Agentic Web
Definition
The agentic web is the stage of the web where AI agents no longer just read pages to answer a question: they act on behalf of the user. They search, compare offers, fill in forms and can go as far as buying or booking, within the limits the person sets. The term spread in 2025, when Microsoft promoted the "open agentic web" at its Build conference and agentic browsers such as ChatGPT Atlas or Perplexity's Comet appeared.
Watch: the agentic web explained in 2 minutes (video in French, turn on English subtitles)
- 0:00 What is the agentic web? The definition
- 0:20 The three ages of the web: links, answers, agents
- 0:38 Example: an AI agent booking a hotel
- 0:57 What the agentic web changes for your website
- 1:09 5 actions to get your website ready for AI agents
- 1:32 Know what AI engines say about your brand
The history of the web can be summed up in three ages. The web of links, where users search, click and compare themselves. The web of answers, where ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews read pages to answer them. Then the web of agents, where AI goes to websites and acts in their place. In this third age, a website is no longer just read: it is used.
The shift is fast: according to HUMAN Security, AI agent traffic grew nearly 80-fold in one year in 2025. For a brand, the consequence is direct: the agent reads the website before the customer does. If it does not understand the offer or cannot complete the journey, it moves on to a competitor.
Getting a website ready for the agentic web comes down to five actions:
- content that is readable without JavaScript, present in the HTML;
- the deciding information written in plain text: price, availability, lead times, conditions;
- structured data (Schema.org);
- simple journeys, with correctly labeled forms and buttons;
- no accidental blocking of useful agents in robots.txt, the firewall or the CDN.
The agentic web relies on several building blocks: agentic browsing; the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and WebMCP to expose actions to agents; the A2A protocol to let agents talk to each other; the agentic commerce protocols (ACP, UCP, AP2) for purchases. Before acting, an agent starts by searching: being visible in AI answers remains the first step, which BotRank lets you measure across AI engines.
Examples
A person asks their assistant: "Find me a hotel in Lyon for under 150 euros and book it." The agent opens several hotel websites, rules out those over budget, fills in the booking form of the best option, then asks for confirmation before paying. A hotel whose prices only appear inside an image is not even compared.
A SaaS vendor only shows its prices after a script has loaded. An agent asked to compare three tools for a small business cannot find the price and recommends a competitor whose pricing table is readable in the HTML.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between the agentic web and agentic browsing?
The agentic web describes the overall shift of the web, where AI agents act on behalf of users. Agentic browsing is its concrete mechanism: an agent moving through a site, clicking and filling in forms. The agentic web also includes the protocols that let agents talk to websites and to each other, such as MCP, WebMCP or A2A.
Is an AI agent the same thing as a chatbot?
No. A chatbot answers a question in a conversation. An AI agent receives a task and carries it out: it searches, compares, fills in forms and can complete a purchase, usually asking for confirmation before paying.
Should you block AI agents on your website?
Usually not: blocking agents means disappearing from the tasks they carry out for your customers. It is better to tell bots apart by role (search, training, user-triggered action) and to keep authentication for the pages that truly must stay private.
Does the agentic web replace SEO and GEO?
No, it adds to them. Before acting, an agent starts by searching: it relies on search engines and AI answers. Being visible in those answers remains the first step. The website must then be understandable and usable by the agent.
How can I tell whether AI agents visit my website?
Server or CDN logs show agent user-agents, such as ChatGPT-User, along with the pages requested. Standard analytics sees little of it, because some agents do not run JavaScript. BotRank tracks what AI engines say about your brand, the step that comes before the agent acts.
