{
  "study": "How the top 100 YC startups do SEO",
  "slug": "yc-startups-seo",
  "collected": [
    "2026-10-13"
  ],
  "sample": {
    "source": "Y Combinator company directory, via the yc-oss/api mirror",
    "mirrorUpdated": "2026-10-13T04:38:36.118Z",
    "rule": "The 100 largest YC companies by team size listed on YC's directory, status Active or Public, nonprofits excluded; ties at the cutoff broken by YC's Top Company badge, then name",
    "n": 100,
    "teamSizeCutoff": 300,
    "ycTopCompanyBadge": 42,
    "usHq": 60,
    "public": 13,
    "industries": {
      "Consumer": 17,
      "Fintech": 15,
      "Real Estate and Construction": 3,
      "B2B": 49,
      "Healthcare": 10,
      "Education": 2,
      "Industrials": 4
    }
  },
  "access": {
    "homeReachable": 93,
    "viaHttp": 87,
    "viaBrowserOnly": 6,
    "notReachable": [
      "Breadfast (blocked 463)",
      "DoorDash (challenge)",
      "Airbnb (geo handoff to a country domain)",
      "Zepto (blocked 202)",
      "Helloverify (blocked ERR_SSL_TLSV1_UNRECOGNIZED_NAME)",
      "MarketForce (parked domain)",
      "SkydropX (blocked 403)"
    ],
    "geoRedirects": [
      "Stripe: https://stripe.com/in",
      "Coinbase: https://www.coinbase.com/en-in",
      "Wave: https://www.wave.com/en/",
      "Xendit: https://www.xendit.co/en/",
      "Nowports: https://nowports.com/en",
      "Tractian: https://tractian.com/en",
      "Flutterwave: https://flutterwave.com/us/",
      "LemFi: https://lemfi.com/en-ca/"
    ]
  },
  "homepage": {
    "n": 93,
    "title": {
      "missing": 2,
      "medianLength": 51,
      "over60": 15,
      "under30": 10
    },
    "metaDescription": {
      "missing": 8,
      "medianLength": 148,
      "over160": 20
    },
    "h1Raw": {
      "none": 11,
      "exactlyOne": 68,
      "more": 14
    },
    "h1NoneEvenRendered": 10,
    "canonical": {
      "present": 81
    },
    "noindex": [],
    "hreflang": {
      "any": 33,
      "median": 6
    },
    "ogImage": 75,
    "jsonLd": {
      "any": 67,
      "rawOnly": 64,
      "types": {
        "Organization": 56,
        "WebSite": 43,
        "WebPage": 28,
        "BreadcrumbList": 16,
        "SoftwareApplication": 7,
        "ImageObject": 7,
        "FAQPage": 6,
        "VideoObject": 3,
        "ItemList": 2,
        "MedicalOrganization": 2,
        "Product": 2,
        "LocalBusiness": 2,
        "Corporation": 2,
        "Person": 2,
        "(invalid JSON-LD)": 1,
        "DiagnosticLab": 1,
        "organization": 1,
        "SpeakableSpecification": 1,
        "FinancialService": 1,
        "Article": 1,
        "Service": 1,
        "AggregateRating": 1
      }
    },
    "jsDependent": [
      "Tractian (230/845)",
      "Odeko (5/859)",
      "Khatabook (0/336)"
    ],
    "medianWordsRaw": 1051,
    "medianWordsRendered": 772
  },
  "crawl": {
    "robotsTxt": {
      "known": 95,
      "present": 91
    },
    "bots": {
      "Googlebot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 0,
        "partial": 65,
        "allowed": 26,
        "namedGroup": 10
      },
      "GPTBot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 2,
        "partial": 63,
        "allowed": 26,
        "namedGroup": 16
      },
      "OAI-SearchBot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 0,
        "partial": 64,
        "allowed": 27,
        "namedGroup": 15
      },
      "ChatGPT-User": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 0,
        "partial": 63,
        "allowed": 28,
        "namedGroup": 15
      },
      "ClaudeBot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 2,
        "partial": 62,
        "allowed": 27,
        "namedGroup": 17
      },
      "Claude-SearchBot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 1,
        "partial": 66,
        "allowed": 24,
        "namedGroup": 4
      },
      "PerplexityBot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 1,
        "partial": 62,
        "allowed": 28,
        "namedGroup": 17
      },
      "Google-Extended": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 1,
        "partial": 63,
        "allowed": 27,
        "namedGroup": 14
      },
      "CCBot": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 2,
        "partial": 65,
        "allowed": 24,
        "namedGroup": 10
      },
      "Applebot-Extended": {
        "n": 91,
        "blocked": 1,
        "partial": 68,
        "allowed": 22,
        "namedGroup": 6
      }
    },
    "anyAiBotBlockedSitewide": [
      "Rappi",
      "Instacart",
      "Scribd"
    ],
    "anyAiBotNamed": 21,
    "llmsTxt": {
      "n": 92,
      "count": 38,
      "pct": 41.3
    },
    "sitemap": {
      "n": 93,
      "count": 88,
      "pct": 94.6
    },
    "sitemapUrlsMedian": 1218,
    "sitemapUrlsP": {
      "under100": 10,
      "over10k": 17,
      "n": 85
    }
  },
  "content": {
    "blog": {
      "n": 92,
      "count": 74,
      "pct": 80.4
    },
    "blogDated": 51,
    "datedBy": {
      "feed": 23,
      "blog page, printed dates": 24,
      "blog page, machine dates": 4
    },
    "medianDaysSinceLatestPost": 7,
    "postedWithin": {
      "d30": 39,
      "d90": 42,
      "over365": 5
    },
    "feeds": 24,
    "feedPosts90d": {
      "n": 15,
      "median": 3,
      "list": [
        "Deel: 47",
        "GitLab: 3",
        "Wave: 0",
        "Clipboard: 3",
        "Akido Labs: 0",
        "Amplitude: 30",
        "Benchling: 13",
        "Shipper: 0",
        "Veriff: 0",
        "H1: 5",
        "Houm: 2",
        "TRM Labs: 45",
        "Front: 22",
        "Reliance Health: 3",
        "Plivo: 33"
      ]
    },
    "comparison": {
      "n": 85,
      "count": 35,
      "pct": 41.2
    },
    "comparisonMedianAmongUsers": 14,
    "comparisonTop": [
      {
        "name": "Apollo.io",
        "pages": 171
      },
      {
        "name": "Aspire",
        "pages": 119
      },
      {
        "name": "Amplitude",
        "pages": 82
      },
      {
        "name": "Rippling",
        "pages": 71
      },
      {
        "name": "Zapier",
        "pages": 66
      },
      {
        "name": "Bird",
        "pages": 39
      },
      {
        "name": "Guesty",
        "pages": 33
      },
      {
        "name": "Deel",
        "pages": 29
      },
      {
        "name": "Ironclad",
        "pages": 23
      },
      {
        "name": "Veriff",
        "pages": 22
      }
    ],
    "vsExplainers": {
      "n": 85,
      "count": 53,
      "pct": 62.4
    },
    "pricing": {
      "n": 100,
      "count": 52,
      "pct": 52
    },
    "docs": {
      "n": 100,
      "count": 41,
      "pct": 41
    },
    "changelog": {
      "n": 100,
      "count": 23,
      "pct": 23
    },
    "helpCenter": {
      "n": 100,
      "count": 52,
      "pct": 52
    }
  },
  "segments": [
    {
      "name": "US headquarters",
      "n": 60,
      "blog": {
        "n": 58,
        "count": 49,
        "pct": 84.5
      },
      "postedLast30d": {
        "n": 31,
        "count": 27,
        "pct": 87.1
      },
      "comparison": {
        "n": 52,
        "count": 27,
        "pct": 51.9
      },
      "pricing": {
        "n": 60,
        "count": 38,
        "pct": 63.3
      },
      "llms": {
        "n": 58,
        "count": 27,
        "pct": 46.6
      },
      "schema": {
        "n": 58,
        "count": 43,
        "pct": 74.1
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Headquarters outside the US",
      "n": 40,
      "blog": {
        "n": 34,
        "count": 25,
        "pct": 73.5
      },
      "postedLast30d": {
        "n": 20,
        "count": 12,
        "pct": 60
      },
      "comparison": {
        "n": 33,
        "count": 8,
        "pct": 24.2
      },
      "pricing": {
        "n": 40,
        "count": 14,
        "pct": 35
      },
      "llms": {
        "n": 34,
        "count": 11,
        "pct": 32.4
      },
      "schema": {
        "n": 35,
        "count": 24,
        "pct": 68.6
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "B2B (YC industry label)",
      "n": 49,
      "blog": {
        "n": 46,
        "count": 42,
        "pct": 91.3
      },
      "postedLast30d": {
        "n": 29,
        "count": 24,
        "pct": 82.8
      },
      "comparison": {
        "n": 45,
        "count": 30,
        "pct": 66.7
      },
      "pricing": {
        "n": 49,
        "count": 36,
        "pct": 73.5
      },
      "llms": {
        "n": 46,
        "count": 25,
        "pct": 54.3
      },
      "schema": {
        "n": 46,
        "count": 33,
        "pct": 71.7
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Consumer",
      "n": 17,
      "blog": {
        "n": 12,
        "count": 7,
        "pct": 58.3
      },
      "postedLast30d": {
        "n": 5,
        "count": 4,
        "pct": 80
      },
      "comparison": {
        "n": 10,
        "count": 1,
        "pct": 10
      },
      "pricing": {
        "n": 17,
        "count": 4,
        "pct": 23.5
      },
      "llms": {
        "n": 14,
        "count": 2,
        "pct": 14.3
      },
      "schema": {
        "n": 13,
        "count": 8,
        "pct": 61.5
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "YC Top Company badge",
      "n": 42,
      "blog": {
        "n": 38,
        "count": 31,
        "pct": 81.6
      },
      "postedLast30d": {
        "n": 24,
        "count": 22,
        "pct": 91.7
      },
      "comparison": {
        "n": 34,
        "count": 17,
        "pct": 50
      },
      "pricing": {
        "n": 42,
        "count": 28,
        "pct": 66.7
      },
      "llms": {
        "n": 39,
        "count": 16,
        "pct": 41
      },
      "schema": {
        "n": 39,
        "count": 27,
        "pct": 69.2
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "No badge",
      "n": 58,
      "blog": {
        "n": 54,
        "count": 43,
        "pct": 79.6
      },
      "postedLast30d": {
        "n": 27,
        "count": 17,
        "pct": 63
      },
      "comparison": {
        "n": 51,
        "count": 18,
        "pct": 35.3
      },
      "pricing": {
        "n": 58,
        "count": 24,
        "pct": 41.4
      },
      "llms": {
        "n": 53,
        "count": 22,
        "pct": 41.5
      },
      "schema": {
        "n": 54,
        "count": 40,
        "pct": 74.1
      }
    }
  ]
}