Machine Readability
Machine readability is how easily software can take in information and use it without a person reading it first. US federal law defines machine-readable data as data in a format a computer can easily process without human help and without losing what the data means, so nothing has to be read and retyped by hand.
Source: 44 U.S. Code § 3502(18), definition of machine-readable (Cornell Legal Information Institute), checked October 29, 2026
What Machine Readability means for your business
On a website, it mostly comes down to whether your facts are written as text. Google's guide to its AI features lists "Making sure that important content is available in textual form" among the SEO basics that still apply, and we'd fix that before adding any special file or code.
On a small business site, the usual trouble is hours posted as a graphic, a menu that's a photo of the printed one, or a price list in a scanned PDF. A person can read all of those. Software has to work harder to get the same facts out, and it may get them wrong.
Structured data, the labels that tell software which text is a phone number and which is an address, can come next. Google's same list asks that structured data match the visible text on the page, so the labels repeat facts already written there and never stand in for them.
To test a key page, copy its text and paste it into a plain note. Whatever doesn't come across is something software may miss too. If your hours, prices or service list live in images or scanned files, turning them into text software can read is a quick first fix.
Source: Google Search Central, AI features and your website, checked October 29, 2026
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited a Scribd copy of an old Wikipedia page, an EU project glossary and YouTube, and framed it as a data format question. ChatGPT gave a similar answer built on scanned invoices and spreadsheets and cited nothing.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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