This morning Google rolled out its May 2026 Core Update. By 7 PM I had rebuilt how both of my personal websites talk to AI tools, jumped past every benchmark I could find, and learned something I think every local business owner needs to hear.
Here is what happened, in plain English.
The thing nobody is telling small business owners
When someone in Kingsport asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Google's new AI Mode a question like "who does AI consulting in the Tri-Cities," the AI does not pull from search results the way you and I do. It sends a different kind of visitor to your website. That visitor is a software agent. It reads pages differently. It looks for specific signals you probably do not have on your site.
Most local business websites are completely invisible to these AI visitors. Not because the content is bad. Because the website is not set up to be read by software.
I learned this the hard way today.
How I found out my own site was failing
This morning, Google launched a major search update. I started getting questions from clients about whether their sites would still rank. Fair question.
While digging in, I found a free tool that Cloudflare launched last month called isitagentready.com. It scans your website and scores it from 0 to 100 on how well AI agents can find and use it.
I ran my own site, tricitiesailab.com, expecting a decent score.
I got a 25.
That stung. I run an AI consulting practice. If my own site is not ready for AI agents, what does that say?
So I started fixing things.
What I changed, in plain language
I will skip the technical details. Here is what each fix actually does for a business owner:
1. Updated the file that tells AI bots what they can read
Most sites either block AI tools by accident or let every bot scrape everything. I set clear rules: search engines and AI citation tools can read my pages, but training bots cannot use my content to train their models. This is the trade-off small businesses should make. Show up in AI answers. Do not give your content away for free training.
2. Added a machine-readable version of every page
When an AI tool visits my site, it can now request a clean text version of any page. No menus, no images, no clutter. Just the words. AI tools process this in a fraction of the time, which means they are more likely to actually read your content and use it in their answers.
3. Published a "site card" that introduces your business to AI
Think of it as a digital business card aimed at AI tools. It says: here is what this site is, here is what services are offered, here is how to find more details. AI agents read it once and know what your site is about.
4. Added live "tools" the AI can use
This was the biggest one. AI agents can now actually interact with my site through a few small functions, not just read it. This is brand new technology and almost nobody has it deployed yet.
The before and after
By 7 PM, my Tri-Cities AI Lab site jumped from 25 to over 80. My personal site went from 50 to 83. Both now rank as "Agent-Native," which is the top level on Cloudflare's scale.
For context: when Cloudflare ran this scan against 200,000 of the top sites on the internet, the average score was around 38. Nobody in their first test group of 62 well-known sites scored above 70. We are now ahead of most of the web.
Why this matters more than the Google update everyone is panicking about
The May 2026 Google update is real. It will move rankings. But here is the bigger picture nobody is saying out loud.
The number of people clicking search results is going down every month. The number of people getting answers from AI tools is going up. If your website is not ready to be read by AI tools, the next two years are going to feel like watching a slow leak.
Every small business in Kingsport, Johnson City, and Bristol that I checked today scored below 30. Most scored below 15. This is fixable. It just takes someone who knows what to look for.
What you should do this week
- Run your site through the scanner. Go to isitagentready.com and enter your domain. It is free. Takes ten seconds.
- Do not panic about the score. The average across 200,000 top sites is around 38. You are not behind. The whole web is behind.
- Decide if you want to catch up now or later. The businesses that get this right in 2026 will be the ones AI tools recommend in 2027. That is the whole game.
How we can help
This is what Tri-Cities AI Lab does. We help small and mid-size businesses in the Tri-Cities get their websites ready for the way people actually search now. Not just Google. Not just Bing. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and whatever comes next.
If you want to know where your site stands, send me a note. I will run the scan for you and tell you the three things that would move your score the most. No pressure, no pitch.
The web is changing. We can save you time by helping you get ahead of it.
Ready to put AI to work in your business?