Research Overview
RAG fetchability — the ability of AI systems to discover, retrieve, and cite your web content — varies dramatically across industries. Some sectors have embraced AI crawler access and content structure optimization; others remain largely invisible to AI retrieval systems. This report presents the first comprehensive RAG fetchability benchmarks by industry, providing the data brands need to assess their AI retrieval readiness relative to their sector.
Cross-Industry RAG Fetchability Scores
We evaluated RAG fetchability across 15 industries using four dimensions: AI crawler accessibility (robots.txt configuration, server-side rendering), content structure quality (heading hierarchy, section self-containment), passage extractability (chunk quality, factual density), and source authority signals (entity consistency, third-party mentions).
| Industry | Crawler Access Score | Content Structure | Passage Quality | Overall Fetchability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technology / SaaS | 82 | 74 | 71 | 76 |
| Media / Publishing | 45 | 78 | 80 | 68 |
| Education / EdTech | 79 | 72 | 68 | 73 |
| Healthcare | 61 | 65 | 62 | 63 |
| Financial Services | 52 | 58 | 55 | 55 |
| E-Commerce / Retail | 68 | 52 | 48 | 56 |
| Cybersecurity | 76 | 70 | 69 | 72 |
| Legal | 44 | 61 | 58 | 54 |
| Real Estate | 55 | 42 | 38 | 45 |
| Travel / Hospitality | 62 | 48 | 45 | 52 |
| Automotive | 58 | 51 | 47 | 52 |
| Insurance | 40 | 45 | 42 | 42 |
| Food & Beverage | 64 | 44 | 41 | 50 |
| HR / Recruiting | 71 | 56 | 52 | 60 |
| Blockchain / Crypto | 83 | 67 | 64 | 71 |
Key Insights by Dimension
AI Crawler Access: Technology, blockchain, and education sectors lead in AI crawler accessibility, likely because these industries are more technically aware of AI crawler user agents and their robots.txt implications. Media/publishing and insurance score lowest — media due to deliberate content protection strategies, insurance due to legacy technical configurations.
Content Structure: Media/publishing leads content structure despite low crawler access, reflecting decades of editorial formatting discipline. E-commerce and real estate score lowest, reflecting the dominance of product catalog pages and listing templates that are optimized for browsing rather than information extraction.
Passage Quality: Media/publishing again leads passage quality — journalistic writing naturally produces clear, factual, self-contained paragraphs. Real estate and food & beverage score lowest, reflecting content that tends toward description and marketing language rather than factual, extractable claims.
The Fetchability Gap Opportunity
Low-scoring industries represent the largest opportunity for early movers. In industries like insurance (42), real estate (45), and food & beverage (50), most competitors have poor RAG fetchability. A brand that invests in AI crawler access and content structure in these sectors can capture disproportionate AI citation share simply because the competition is unprepared.
In high-scoring industries like technology (76) and cybersecurity (72), the competition is more intense. Earning AI citations requires not just good fetchability but exceptional content quality and source authority to differentiate from well-optimized competitors.
How Presenc AI Helps
Presenc AI provides your brand's personalized RAG fetchability score benchmarked against your specific industry and competitor set. Rather than comparing against cross-industry averages, Presenc shows how you perform relative to the brands you actually compete against for AI citations. The platform tracks your fetchability score over time, measures the impact of optimization efforts, and identifies the specific dimensions (crawler access, content structure, passage quality) where your biggest improvement opportunities lie.