Kuroma
AI Readiness benchmark for DTC / Consumer Brands
Across 1,018 audited domains we have classified as DTC / Consumer Brands, the median AI Readiness score is 39 out of 100. That is level with the median for all 30,738 audited domains in the corpus.
How the scores are distributed
Half of the 1,018 audited DTC / Consumer Brands domains score between 33 and 46. The corpus-wide interquartile range, across all 30,738 audited domains, is 32 to 45.
Which factors this industry fails most often
The rubric scores 19 factors. A factor counts as failed here when a site scores below 50 out of 100 on it. The last column is how many audits each rate was calculated from. Question Coverage & FAQ Presence and Media Accessibility are not scored on every kind of page: a rankings table or a paginated index has no question to answer and no image to caption. E-E-A-T Signals, Question Coverage & FAQ Presence and Citation-Worthiness lean on English-language patterns, so on a page written in another language they are scored out of a smaller total. Those rows therefore leave out every audit of a page the factor was not scored on the same scale, and every audit that did not record enough about the page for us to tell. Every other row counts every audit in this industry that scored the factor.
| Factor | Fails in DTC / Consumer Brands | Fails corpus-wide | Difference | Audits counted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-E-A-T Signals Authority Signals · 7% of the total score · counted only on pages in a language it measures in full |
98% | 89% | +9 | 240 |
| Structured Data Quality On-Page Content · 4.5% of the total score |
96% | 96% | 0 | 1,018 |
| Question Coverage & FAQ Presence On-Page Content · 6.5% of the total score · counted only on pages this factor applies to, in a language it measures in full |
95% | 85% | +10 | 225 |
| Citation-Worthiness AI Readiness · 7.5% of the total score · counted only on pages in a language it measures in full |
93% | 94% | -1 | 240 |
| Media Accessibility On-Page Content · 1.8% of the total score · counted only on pages this factor applies to |
92% | 87% | +5 | 939 |
| Unique Value Proposition AI Readiness · 5.1% of the total score |
90% | 94% | -4 | 1,018 |
| External Citations & References Authority Signals · 9% of the total score |
77% | 83% | -6 | 1,018 |
| Trust & Brand Signals Authority Signals · 9% of the total score |
77% | 74% | +3 | 1,018 |
| Answer Box Potential AI Readiness · 7.2% of the total score |
76% | 68% | +8 | 1,018 |
| Schema Markup Completeness Technical Optimization · 1% of the total score |
60% | 63% | -3 | 1,018 |
| Content Freshness AI Readiness · 5.7% of the total score |
46% | 49% | -3 | 1,018 |
| Crawlability & Accessibility Technical Optimization · 13% of the total score |
40% | 46% | -6 | 1,018 |
| AI Discoverability AI Readiness · 3% of the total score |
33% | 34% | -1 | 1,018 |
| Heading Hierarchy On-Page Content · 2.8% of the total score |
30% | 28% | +2 | 1,018 |
| Page Performance Indicators Technical Optimization · 2% of the total score |
23% | 20% | +3 | 1,018 |
| Raw HTML Availability AI Readiness · 1.5% of the total score |
22% | 24% | -2 | 1,018 |
| Mobile Optimization Technical Optimization · 4% of the total score |
14% | 14% | 0 | 1,018 |
| AI Readability Score On-Page Content · 3% of the total score |
13% | 8% | +5 | 989 |
| Content Depth & Comprehensiveness On-Page Content · 6.5% of the total score |
12% | 14% | -2 | 1,018 |
Where DTC / Consumer Brands diverges from everyone else
Relative to the whole corpus, this industry is distinctively weak on Question Coverage & FAQ Presence (+10 points), E-E-A-T Signals (+9 points), Answer Box Potential (+8 points).
It is distinctively strong on External Citations & References (-6 points), Crawlability & Accessibility (-6 points), Unique Value Proposition (-4 points).
Question Coverage & FAQ Presence: fails on 95% of the 225 DTC / Consumer Brands audits it was measured on
Covering the sub-questions users actually ask is the single strongest diagnosed lever: contextual gaps and intent divergence explain most zero-citation failures. FAQ formatting by itself is not the lever; answering the questions is.
E-E-A-T Signals: fails on 98% of the 240 DTC / Consumer Brands audits it was measured on
No study tests author bios as a causal AI-citation lever; the real authority channel is off-site brand footprint. On-page bylines and dates are kept as best-practice hygiene at reduced weight.
Answer Box Potential: fails on 76% of the 1,018 DTC / Consumer Brands audits it was measured on
The real mechanism is passage self-containment: heading-scoped sections that stand alone match retrieval chunking, and fixing context-severed passages measurably cuts retrieval failures.
Audited DTC / Consumer Brands sites with a public report card
Each of these sites has a public AI Readiness report card from a real audit. Scores are point-in-time; the card shows what was measured and when.
| Site | Grade | Score | Audited |
|---|---|---|---|
| 自然で高品質なウィッグ通販 (prisila.jp) | Grade A+ | 75/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| MUD\WTR™ (mudwtr.com) | Grade A | 69/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| パソコン（PC）通販のドスパラ【公式】 (www.dospara.co.jp) | Grade A | 67/100 | 16 Sep 2026 |
| palmers.com | Grade A | 66/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| Lovelaice (lovelaice.com) | Grade A | 65/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| Inna Organic 童顏有機 (innaorganic.com) | Grade A | 63/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| 390yen.jp | Grade A | 63/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| コトブキヤ製品情報ポータルサイト (www.kotobukiya.co.jp) | Grade A | 63/100 | 16 Sep 2026 |
| 成人式の振袖レンタル (kyotokimonoyuzen.co.jp) | Grade A | 63/100 | 15 Sep 2026 |
| American ExpressApple PayGoogle PayJCBMastercardPayPalShop PayVisa (ibasen.co.jp) | Grade A | 62/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| Video Production Company Dubai (backyardstudioofficial.com) | Grade A | 62/100 | 20 Aug 2026 |
| 中古スマホ (iosys.co.jp) | Grade A | 61/100 | 15 Sep 2026 |
Browse every audited site in the public audit archive.
See the full ranked list of 50 DTC / Consumer Brands sites →
How to read this
- What the sample is. The 1,018 domains we have audited and classified as DTC / Consumer Brands. That is a sample of the industry, not a census: it is the set of sites our crawler has reached and scored, and it carries whatever bias that selection has.
- Rubric version 2026-08-13. Every figure here comes from audits scored on this single rubric generation. Scores from different generations measure different things, so they are never mixed. Compatible generations: 2026-08-13.
- Why there are no company names. These are aggregates. We do not publish which domains sit at the bottom of a distribution, and the queries behind this page cannot return a domain name.
- Publishing floor. We publish an industry only once it reaches 100 audited domains, and a factor's failure rate only once 30 audits in the industry count toward that factor. Below either floor the number would move with a handful of sites, so we withhold it.
- What the audit can and cannot see. This audit measures citation readiness: how easily AI engines can crawl, extract, and quote these pages. It cannot see the off-site brand footprint (mentions, reviews, third-party coverage) that gates whether AI engines retrieve a brand at all; Kuroma's visibility scans and off-site signals track that side. Read the full methodology.