Definition
What is a machine-readable website?
Machine-readable website: A machine-readable website states its meaning explicitly (what the business is, what it offers, where and when) in semantic HTML and structured data, so search engines and AI systems can read it without inference or rendering. Most websites are human-readable only: the meaning lives in pictures and layout.
Also called: machine-readable web, semantic website.
Published
Human-readable vs. machine-readable
A menu photographed as an image is human-readable. The same menu as an HTML table with prices is machine-readable. A “Book now” div wired to a script is human-readable; a real link to a booking page is machine-readable. The difference decides whether a search engine or an assistant can quote you.
The test
Fetch a page with curl (no JavaScript). If the primary content, headings, and facts are there, the page is machine-readable. If you get an empty shell, it is not, and neither retrieval bots nor most AI assistants will see it.