Understanding the Natural Language Web (NLWeb) and What It Means for SEO

TL;DR

• Search is changing. We’re moving from classic “10 blue links” to AI-powered “answer engines” and assistants that pull information directly from websites.

• NLWeb (Natural Language Web) is an open project from Microsoft that lets people and AI agents ask your website questions in everyday language and get structured answers back.

• Schema is now a core asset, not a bonus. NLWeb leans heavily on schema.org and structured data to understand your services, locations, providers, and content. Clean, accurate schema becomes your “information API” for AI.

• SEO is shifting from keyword-first to entity-first. It’s no longer just about phrases on a page; it’s about clearly defining entities (your practice, providers, services, locations) and their relationships in structured data.

• Technical SEO = AI readiness. Technical SEO services now include making sure your site is fast, crawlable, secure, and marked up with robust, error-free schema so AI systems and NLWeb-style tools can reliably use your content.

• You don’t need NLWeb live to benefit. By investing in technical SEO, entity-focused schema, and strong site architecture now, you’re improving today’s rankings and preparing your site to be a trusted data source in the agentic web.

AI has already changed how people search.

We’re no longer just typing keywords into a box—we’re asking full questions and expecting clear, conversational answers from tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and other AI assistants.

Behind the scenes, the web is shifting too.

One of the clearest examples of this shift is NLWeb (Natural Language Web), an open project from Microsoft designed to make websites directly queryable by people and AI agents using natural language.

And that has big implications for SEO.

In this post, we’ll walk through:

• How things used to work on the web
• What NLWeb actually is (in plain English)
• How it may shape the future of SEO
• What you can do now with technical SEO and schema to get ready

From “10 Blue Links” to AI Answers: How the Web Used to Work

For most of the web’s history, search worked like this:

1. Crawlers discover pages
   Search engines like Google use bots to crawl links and sitemaps, find new URLs, and download HTML.
2. They index your content
   The HTML gets parsed, text is extracted, and pages are stored in a giant index.
3. They rank pages based on signals
   Things like:
   • Keywords and content relevance
   • Links and authority
   • Technical health (status codes, mobile-friendliness, page speed, etc.)

Traditional SEO grew up inside this system:

• Do your keyword research, write content, and earn backlinks.
• Use technical SEO to make sure nothing breaks: fix 404s, set up redirects, improve Core Web Vitals, and maintain clean site architecture.
• Use schema (structured data) as a “bonus” for rich results (stars, FAQs, breadcrumbs).

That model still matters—but it’s no longer the whole picture.

AI assistants and agents don’t want to scrape messy pages if they can instead access clean, structured data that tells them exactly what your site is about. The web is slowly moving from a network of pages to a network of knowledge.

That’s where NLWeb comes in.

What Is the Natural Language Web (NLWeb)?

NLWeb in Plain English

NLWeb (Natural Language Web) is an open project from Microsoft that turns websites into natural language interfaces. Users and AI agents can ask questions in everyday language and get answers powered directly by your site.

Instead of just having a search bar that looks for keywords, your site can behave more like an app or an assistant:

“What services do you offer in Chicago?”
“Do you take virtual appointments?”
“What are your prices for X?”

NLWeb’s goal is to help a website answer questions like these directly—both for human visitors and for AI tools that need up-to-date information.

How NLWeb Works (High Level)

Under the hood, NLWeb:

1. Crawls your site, similar to a search engine.
2. Pulls structured and semi-structured data, especially:
   • Schema.org JSON-LD
   • Feeds like RSS, and other structured formats
3. Indexes that content in a vector database so it can understand concepts, not just exact keywords.
4. Exposes an endpoint (usually /ask) that AI agents and users can query in natural language.

Every NLWeb instance is also a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which means it plugs directly into the growing ecosystem of AI agents that use MCP as a standard way to talk to tools and data sources. 

So instead of simply “reading” your site, an AI agent can say:

“Hey, this site has an NLWeb interface—let me ask it directly.”

NLWeb and the “Agentic Web”

You’ll hear the phrase agentic web more and more. It refers to a web where AI agents (not just human users) navigate sites, ask questions, and complete tasks on our behalf.

Microsoft’s NLWeb, combined with Cloudflare’s AutoRAG, is one of the first serious attempts to build infrastructure for that world, where websites are ready to be queried like databases by AI agents across the MCP ecosystem.

Why NLWeb Makes Schema a Big Deal for SEO

In the NLWeb model, schema isn’t just for rich snippets anymore.

Schema as Your “Information API”

Structured data—especially schema.org in JSON-LD—becomes the primary way NLWeb understands your site’s:

• Organization or brand
• Services or products
• People (practitioners, authors, staff)
• Locations
• Articles, FAQs, events, and more

Think of schema as your information API. If it’s clean, complete, and accurate, AI systems have a solid, trustworthy representation of your business. If it’s broken or missing, your website becomes much harder to use as a reliable data source.

The Search Engine Land piece argues that this is the time to “mandate an entity-first schema audit”—in other words, make sure your structured data thoroughly represents the key entities that define your business.

From Keywords to Entities

This shift lines up with a broader change in SEO: from keyword-first to entity-first.

Entities are the “things” in your business ecosystem:

• Your practice or company
• Individual clinicians or providers
• Services you offer
• Conditions or topics you treat
• Locations you serve

An entity-first schema strategy makes those relationships explicit:

• Dr. X works at Clinic Y
• Clinic Y is located in City Z
• Clinic Y offers Service A, which can be booked online or in person

The better you encode this data with schema, the easier it is for NLWeb, search engines, and AI agents to understand—and trust—your business.

From Ranking Pages to Being the Trusted Source

With AI assistants and agents, you’re not always competing for a spot in a classic SERP with 10 links. Sometimes you’re competing to be:

The source the assistant relies on when answering.

Your goal becomes:
“Make my website the most reliable, structured source on this topic in my niche.”

Schema is how you tell NLWeb (and other systems):

“This is who we are, this is what we do, and here’s how everything connects.”

How NLWeb and the Agentic Web Change SEO Strategy

So what does all this mean for your SEO strategy in practical terms?

1. Technical SEO Becomes “AI Readiness”

Technical SEO has always been important—but NLWeb raises the stakes.

Now, technical SEO isn’t just about:

• Crawlability
• Indexability
• Fast pages

It’s also about:

• Whether your content exists in a structured, machine-readable form
• If your schema is valid, consistent, and comprehensive
• Whether AI agents can safely and securely query your site

Messy structured data, conflicting markup, or blocked resources don’t just cost you a rich result—they can make your site harder for AI systems to use at all.

2. Performance and Architecture Still Matter

The basics don’t go away:

• Good Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) still help crawlers, users, and any NLWeb/AutoRAG indexing processes.
• Logical site architecture and smart internal linking still guide crawlers—and help define which pages map to which entities and services.
• Proper use of robots.txt, canonicals, and sitemaps keeps things clean and reduces confusion.

You can think of NLWeb and MCP as the new plumbing, but performance and architecture are still your water pressure and pipe layout.

3. Security Becomes Part of the SEO Conversation

Any time we introduce new protocols and endpoints, security matters.

NLWeb has already had a high-profile security flaw that allowed access to sensitive configuration files until it was patched—highlighting how traditional vulnerabilities can have much bigger impacts in an AI context.

That doesn’t mean “avoid NLWeb”; it means:

• Work with devs and security teams.
• Keep open-source components updated.
• Treat AI-related endpoints as seriously as any other attack surface.

Technical SEO often sits at the intersection of marketing and development, which puts you in a strong position to advocate for secure, well-managed implementations.

4. From Search Engines to “Answer Engines”

Tools like NLWeb plus Cloudflare AutoRAG are part of a broader shift:

• Away from “search engines that show lists of links”
• Toward “answer engines” that provide direct responses, backed by sources

Your website isn’t just a destination; it’s a data source that AI tools consult.

SEO’s job isn’t going away—but it is expanding to include:

“How do we make our site the best possible source for AI agents to draw from?”

Practical Steps: Making Your Site NLWeb- and AI-Ready with Technical SEO

You don’t have to deploy NLWeb tomorrow to benefit from this shift. A lot of the prep work looks like good technical SEO—with an entity-first mindset.

Here’s how we typically think about it.

Step 1: Run a Technical & Structured Data Audit

Start by answering: What does a machine actually see when it looks at our site?

That means auditing:

• Crawlability and indexation issues
• Duplicate, thin, or low-value pages
• Existing structured data:
  • Are we using schema.org types correctly?
  • Are there validation errors?
  • Are we missing key entities (organization, services, locations, people)?

This is exactly what we focus on in our technical SEO audits—not just “Does the site load?” but “How well could an AI system understand this site’s content and relationships?”

Step 2: Build an Entity-First Schema Strategy

Next, identify the entities that matter most:

• Your brand/organization
• Locations
• Providers or key team members
• Core services or offerings
• Content hubs (guides, FAQs, pillars)

Then design schema that:

• Uses appropriate types (Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Person, Article, FAQPage, etc.)
• Connects entities using @id references and properties like employee, provider, areaServed, offers, availableService
• Matches what’s actually on the page (no “fantasy schema” for things that don’t exist)

This sets you up not only for current search engines, but also for NLWeb-style systems that lean heavily on schema.org and related formats.

Step 3: Strengthen Performance and Crawlability

Then, shore up the fundamentals:

• Improve Core Web Vitals where needed (LCP, INP, CLS).
• Fix or redirect broken links.
• Streamline navigation and internal links so important pages aren’t buried.
• Ensure sitemaps and robots.txt are correctly configured.

These improvements help:

• Search engines crawl and rank you more effectively today
• NLWeb/AutoRAG style crawlers more efficiently build semantic indexes of your content tomorrow

Step 4: Optimize for Conversational Queries

NLWeb is designed to power conversational interactions. Even if you don’t use it yet, you can prepare by:

• Identifying your most common questions:
  • “Do you offer virtual appointments?”
  • “What insurance do you accept?”
  • “How does [service] work?”
• Building clear FAQ sections and Q&A content that:
  • Lives on relevant service/location pages
  • Is marked up with FAQPage or QAPage schema where appropriate

When your content is structured around real questions, it’s easier for both AI assistants and potential NLWeb-style agents to surface helpful, accurate answers.

Step 5: Monitor, Learn, and Iterate

Finally, treat this as an evolving landscape:

• Watch Google Search Console for how your entity-focused pages perform.
• Keep an eye on how AI tools reference your brand or pull from your content.
• Update schema and technical configuration as standards like MCP and NLWeb mature.

This isn’t a one-time project; it’s a steady move toward making your site a high-quality data source, not just a collection of pages.

What This Means for Your Business (And Why It’s Not Too Late)

All of this can sound overwhelming. But here’s the good news:

• You don’t need to implement NLWeb today to benefit from the mindset shift.
• The same practices that help you rank better now—clean architecture, strong schema, optimized performance—also make you more “AI-ready” over time.
• The sooner you start treating technical SEO and structured data as strategic assets, the more prepared you’ll be as AI agents and the agentic web become more mainstream.

Think of this moment as an opportunity:

While others are still only thinking in terms of “keywords and links,” you can be quietly building a site that search engines, NLWeb, and AI assistants love to use as a trusted source.

How Simplified SEO Can Help: Technical SEO for the Agentic Web

Our team can provide support with technical SEO that prepares your site for both today’s search engines and tomorrow’s AI-driven experiences. If you’re curious how well your current site would perform in this new landscape, or you want help turning your website into a clear, structured source that AI can understand, you can start working with Simplified SEO Consulting by following these simple steps:

1. Schedule a free SEO consultation.
2. Meet with an SEO specialist
3. Start building your technical SEO foundation!

Other Services Offered with Simplified SEO Consulting

Along with our technical SEO services, we offer a full suite of support for doctors and other healing professionals. This includes local SEO services, Done-For-You SEO packages, DIY online SEO courses, and SEO consulting. We also provide stand-alone copywriting services and focused SEO strategy sessions. Be sure to visit our blog for more in-depth SEO tips and education!