Brussels, 2026-10-15
The Direct Index, an independent measurement of whether AI assistants can find, read and act on a business's own website, published its Q4 2026 edition today, as a preview with data to 2026-10-15. In Brussels it scanned every dentists, clinics and vets business with a website of its own: 229 sites, 180 of them reachable.
Of the reachable sites, 24% turn at least one AI crawler away at the edge, almost always a hosting firewall the owner never chose. 35% take a booking or an order on their own domain; the rest hand that to a marketplace or offer nothing an agent can act on. 24 sites score A or B. That places Brussels 38 of 50 dentists, clinics and vets indexes in the edition, ranked by the share of sites that take bookings or orders directly.
The assistants have not been asked about Brussels yet; the next edition will say where ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini send people.
[Quote from Antonio Curado, founder of The Direct Index, Brussels. Two sentences on what the number means for owners in Brussels.]
The Direct Index is built by Antonio Curado, an engineer based in Brussels. The method is public, the data is open (ODbL) and nothing in the ranking is for sale. Every business in the index has a page with its findings, a free rescan and a badge. The Brussels index: https://directindex.org/city/brussels-clinics. The edition: https://directindex.org/editions/2026-q4. The method: https://directindex.org/methodology. The data: https://directindex.org/data. Contact: hello@directindex.org.
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