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Mark McNeece

Founder, AI Visibility

Kettering, Northamptonshire

About the author

Mark McNeece

Mark created the AI Visibility Definition in 2025 after spending three decades building web infrastructure and watching the gap widen between what websites publish and what AI systems can actually read. His background in managed WordPress hosting, performance engineering, and technical SEO gave him a front-row seat to a problem most site owners didn't know they had: their businesses were invisible to AI.

That observation became the AI Discovery Files Specification, a set of 10 machine-readable files that give AI systems the structured identity, permissions, and context they need to represent a business accurately. Mark wrote the specification, built the AI Visibility Checker to validate it, launched a quarterly research programme to measure adoption, and published a WordPress plugin so site owners can generate the files without touching code.

Practical systems that work. Clear structure over clever complexity. If AI can't read it, it doesn't exist. Mark McNeece, Founder, AI Visibility
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Mark McNeece, Founder of AI Visibility

Mark's career in web technology started in the mid-1990s when he built and operated Boots Board, a bulletin board system that grew into one of Britain's earliest internet service providers. He sold the business in 1997, moved into enterprise consulting, and incorporated BSolve IT Limited on 3 December 2002 (Company No. 04607330). In 2005 he created 365i, a managed WordPress hosting platform that now serves businesses across the UK. In 2025, recognising that AI systems lacked any standardised way to discover and verify website identity, he created the AI Visibility Definition and published it under a Creative Commons licence.

Areas of Expertise

AI Visibility & Readiness AI Discovery File Standards Web Standards & Specifications WordPress Plugin Development Managed WordPress Hosting PHP & Web Infrastructure Technical SEO Schema.org & Structured Data Performance Optimisation CDN & Edge Caching

Career & Background

Career Timeline

Mid-1990s

Boots Board BBS & ISP

Built and operated one of Britain's earliest online communities. Expanded into a full internet service provider with leased lines and a dedicated Class C IP block.

2002

Founded BSolve IT Limited

Incorporated on 3 December 2002 as a consulting and development company (No. 04607330), delivering web solutions for businesses across the UK.

2005

Created 365i Hosting

Launched a specialist managed WordPress hosting platform serving businesses with hosting, web design, and technical SEO.

2025

Created AI Visibility

Published the canonical AI Visibility Definition and the 10-file AI Discovery Files Specification. Built the AI Visibility Checker and launched quarterly adoption research.

Freedom of the City of London

25th November 1993

Granted as "A Computer Analyst/Programmer"

Education & Qualifications

  • BSc (Honours) in Computer Science
    Began 1992
  • Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate
  • ScotVec qualifications in IT disciplines
    Including COBOL and electronic engineering
  • IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists)
    Qualified advanced motorcycle rider
  • Holyrood Secondary School, Glasgow

Creator & Maintainer

AI Visibility Definition

Mark created the AI Visibility Definition, establishing a precise technical standard for the degree to which a website can be discovered, interpreted, trusted, and safely used by AI systems. The accompanying AI Discovery Files Specification defines 10 machine-readable files, including llms.txt, ai.txt, identity.json, and brand.txt, that let AI systems verify a website's identity, permissions, and context.

The Q1 2026 Adoption Study crawled 1,460 domains across the top 1,000 global and top 1,000 UK websites, measuring file adoption rates, validity, and AI crawler policies. The first dataset is published as open data under CC BY 4.0, with future crawls running quarterly.

On the tooling side, Mark built the AI Visibility Checker for free, instant website analysis, and released the AI Discovery Files WordPress plugin so site owners can generate all 10 files from their dashboard. The specifications and all related tools are published under CC BY 4.0.

AI Visible Directory Technical Specifications Adoption Research

Is Your Website Visible to AI?

Mark built the AI Visibility Checker so you can find out. Paste any URL and it scans your AI Discovery Files, tests crawler access against all 10 file types, checks identity consistency, and scores structural readiness. The whole thing takes about 15 seconds.

He also created free downloadable templates for every AI Discovery File type: grab them, fill in your details, and you're done.

Check Your Site & Get Free Templates Get Them Created For You

No account needed. No personal data collected.

29
Articles Published
6
Topics Covered
30+
Years in Tech
Latest 29 Guide 6 Explainer 13 Research 3 Case Study 4 News 2 Tutorial 1

Latest articles

Nine AI Bots Read Our Files in 30 Days. Here's the Free WordPress Plugin That Logged Them.
Guide 21 min read

Nine AI Bots Read Our Files in 30 Days. Here's the Free WordPress Plugin That Logged Them.

Most WordPress sites cannot tell you whether a single AI system has ever read them. Ours can. Over the 30 days to 4 August 2026 our own site logged 55 reads of its AI Discovery Files by 9 named bots, with PerplexityBot top and nothing blocked. Three weeks earlier the same site logged 43 reads from 11 bots and a different leader. Here is the full log, the free plugin that captured it, and an honest account of what a fetch does and does not prove.

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Your Next Customer Is an AI Agent: The 10 Things Your Website Must Publish
Guide 22 min read

Your Next Customer Is an AI Agent: The 10 Things Your Website Must Publish

Someone asks an assistant to find the best locksmith in Birmingham. Before a human sees anything, an agent has to answer seven questions about your business, and it can only answer them from what you published. Yext found 42.7% of people already use AI for local search and 28% have tried a new business on its say-so. Here are the ten things a website has to publish to survive that shortlist, each one shown working on a real UK trade site.

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Claude Opus 5 Checks Its Own Work. Here's When to Use It Over Sonnet.
Explainer 14 min read

Claude Opus 5 Checks Its Own Work. Here's When to Use It Over Sonnet.

Ask most AI models to fix something and they will tell you it is fixed. Whether it actually is remains your problem. Claude Opus 5, released 24 July 2026, is the first one that reliably goes and looks before it answers, and that asks before it does something it thinks is a bad idea. What changed, the benchmark numbers translated into plain English, and the honest line between using Opus 5 and the cheaper, faster Sonnet 5.

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Your Next Website Visitor Might Be an AI Agent, Not a Person
Explainer 26 min read

Your Next Website Visitor Might Be an AI Agent, Not a Person

AI stopped chatting and started doing. Agents now research, compare, book and buy on a customer's behalf, and they never see your design: Google's own guidance says they work from a machine-readable representation of your site. One study measured agent-ready sites completing tasks at 89.3% against 49.3% for conventional ones. Here is what those visitors need, why "I'll wait until it becomes a standard" is the wrong test, and the three free steps to prepare your website for AI agents.

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Blocking Every Crawler in robots.txt? AI Can Never Recommend You
Explainer 11 min read

Blocking Every Crawler in robots.txt? AI Can Never Recommend You

A client with domains dating back to the early 1990s blocks every crawler in robots.txt, submits sitemaps to Google Search Console, and wants to appear in Google's AI results. That combination cannot work. Here's what Disallow: / actually does, why AI assistants can never recommend a site their crawlers can't read, the server-overload myth behind the policy, and the free two-minute check that shows what your own robots.txt is really blocking.

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AI Visibility Trackers Are a Waste of Money. Here's the Free Test.
Explainer 10 min read

AI Visibility Trackers Are a Waste of Money. Here's the Free Test.

A whole category of software now charges £25 to £400 a month to count how often AI mentions your brand. That number barely repeats between runs, can't be acted on, and isn't what you think you're buying. Here's why mention-tracking is a vanity metric, the free five-minute test that answers the same question, and the deterministic check that's actually worth your attention.

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What AI Visibility Actually Is (And Why the Tracker Tools Get It Wrong)
Explainer 12 min read

What AI Visibility Actually Is (And Why the Tracker Tools Get It Wrong)

Almost every tool defines AI visibility as how often an AI assistant mentions your brand. Share of voice, citation counts, mention tracking. That is tracking, and it measures an output that changes every time you ask. AI visibility is the input side: whether a website can be discovered, interpreted, trusted, and safely used by AI systems at all. Here is the case for the inputs, made fairly against the strongest objections.

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Google I/O's Agentic Search Demos Have a Visibility Problem. The Answer Is Already a Standard.
News 10 min read

Google I/O's Agentic Search Demos Have a Visibility Problem. The Answer Is Already a Standard.

Google I/O 2026 showed Universal Cart, agentic booking, and information agents picking which businesses to recommend on the customer's behalf. Search Engine Journal called it the new business visibility problem on 30 May. Six named industry experts agree there is a problem. Nobody is connecting the answer. The fix is already a published standard, and it is deployable today.

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