol 2In Progress

Australian Digital Authority Benchmark 2026

How prepared are Australian businesses for AI search? A composite authority benchmark across 500 domains measuring Brand Intelligence, Search Intelligence, AI Readiness and AI Risk. The scoring instrument is in reproducibility validation; the study publishes once validation clears.

500
domains
10
industry groups
4
Smart Cards

Planned

Methodology defined, no execution date

AU Vol 3Planned

Australian AI Citation Benchmark

When AI systems are asked real questions about Australian industries, which businesses are actually cited — and does digital authority predict citation frequency? A correlation study across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini using a stratified sample from AU Vol 2.
US Vol 2Planned

United States Digital Authority Benchmark

The composite authority benchmark applied to the US sample, following US Vol 1 and the reproducibility validation of the scoring instrument.
US Vol 3Planned

United States AI Citation Benchmark

Correlation of digital authority with actual AI citation frequency across major AI engines, using a stratified sample from US Vol 2.

Future Markets

Logical extensions of the series

NZ Vol 1Future

New Zealand AI Crawler Access Benchmark

AI crawler access across a structured sample of New Zealand business websites, using the same frozen methodology as the published volumes for direct cross-country comparison.
EUFuture

European AI Crawler Access Benchmarks

Country-level volumes across European markets, to be announced. Each would follow the same frozen methodology for like-for-like comparison with the existing markets.

Roles & attribution: Douglas Lord (researcher, author) · Periodic Table of Digital Authority (publisher & methodology owner) · PTODA C01 Crawler (research instrument) · AUTHORITY44™ (commercial operator) · Digital Dominator Pty Ltd ABN 28 616 931 116 (operating entity). Douglas Lord is founder of both PTODA and AUTHORITY44; this relationship is disclosed in full. This research publishes aggregate, anonymised findings only — no named individual site results are published.

All research published on this website is the original work of Douglas Lord and the property of Digital Dominator Pty Ltd. The Periodic Table of Digital Authority™ (TM 2644497) and AUTHORITY44™ (TM 2643932) are trade marks pending. You may cite findings with attribution. You may not reproduce studies in full or present findings as your own work. Use is subject to the Terms of Use.