Published vCard File So AI Agents Can Add Your Contact to Address Books Cleanly
Publishes a downloadable, IETF-standard contact card AI agents and humans can save in one click.
What this signal tests
We check whether your site publishes a valid vCard 4.0 file (the IETF-standardised contact serialisation defined in RFC 6350) and serves it with the correct text/vcard content type. The vCard must include the required BEGIN:VCARD, VERSION:4.0, and END:VCARD markers. We probe common paths like /contact.vcf and scan your contact page for .vcf links.
Why it matters for your visibility in AI
vCard is the only IETF-standardised contact serialisation, and every mainstream address book - Apple Contacts, Google Contacts, Outlook, mobile dialers - imports it natively. When an AI agent helps a customer save your details, vCard is the canonical format both the agent and the destination app understand. Without one, agents either reconstruct a contact card from page prose (often inaccurate) or skip the save action and ask the user to enter details manually. For location-based businesses, professional services, and anyone whose customers are likely to want a saved contact ("add Dr Smith to my contacts", "save this caterer's details"), publishing a vCard turns an awkward multi-step task into a one-click handoff. The cost is minimal - vCard files are tiny text files - and the benefit lands the moment an agent decides your contact is worth saving.
Pass criteria at a glance
| Criterion | Passes when |
|---|---|
| At least one valid vCard 4.0 served with text/vcard. |
How we test it
Our scanner probes the conventional paths /contact.vcf, /vcard.vcf, and /about.vcf, and also scans your /contact page for anchor hrefs ending in .vcf or links served with a text/vcard content type. When it finds a candidate, it parses the file and confirms the required vCard 4.0 markers - BEGIN:VCARD, VERSION:4.0, FN (formatted name), and END:VCARD - are present. At least one valid vCard satisfies the signal.
Show technical detection method
Probe /contact.vcf, /vcard.vcf, /about.vcf; scan /contact for .vcf hrefs or text/vcard Content-Type.
If your site fails: how to fix it
- Generate a vCard 4.0 file per RFC 6350 containing your business name, address, primary phone, primary email, and website; the work to do this is best done by a developer who can read RFC 6350 or use a vCard library.
- Host the file at a conventional path such as /contact.vcf or /vcard.vcf and ensure your web server returns it with the content type text/vcard, not the default text/plain or application/octet-stream.
- Link to the vCard prominently from your contact page with anchor text like Save contact, and consider a small download icon so human visitors also benefit from the same one-click contact save.
- Keep the vCard in sync with your contact page; stale phone numbers in a saved contact are worse than no saved contact at all because the user will not realise the data is out of date.
- For multi-location businesses, publish a vCard per location and link to each from the relevant location page so the right address-book entry is created for each branch.
Quick facts
| Maturity | ESTABLISHED |
|---|---|
| Weight | low |
| Category | Agent Actions |
Primary sources
Related signals
Frequently asked questions
Does this cost anything to implement?
vCard files are plain text and can be hand-written or generated by any contact tool in seconds. Hosting is included in any web hosting plan. The only configuration step is setting the text/vcard content type on the file, which is typically one line in your web server config.
How is this different from a mailto: link?
A mailto: link triggers an action - open mail client with this address. A vCard is a contact card - name, organization, multiple phone numbers, addresses, and website - that gets saved into the user's address book. Both are useful; vCard is for handoff to address books, mailto: is for an inline contact action.
Will agents really use vCard files?
Yes. Apple Intelligence, mobile assistants, and emerging contact-management agents all consume vCard for address-book operations because it is the format their destination apps already understand. Web agents that produce a Save contact button typically generate or fetch a vCard behind the scenes.
Is this worth doing if we have organization Schema.org markup?
Yes, the two are complementary. Schema.org Organization markup is what AI search engines read to know who you are. vCard is what address books and contact apps consume to save you. Most AI agents prefer to pull both, using vCard specifically for the save-to-contacts action.
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