360 check, 9 Nov 2026
Alibaba on the pay layer: the 360 agent-readiness check
Alibaba scores 41 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, read 14 Nov 2026. The six payment checks did not apply to alibaba.com on this read, which is how Ora treats a site it does not read as a shop. Six agents through the door, onto a home page with zero characters of text.
On 14 Nov 2026 the public site at alibaba.com scored 41 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a D, in Ora's Identity & Auth category. Alibaba is the business-to-business marketplace of the Alibaba Group, selling from China to the world, so this check reads the Payments layer first: the six checks that look for x402, MPP, UCP, ACP and AP2 on the domain, the same protocols this site's matrix tracks row by row. The other layers follow, with every check Ora ran and what it saw.
The score
| Layer | Points | Share | What the layer asks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | 9 of 11 | 82% | Can agents find and recommend it |
| Access | 20.67 of 43 | 48% | Can agents read it |
| Usability | 7.43 of 50 | 15% | Can agents use it |
| Payments | 0 of 0 | none apply | Can agents pay |
| Total | 41 of 100 | 41% | Grade D |
The pay layer
Ora did not run the six payment checks against alibaba.com on this read: it marks them not applicable on a site it does not read as a shop, so the layer has no maximum and costs nothing. A marketplace that sells online can still publish any of the five protocols; the matrix says which processors and platforms carry each one. Each protocol links to its matrix row, where the processors and platforms that carry it are dated and sourced.
| Payment check | Result | Points | Matrix row | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| x402 | Does not apply | 0 of 2 | x402 in the matrix | No x402 payment protocol support detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
| MPP | Does not apply | 0 of 2 | MPP in the matrix | No MPP (Machine Payments Protocol) support detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
| UCP | Does not apply | 0 of 3 | UCP in the matrix | no UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) signals detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
| ACP | Does not apply | 0 of 3 | ACP in the matrix | no ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) signals detected. No working way for an agent to pay was found, so payments are not scored |
The other layers, check by check
Every check Ora ran on alibaba.com, grouped by layer, with the result, the points and what Ora recorded where its wording passes this site's gate.
Discovery: 9 of 11
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| ARD discovery | Partial | 0 of 1 | /.well-known/ard.json exists but is not valid JSON |
| AI Catalog discovery | Partial | 0 of 1 | /.well-known/ai-catalog.json exists but is not valid JSON |
| Developer resource discoverability | Pass | 4 of 4 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Brand name discoverability | Pass | 3 of 3 | alibaba.com ranks #1 for "Alibaba Manufacturers" and #1 for "Alibaba Suppliers" |
| robots.txt AI crawler policy | Pass | 1 of 1 | AI search crawlers: allowed in 3 of 3 checks (3 crawlers on 1 page). AI training crawlers: allowed in 1 of 2 checks (2 crawlers on 1 page), not scored. |
| NPM/PyPI SDK package | Fail | 0 of 1 | No NPM or PyPI SDK package found |
| Agent platform configs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Could not locate a public repo containing agent configs or rules. If our probes missed it, AI coding agents likely will too - link the repo from your homepage or docs so it's discoverable. |
| Agent Plugins manifest | Fail | 0 of 1 | No Agent Plugins manifest (plugin.json) found in discovered repos |
| ChatGPT app listed | Fail | 0 of 2 | Not found in ChatGPT app directory |
| Homepage not hidden from search | Pass | 1 of 1 | No noindex on the homepage: no robots, googlebot or bingbot meta tag and no X-Robots-Tag header hides it from search. |
Access: 20.67 of 43
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sitemap exists | Fail | 0 of 1 | No sitemap found |
| Content without JavaScript | Partial | 1.67 of 5 | Homepage: 120012 chars of readable text, but no H1 tag. Sampled pages with almost no text without JavaScript (2 of 3): https://rfq.alibaba.com/rfq/profession.htm (78 chars) and http://developer.alibaba.com/doc.htm (22. |
| Not blocked by bot detection | Pass | 2 of 2 | Site accessible to 4 agent user-agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot). |
| Agent discovery file | Partial | 0 of 2 | /.well-known/agent-skills/index.json exists but is not valid JSON - fix the file or remove it so agents fall back to /.well-known/agent-skills, /agents.md, or /skills.sh |
| A2A / agent-card | Fail | 0 of 2 | No A2A agent card found at /.well-known/agent-card.json |
| Listed on skills.sh | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| pricing.md exists | Partial | 1 of 2 | pricing.md found at /pricing.md (394 lines), but it does not open with a # heading - start it with a # title so agents read it as markdown |
| NLWeb Schema Feeds | Fail | 0 of 1 | No schemamap: directive in robots.txt |
| MCP well-known discovery | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server URL discovered |
| HTTP Link headers (RFC 8288) | Fail | 0 of 1 | Link header present but no agent-relevant rel values (sitemap, describedby, alternate, service-desc) |
| Markdown URL fallback | Fail | 0 of 2 | Homepage does not support the .md suffix. Probed https://alibaba.com/index.md and it did not return markdown (expected text/markdown content-type or a heading-led non-HTML body). |
| Modular llms.txt per product area | Fail | 0 of 1 | No section-level llms.txt found. Tried /docs/llms.txt, /api/llms.txt, /developers/llms.txt, /guides/llms.txt, /reference/llms.txt. This is a bonus check: it can add a point and never costs one. |
| robots.txt agent-user policy | Pass | 1 of 1 | No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 3 user-triggered agents (chatgpt-user, claude-user, perplexity-user) on 1 public page: https://alibaba.com/. Declared policy only |
| llms.txt exists | Partial | 0 of 1 | A file is present at https://alibaba.com/.well-known/llms.txt, but it returns an HTML page rather than a plain-text llms.txt. |
| llms.txt formatting | Fail | 0 of 2 | No llms.txt found to evaluate quality |
| JSON-LD structured data | Partial | 0.5 of 2 | JSON-LD found (1 block(s)) but no identity type - use SoftwareApplication, Product, Organization, Person, or Article so agents can tell what this site is |
| Pricing info accessible | Pass | 3 of 3 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Public API/docs linked from homepage | Pass | 4 of 4 | Documentation site found at https://developer.alibaba.com |
| Agent instruction / when-to-use | Fail | 0 of 1 | No agent instruction file with when-to-use guidance found |
| Skills.sh skill quality | Partial | 1 of 2 | Skills.sh presence exists but limited - 4 skills (goal: 5+) |
| JSON-LD entity linking (sameAs) | Fail | 0 of 1 | No sameAs entity linking in JSON-LD - agents cannot disambiguate your brand |
| Metadata completeness | Partial | 0.5 of 1 | 3/4 metadata signals present - missing: og:image |
| Organization schema completeness | Fail | 0 of 1 | No Organization type found in JSON-LD |
| Trust anchor pages | Fail | 0 of 1 | No trust anchor pages found with sufficient content (About, Contact, Privacy) |
| Markdown alternate link | Fail | 0 of 1 | No sampled page advertises a markdown alternate. Add <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="..."> (or the equivalent Link response header) pointing at a markdown twin of the page. |
| Redirect hygiene | Pass | 1 of 1 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Page token budget | Partial | 0 of 1 | 1 of 4 measured pages exceed ~25K tokens of extracted text: https://www.alibaba.com/ (~30K tokens). Agents truncate what does not fit - split these into focused pages. |
| Content starts near the top | Partial | 0 of 1 | Main content starts late on 1 of 1 measured pages: https://www.alibaba.com/ (26% in). Put navigation after the main content in the markup, or trim it, so an agent that cuts the page keeps the content. |
| Content behind auth | Pass | 1 of 1 | All 2 sampled pages are publicly readable (1 with substantive content) |
| OpenAPI spec published | Fail | 0 of 8 | No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| Developer portal | Pass | 5 of 5 | Developer portal found at /developers |
| API catalog (RFC 9727) | Partial | 1 of 2 | api-catalog responded but body is not valid JSON |
| Markdown agent docs | Fail | 0 of 1 | Missing markdown content negotiation. Homepage returned text/html when probed with Accept: text/markdown (expected text/markdown), and none of the well-known root paths (/llms.md, /auth.md, /agents.md, /developers.md |
| Markdown content negotiation (acceptmarkdown.com) | Fail | 0 of 1 | Homepage https://alibaba.com does not meet the Markdown negotiation requirements: Accept: text/markdown returned text/html;charset=utf-8; Vary header missing Accept (got "accept-encoding") |
| Bot-UA markdown serving | Fail | 0 of 1 | No probed bot User-Agent (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User) receives markdown when requesting HTML. Optional: detect AI-bot UAs server-side and serve them a markdown representation directly. |
| Agent crawler reachability | Pass | 1 of 1 | Reachable to every agent we tested - ChatGPT-User: reachable, OAI-SearchBot: reachable, Claude-User: reachable, PerplexityBot: reachable |
Usability: 7.43 of 50
| Check | Result | Points | What Ora saw |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public API with reachable endpoints | Partial | 3.43 of 8 | API described in documentation at https://developer.alibaba.com but no machine-verifiable API surface confirmed. Best-of-protocols score: 3/7. |
| OAuth 2.0 support | Fail | 0 of 5 | No OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect support detected |
| Scoped permissions | Fail | 0 of 5 | No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found |
| Agent onboarding friction | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Web Bot Auth directory | Partial | 1 of 2 | Web Bot Auth directory found but body is not valid JSON |
| auth.md exists | Fail | 0 of 2 | Path https://alibaba.com/auth.md returned HTML (SPA / 404 fallback), not an auth.md document |
| auth.md structure | Fail | 0 of 2 | No /auth.md found at site root |
| Agent auth discovery metadata | Fail | 0 of 3 | Neither /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource nor /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server found. Probed: alibaba.com, api.alibaba.com. |
| Agent auth WWW-Authenticate hint | Fail | 0 of 1 | No 401 with WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata=... found. Probed [https://alibaba.com/api, https://alibaba.com/api/v1, https://alibaba.com/v1, https://alibaba.com/v2, https://alibaba.com/agent/identity |
| agent_auth endpoints reachable | Fail | 0 of 2 | No agent_auth endpoint URIs found in AS metadata or /auth.md prose; nothing to probe |
| MCP server / manifest | Fail | 0 of 10 | No MCP server or manifest found |
| WebMCP support | Fail | 0 of 8 | No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found |
| JSON error responses | Fail | 0 of 3 | API does not return JSON error responses (or no API detected) |
| CLI tool available | Fail | 0 of 3 | No CLI tool found |
| NLWeb /ask endpoint | Fail | 0 of 1 | No NLWeb-conformant /ask endpoint found via GET or POST |
| NLWeb streaming support | Fail | 0 of 1 | NLWeb /ask does not support SSE streaming via GET or POST |
| MCP server-card.json | Fail | 0 of 2 | No MCP server card found (checked /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json, the site's ai-catalog.json, servers[].card in mcp.json, and <server>/server-card) |
| Product + docs MCP coverage | Fail | 0 of 2 | This bonus needs two MCP servers: one for your product so agents can take actions, and a separate one for your documentation so agents can answer questions from your docs. |
| Agent-friendly 404s | Fail | 0 of 2 | Fail, no detail recorded. |
| Accessible names on controls | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| Accessibility-tree injection safety (bonus) | Pass | 2 of 2 | Pass, no detail recorded. |
| API schema complexity analysis | Partial | 1 of 2 | REST: OpenAPI spec found but failed to parse for complexity analysis |
| Function calling compatibility | Partial | 1 of 2 | API spec found but couldn't validate function calling compatibility |
The fixes worth most points
Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for Alibaba.
- MCP server / manifest
- Fail, 0 of 10, about 8.9 points to gain. Ora saw:
No MCP server or manifest found
. - WebMCP support
- Fail, 0 of 8, about 7.1 points to gain. Ora saw:
No WebMCP support detected - no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found
. - OpenAPI spec published
- Fail, 0 of 8, about 6.2 points to gain. Ora saw:
No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found
. - OAuth 2.0 support
- Fail, 0 of 5, about 4.4 points to gain. Ora saw:
No OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect support detected
. - Scoped permissions
- Fail, 0 of 5, about 4.4 points to gain. Ora saw:
No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found
.
Our read
Alibaba.com lets all six agent user agents in and shows them nothing: the home page renders zero characters of text without JavaScript, there is no sitemap, no JSON-LD and the llms.txt at /.well-known/llms.txt returns an HTML page. The six payment checks did not apply, because no commerce signal could be read from an empty page, which for the largest business-to-business marketplace in the world is a template problem rather than a policy. The act layer is better than the reading layer: REST documentation scores 7 of 7 and developer.alibaba.com is a real portal, though Ora found neither an OpenAPI specification nor an MCP server, no OAuth discovery, and an agent skills index that does not parse as JSON. robots.txt restricts one of five crawler and page pairs it checked. Ora reads the domain in its Identity and Auth category rather than as a shop. Server-rendered text on the home page is the one fix that opens every reading row.
Test your own checkout
The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at ora.ai and read the same layers for your own site, with the six payment checks mapped to this matrix on the Ora Payments page. The command below runs the same audit from a terminal and exits with 1 under the score you set, so it can gate a deploy. Why Ora, and its limits.
npx ax@0.10 audit https://example.com --min-score 70All 360 checks, one company a day. Corrections to the corrections page.
Sources
- ora.ai/api/score/alibaba.com, Ora's scan (vendor), read 14 Nov 2026
- Ora's scoring rules, version 3 (vendor), read 14 Nov 2026
- Ora check catalog (GET /api/checks), read 14 Nov 2026
- alibaba.com, the company's site, read 14 Nov 2026
Last reviewed