loading . . . Why the agentic web matters for businesses The agentic web is a technical shift that changes what a website is. But more than that, it is a business shift.
As AI agents begin to discover, interpret, and act on websites on behalf of users, businesses will need to rethink how their digital presence works. A website will no longer be judged only by how well it serves human visitors. It will also be judged by how clearly it exposes information, actions, permissions, and trust signals to AI systems.
That matters for business leaders, product teams, publishers, and developers alike. In this post, I’ll outline how each of these four groups will need to adapt.
## 1. Business leaders
For business leaders, the agentic web raises a strategic question: will your business be accessible, understandable, and usable in an AI-mediated digital environment?
Your first priority should be to shift your mindset from a website strategy to an agent strategy. How you adapt to the agentic AI era will affect discovery, distribution, customer acquisition, trust, partnerships, and operational workflows.
### Will agents understand your business?
Agents are becoming an important way that users compare products or services, retrieve information, complete tasks, and make purchases. So your business needs to understand how it appears to those agents. Are your products or services easy to find? Is your content structured clearly? Are your capabilities exposed safely? Can an agent tell what your business does, what it offers, and what actions are available?
> Your website becomes a control layer for how AI systems understand and act on your business.
The risk is that your business may still have a website, but it becomes harder for AI systems to interpret, recommend, or act upon. The businesses that adapt early will treat their websites not only as marketing channels, but as part of their AI-era business infrastructure.
## 2. Product teams
The agentic web changes how your product is accessed. Now, it won’t just be used by people through your interface. Increasingly, it will be accessed through agents acting on behalf of users.
That has some important consequences.
### Products become agent-accessible
Your product needs to expose clear, structured capabilities so that agents can discover, understand, and interact with it reliably. It’s no longer enough to have a well-designed interface; you need to make actions legible to machines, whether via APIs, MCP tools, or other emerging standards.
Alongside this, you need to think about agent experience (AX) as part of the broader user experience. How easily can an AI system discover what your product does, understand how to use it, and execute tasks reliably? In many cases, the “interface” your users rely on will not be your UI, but an agent translating intent into actions.
### Control becomes part of the product
In the agentic web, control becomes a core product concern. You will need to define what agents are allowed to do, under what conditions, and on whose authority. That includes authentication, permissions, rate limits, and safeguards — all of which will become part of the product surface.
In short: products become platforms for both humans and agents, and success will depend on how well you serve both. Put another way, products will compete not only on usability for humans, but on usability for agents.
## 3. Publishers
For publishers, the agentic web represents both a threat and an opportunity.
The threat is clear: fewer users will visit your site directly. Instead, AI systems will increasingly intermediate access to your content — summarizing it, extracting insights, and presenting it elsewhere.
### From destination to source of truth
But the opportunity is just as significant. Your website becomes the source of truth that feeds those systems.
That means your focus shifts from page views to:
* being discoverable by AI systems;
* being trusted as a source; and
* being structured in ways machines can understand.
Practically, this means:
* ensuring content is accessible (not locked behind barriers);
* using structured data and clear information architecture; and
* thinking about how your content will be retrieved, chunked and cited.
### Revenue remains unresolved
Now, having said all that, there are currently major concerns about how publishers will be compensated in this new agentic era. How can we earn a living in a world in which fewer people visit our websites — a problem exacerbated by Google referral traffic drying up.
There is some hope: publisher-friendly companies like Cloudflare are trying to encourage creator compensation from AI vendors, plus there are emerging protocols like Really Simple Licensing (RSL) that aim to help publishers license their content.
But it’s still early days and many publishers are rapidly downsizing (I myself have been impacted). So this is very much an existential crisis for the online media industry — and indeed the open web itself.
### From media property to data layer
Even so, the agentic web does open up new product possibilities for publishers, from site-specific assistants (like my own “Ask Ricmac” feature) to premium, agent-accessible knowledge services.
Directionally, a publisher’s role in the agentic web is starting to move upstream: from destination to data layer. Strategically, the goal is to become a trusted, structured, machine-readable source for AI systems — while also defending the commercial value of that content.
## 4. Developers
For developers, the agentic web expands the scope of what it means to build for the web. You are no longer just building interfaces and APIs — you are building capabilities that agents can discover, reason about, and use autonomously.
That requires a shift in mindset.
### Build for machine readability
You need to design systems that are machine-readable by default — not just human-friendly.
Clear schemas, predictable outputs, and well-defined actions become critical.
### Think in workflows, not endpoints
You also need to think in terms of orchestration, not just endpoints. Agents will combine multiple tools and services dynamically, so your systems need to behave reliably as part of a broader workflow.
This means developers will increasingly work across a hybrid stack, including:
* browser-based AI (local models, Web APIs);
* cloud-based inference;
* tool protocols like MCP; and
* traditional web infrastructure.
### Debugging the agent layer
Debugging changes too. As a16z VC Andrew Chen suggested, the UI may become “a debug layer” and developers will need new tools to understand what agents are doing, why they made decisions, and how to guide them.
In a nutshell, building for the agentic web means building for humans, agents, and the interactions between them.
The business implication is that developer experience and agent experience will increasingly overlap. The easier your systems are for agents to understand and use, the more valuable they become in AI-mediated workflows.
## What businesses should do next
The practical starting point is not to rebuild everything for agents. It is to assess how ready your existing website, content, product surfaces, and technical infrastructure are for AI usage.
That means asking:
* Can AI systems discover your important content and capabilities?
* Can they understand what your business does?
* Can they retrieve accurate, structured information?
* Can they distinguish canonical content from noise?
* Are there clear boundaries around what agents can and cannot do?
* Are your APIs, feeds, schemas, metadata, and permissions aligned with how agents will interact with your site?
In other words, the agentic web turns your website into more than a destination. It becomes part of the operating layer through which AI systems understand and act on your business.
### Start with an agent experience assessment
If you’re thinking about how to adapt to this shift, my Agent Experience Assessment shows how well your website and related product surfaces work from an agent’s point of view — and what to improve first. You can also request my Agentic Web Playbook to dive deeper into this subject.
_Feature image created with ChatGPT._ https://ricmac.org/2026/05/13/why-the-agentic-web-matters-for-businesses/
