I scanned 20 Indian study-abroad consultants for AI visibility

On 31 July 2026 I ran 20 Indian study abroad and overseas education consultant homepages through my AI visibility scoring engine, the same one behind the free Report Card tool. It grades a page from 0 to 100 on how readable it is to AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews: structured data, FAQ schema, Open Graph tags, page title, a single clear H1. The median score came out to 90, and 14 of the 20 scored an A. That ties study abroad consulting with IVF and fertility clinics for the strongest vertical I've measured, and it's the first time a non medical category has reached the top. The reason turns out to have nothing to do with medicine at all.

The strongest non medical vertical I've scanned

Median score across the 20 consultants was 90, matching IVF and fertility clinics as the highest median I've recorded across every vertical I've scanned so far. Fourteen of the 20 scored an A (85 or above), and two hit a perfect 100. Only 2 scored a C, and nobody scored a D or an F.

Split by business model, the spread was narrow. Digital-first platforms, the app-led and often venture-funded players, had a median of 92 across 7 sites. Regional and independent consultancies came in at 88.5 across 8 sites. The large multi-city networks, which I expected to lead on resources, actually scored lowest at a median of 87 across 5 sites. The gap between the strongest and weakest group is only 5 points, which tells you this isn't about one type of business outbuilding the rest. Everyone here is playing the same game well.

Structured data is nearly universal

18 of the 20 consultants publish JSON-LD structured data on their homepage. That's the highest adoption rate I've measured in any vertical to date. Structured data is a block of code that tags a page's content in a format machines can parse directly, who the business is, what service it offers, where it operates, without an AI engine having to guess by reading prose.

The gap for the two that skipped it is stark. Those two sites scored 53 and 69, a median of 61. The 18 sites with structured data scored a median of 90.5. That's a 29.5 point gap, the single biggest swing I found in this study. An AI engine can still read a page without JSON-LD, but it has to infer instead of confirm, and inference is where a business risks getting summarized wrong, or skipped for a competitor whose page states things plainly.

The gap that's left: FAQ schema

Only 5 of the 20 consultants have FAQ schema on their homepage. In isolation that sounds low, but it's actually one of the higher FAQ adoption rates I've measured across any vertical. Most categories I've scanned sit at 0 to 3 out of 20. Even the strongest vertical I've found still leaves this specific box mostly empty.

A single clear H1, one unambiguous heading that tells both a reader and an AI engine what the page is about, is present on 14 of the 20 sites. The other 6 either have none or have competing headings that muddy the signal.

FAQ schema matters more for a study abroad consultant than for most businesses, because the questions a student or parent brings to an AI assistant are extremely specific: which country fits my profile, what's this consultant's visa success rate, what do they charge, do they help with scholarships. That's exactly the kind of question and answer content FAQPage markup is built for. Without it, the answer might be sitting in a paragraph on the page, but the engine has to read and interpret prose to find it instead of lifting a structured answer directly. With 15 of 20 sites still missing that markup, most of this vertical is leaving a very literal answer on the table.

The smaller gaps in the sample:

• FAQ schema present on only 5 of 20 consultant homepages.
• A single clear H1 missing on 6 of 20 sites.
• Open Graph tags present on 17 of 20, still not universal.
• The 2 sites without structured data scored just 53 and 69.

What to fix, for the sites still behind

1. Add JSON-LD structured data if it's missing, it's the single biggest gap I found, worth 29.5 points.
2. Add FAQPage schema for your most asked questions using a free schema generator, since only 5 of 20 sites have it.
3. Give your homepage one single, clear H1 that states what the consultancy does.
4. Add Open Graph tags so AI engines and social platforms can identify the page correctly.
5. Run your homepage through the free Report Card tool to see exactly which of these you're missing.

Method and limits

This is a snapshot, not a permanent ranking. I scanned 20 real study abroad consultant homepages live on 31 July 2026 using the same public engine that powers the free Report Card tool on this site, so anyone can run the same check on their own site or a competitor's. I looked only at each homepage, not the full site, and a homepage is not the whole story of a business's AI visibility. The sample also skews toward larger, more visible consultants I could find and scan quickly, so the long tail of small local agents and independent counsellors is likely weaker than what's reported here. Scores are anonymous and reported in aggregate; no business is named.

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