Luna Studios Research · The metric
The Speaking Index.
One number answers how far the talking web has actually come: the share of business websites able to answer a visitor on their own. Measured annually, with an unchanged method.
Speaking Index 2026 · all four countries
0.06
out of 100
Of 659,095 reachable business websites across the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, 385 can answer a visitor without human involvement.
Definition
What the index measures.
The Speaking Index of a market is the percentage of business websites able to give a visitor a substantive answer without human involvement.
Counting is strict: a conventional chat window is not enough, because it only answers when a human is sitting behind it. Only systems that can answer a question independently count — verified by their actual integration in the source code, not by declarations. In the German editions the metric is called Sprech-Index.
2026 values
The current standings.
| Market | Speaking Index 2026 | One answering website in | Basis | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland | 0.12 | 823 | 37,862 reachable websites | Edition 01 (DE) → |
| Austria | 0.07 | 1,380 | 44,151 reachable websites | Edition 03 (DE) → |
| Germany | 0.06 | 1,667 | 301,643 reachable websites | Edition 02 (DE) → |
| United States | 0.05 | 2,186 | 275,439 reachable websites | Edition 05 → |
| DACH combined | 0.07 | 1,481 | 383,656 reachable websites | Edition 04 (DE) → |
The ranking matters less than the level: no measured market reaches even a tenth of a percent — except Switzerland, barely above it. The talking web has not begun. Which is precisely why its baseline is now documented.
Measurement rules
How it is measured.
The full methodology including its limits is documented in every edition. Systems injected by JavaScript after load are invisible to this method — the values are lower bounds.
Time series
2026 is the baseline.
The Speaking Index is updated annually with an unchanged method. From the second measurement on, it shows movement, not just state: how fast websites learn to answer, and where first. The 2027 edition is scheduled for summer 2027.
The Speaking Index has a sister metric: the Reading Index (German: Lese-Index) — the share of business websites that let AI systems read them. 2026 values: US 19.79 · Switzerland 14.24 · Austria 9.09 · Germany 8.01. Together the two metrics answer the same question from two directions: can a website speak with people — and can machines read it? Notably, the most machine-readable market (the US) is also the one least able to answer.
Whoever defines a category's metric and owns its time series gets cited for as long as the category exists.
Use
How to cite the index.
All values may be used freely. Suggested citation:
"Speaking Index 2026 (United States): 0.05 — Luna Studios, lunastudios.ai/en/research/speaking-index"