Markdown alternate link

A rel="alternate" link pointing to text/markdown tells an agent a Markdown copy exists, so it does not have to guess.

Standard
Emerging checkEmerging
Off by default, turn on in settings

No agent or browser has announced support yet.

27 others: no evidence yet. See every agent and browser

What it checks

The extension looks for a link to a Markdown copy of the page in two places:

  • The HTTP Link response header, with type="text/markdown".
  • A <link rel="alternate"> element on the rendered page with a text/markdown type.

Results

Status When
Pass A Markdown alternate is advertised in the Link header or the page
N/A No Markdown alternate is advertised

How to fix

Add a <link> element to the page’s <head> pointing to its Markdown copy:

<link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="https://example.com/docs/setup.md" />

Or send the equivalent response header:

Link: <https://example.com/docs/setup.md>; rel="alternate"; type="text/markdown"

Related: Markdown URL fallback and Link response headers.

Announced means the vendor’s own docs or announcement say so. Published is the date on the vendor’s own page, where it has one. Checked is the last time our weekly research found that page still saying so.

No agent or browser has announced anything about this yet.

No evidence yet27
  • ChatGPT
  • Claude
  • Gemini
  • Perplexity
  • Copilot
  • Meta AI
  • ChatGPT Atlas
  • Comet
  • Dia
  • Gemini in Chrome
  • Edge Copilot Mode
  • Claude Code
  • Cursor
  • Codex
  • GitHub Copilot
  • Windsurf
  • CCBot
  • Applebot
  • Amazonbot
  • Bytespider
  • Cohere
  • Mistral
  • DuckAssist
  • Chrome
  • Edge
  • Firefox
  • Safari

Adoption on the top 100 sites

2 of 99 measured sites implement it

Scanned 23 Oct 2026 with the Sitebulb Labs extension, against the Tranco list (tranco-56Z8N). 1 sites couldn’t be measured (bot challenge or timeout) and are left out of the share.

9 Oct 2026: 3%12 Oct 2026: 3%23 Oct 2026: 2%
9 Oct 2026 3% → 23 Oct 2026 2%
Sites implementing it2
  1. #2 cloudflare.com
  2. #55 wordpress.org

Overview

4/9

Speculative

Specified, but little evidence anything uses it yet.

How this rating is worked out4 of 9 points
FactorPointsWhy
Vendor support0 / 30 vendors supporting, 0 partly or planned
Top-100 adoption1 / 32% of measured sites
Spec maturity3 / 3Published standard

8 or more points is Established, 5 to 7 is Gaining traction, 2 to 4 is Speculative and under 2 is Stalled. A feature is also Stalled when more vendors have said no than yes. Read the spec.

Community insights

No community insights for this feature yet.

Quotes are from public posts, checked against the original before they appear here. Suggest an insight, or ask for yours to be removed.