Understanding AI-powered shopping and what it means for your business.
For two decades, the e-commerce industry invested heavily in bot protection. reCAPTCHA, WAFs, behavioural fingerprinting: all designed to keep automated traffic off our sites. It worked. But AI shopping agents are automated traffic, and the same defences that stopped credential stuffers in 2008 are now silently rejecting agents acting on behalf of real customers in 2026. In our scans, 26.6% of sites already block agent access entirely, and most of those merchants have no idea it is happening.
Provider Breakdown — 95 sites
How Hard Is It to Allow AI Agents?
Data from 365 unique e-commerce sites scanned by Aidō Lighthouse as of April 2026. Provider counts exclude scan artefacts (timeouts, DNS errors). Bypass difficulty reflects the effort for a merchant to allowlist verified AI agent user agents — not the difficulty of malicious circumvention. Dataset grows with every scan; figures update as new sites are analysed. Learn how protocols like Visa TAP and ACP are creating verifiable agent identity →
AI agents are becoming the new shoppers. Learn what that means for your business and how to prepare.
Read ArticleEmerging standards like UCP, MCP, and WebMCP that will define the next era of e-commerce.
Read ArticleMost retail brands have launched AI agents on top of infrastructure that was never designed to support them. Here is the gap that is quietly capping your AI investment.
Read ArticleWe scanned 75 LATAM e-commerce sites. Average transactability: 29.4/100. The region has leapfrogged desktop commerce into WhatsApp — and left its web APIs behind.
Read Article19 marcas líderes analizadas. Puntuación agéntica promedio: 16.9/100. Las marcas de prestigio internacional tienen el mejor contenido y el peor checkout. Ninguna está lista.
Leer análisisWe scanned every brand listed on checkout.directory as UCP-ready. All 49 scored "Not Ready" for agentic commerce. Here's what the protocol doesn't cover.
Read ArticleData from 500+ retailer scans. Where each industry stands, what separates AI-ready leaders from the rest, and the infrastructure gaps still blocking autonomous commerce.
Get the ReportFree access · enter your email to unlock