The Open Index · Foundations

Before AI search, the basics: how the web really looks.

The 2025 Web Almanac crawled millions of public pages. Here is how many have the basics right, how fast the web is getting, and what Google says AI features need.

Headline number

43%

of home pages use JSON-LD structured data

HTTP Archive Web Almanac

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Written byKris GjorgjioskiKeyword research and industry benchmarks, Webtec Research
Checked byHristijan NajcheskiHead of SEO and AEO (technical and AI SEO), data verification

Updated October 15, 2026 · Edition 1Refreshed quarterly · next January 2027

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THE BASICS

Titles are universal. Almost everything else is patchy.

HTTP Archive Web Almanac 2025, SEO chapter. Share of pages (desktop figures), unless marked home pages.

How many pages have each basic in place

A third of pages still have no meta description; only about 4 in 10 home pages use JSON-LD.

Pages with a title tag98.6%
Robots.txt returns a valid file84.9%
Pages with an H171%
Pages with a canonical tag68%
Pages with a meta description67.7%
Home pages with JSON-LD43%
Home pages with schema.org Organization26.74%
Pages with hreflang20.3%

SourceHTTP Archive · 2026

WHAT IT MEANS

Being complete is an edge.

With a third of pages missing a meta description and over half of home pages missing JSON-LD, a site that does the basics properly is ahead of the median.^[1]

Google says AI features need nothing special: pages must be indexed and eligible for a snippet, with no extra schema required.^[3] The basics are the foundation, not a trick.

SPEED

Core Web Vitals: nearly half of mobile sites now pass.

Share of websites with good Core Web Vitals (all three metrics), Chrome UX Report, 2021 to 2025.

Websites passing all three Core Web Vitals

Mobile has climbed 16 points since 2021 but still trails desktop.

MobileDesktop

SourceHTTP Archive · 2026

Share of sites rated good, by metric (2025)

Loading is the weak spot, especially on mobile.

Largest Contentful Paint (loading)
- Desktop74%
- Mobile62%
Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness)
- Desktop97%
- Mobile77%
Cumulative Layout Shift (stability)
- Desktop72%
- Mobile81%

SourceHTTP Archive · 2026

Home pages pass less often than inner pages: 47% on desktop and 45% on mobile for home pages, against 61% and 56% for secondary pages.^[2] The data is field data from real Chrome users, so it reflects what visitors experience, not a lab test.

STRUCTURED DATA

The numbers behind schema.

50%

of home pages use some structured data

43%

of home pages use JSON-LD (40 to 41% in 2024)

26.7%

of home pages declare schema.org Organization

20.3%

of pages use hreflang, about double 2024

About 2% of crawls had structured data added by JavaScript. Since many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, markup added that way may never be seen by them.^[1],[4]

OUR INTERPRETATION

What we make of the numbers.

The figures above are the studies’. This part is our reading of them, kept separate so you can disagree.

Webtec Research

Our interpretation

Kris GjorgjioskiKeyword research and benchmarks
Hristijan NajcheskiTechnical SEO, data checks

Figures: the cited studies
Reading: ours

The figures on this page come from the cited studies. This reading of them is ours, and you may weigh it differently.

The Web Almanac’s numbers describe the whole web, and the main finding is how unevenly the basics are done. Many sites still miss a meta description, mobile performance lags desktop, and structured data is far from universal.

That is encouraging for any business willing to do the basics well: the bar is lower than it looks. It also means the foundations are not a differentiator on their own. They make you eligible and easy to read, and they still need good content on top.

Our practical order is crawl and render first, speed second, markup third.

Audit crawlability and rendering before anything else
Fix Core Web Vitals on the templates that earn the most traffic
Add structured data where it matches the page, not everywhere

Cite this page.

Charts have CSV downloads. Please link back and credit Webtec Research.

CITE THIS PAGE

Webtec Research. (2026, October 15). Technical foundations: how the web actually looks in 2025. The Open Index by Webtec. https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/technical-foundations/

Webtec Research. “Technical foundations: how the web actually looks in 2025.” The Open Index by Webtec, 15 Oct. 2026, https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/technical-foundations/.

@misc{webtec_open_index,
  author = {{Webtec Research}},
  title = {Technical foundations: how the web actually looks in 2025},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  howpublished = {The Open Index by Webtec},
  url = {https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/technical-foundations/}
}

<a href="https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/index/technical-foundations/">Technical foundations: how the web actually looks in 2025</a> (The Open Index by Webtec)

Questions about the basics.

What share of websites pass Core Web Vitals?

In the 2025 Web Almanac (Chrome UX Report field data, July 2025), 48% of websites passed all three Core Web Vitals on mobile and 56% on desktop. Mobile rose from 32% in 2021, 31% in 2022, 36% in 2023 and 44% in 2024. Loading is the main failure: 62% of mobile sites have good Largest Contentful Paint, against 77% for Interaction to Next Paint and 81% for layout stability.

How many sites use structured data?

The Web Almanac found structured data of some kind on 50% of home pages in 2025. JSON-LD was on 43% of desktop and mobile home pages (up from 40% to 41% in 2024) and 37% to 39% of inner pages. The schema.org types seen most on home pages were WebSite (37%) and Organization (about 26%).

Do I need structured data to appear in AI Overviews?

Google says there is no special schema.org structured data you need to add to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, though structured data should match the visible text as part of general SEO practice.

How many pages have a meta description?

67.7% of desktop and 67.2% of mobile pages in the 2025 crawl. Titles are almost universal at 98.6%, canonical tags are on about two thirds of pages, and H1 headings on about 70%.

Why does mobile lag desktop?

Mobile devices and networks are slower, and heavier pages hit them harder. The Web Almanac data shows the largest gap on loading: 74% of desktop sites have good Largest Contentful Paint against 62% on mobile.

What are the Core Web Vitals thresholds?

Google’s thresholds for a good experience are Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1. A page passes when it meets all three at the 75th percentile of real visits.

Does page speed affect whether AI cites me?

No study we cite shows that it does. Speed matters for users and for crawling, and many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so key content should be in the HTML the server sends. That is a reason to care about rendering, not a proven citation factor.

Which foundation should I fix first?

Make sure the pages you want found are crawlable, indexable and send their main content in HTML. Then fix whatever fails Core Web Vitals on your highest-traffic templates. Structured data comes after those.

Is structured data optional?

Yes for AI Overviews, no for rich results. Google says no special markup is needed to appear in AI features, but structured data can make a page eligible for rich results in standard search and helps machines read your content.

SOURCES

Sources and notes

4 sources on this page: 4 independent or official (grade A) and 0 vendor or agency studies with a disclosed method (grade B). Numbers in brackets in the text match the numbers below. We read every figure on the source’s own page. How we grade sources.

1
HTTP Archive
Web Almanac 2025: SEO
Public datasetGrade APublished 2026-01-15
Read the source
What we use:
How common titles, descriptions, canonicals, structured data, robots.txt and llms.txt are across the web.
Period:
2025 crawl
Sample:
A crawl of millions of public websites; figures are for desktop and mobile pages.
Read with care:
Last updated 2026-06-09.
2
HTTP Archive
Web Almanac 2025: Performance
Public datasetGrade APublished 2026-01-15
Read the source
What we use:
Core Web Vitals pass rates, 2021 to 2025, by device and page type.
Period:
CrUX July 2025
Sample:
Chrome UX Report field data plus HTTP Archive lab data across public websites.
Read with care:
Last updated 2026-05-05.
3
Google Search Central
AI Features and Your Website
Platform documentationGrade APublished 2025-12-10
Read the source
What we use:
What Google says is and is not required to appear in AI features.
Period:
Documentation, last updated Dec 10, 2025
Sample:
Google’s own guidance for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
4
Vercel (with MERJ)
The rise of the AI crawler
Platform dataGrade APublished 2024-12-17
Read the source
What we use:
None of the major AI crawlers it studied render JavaScript.
Period:
2024
Sample:
Crawler request logs across Vercel’s network.

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A LIVING REFERENCE

Refreshed every quarter.

We re-check every source in January, April, July and October, add new studies and retire old ones. This is Edition 1 (October 15, 2026); the next is due January 2027. Changes are logged on the methodology page.