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Answer Engine Optimization

Free AEO Audit Tool

Run a 29-check audit of any site's AI search readiness in under 60 seconds. Technical, content, and authority signals, scored the way answer engines actually read you. No sign-up.

Methodology

Every check the audit runs, published

No black box: these are all 29 checks, grouped the way your score is grouped. The list mirrors the production auditor, so what you read here is what runs against your site.

29 is the full-coverage figure: the five detailed schema checks need JSON-LD present to evaluate (a site without structured data gets one consolidated schema check instead), and blog-dependent checks skip when there is no blog.

Technical (16 checks)

Can AI crawlers reach you, read you, and understand who you are? These checks cover the retrieval layer: bot access, rendering, and machine-readable structure.

Cloudflare AI blocking
Detects whether Cloudflare blocks or challenges an AI crawler request before it reaches your pages.
Search and AI search access
Confirms Googlebot, Bingbot and the AI search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) can crawl you, and that no noindex or nosnippet tag keeps your pages from being indexed or quoted.
robots.txt: user-initiated bots
Reports whether robots.txt blocks the fetchers assistants use when a real person asks (ChatGPT-User, Claude-User, Perplexity-User). Only Claude-User follows robots.txt; the firewall check catches blocks on the rest.
robots.txt: training crawlers
Reports which AI training crawlers (GPTBot, CCBot, and peers) you allow or block, so that trade-off is a decision, not an accident. Blocking Google-Extended is flagged, because Google says it also affects Gemini app answers.
Server-side rendering completeness
Verifies your main text is in the raw HTML. Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so text that only appears after it runs is invisible to them.
WAF bot overlay
Checks whether a web application firewall is silently challenging the same crawlers your robots.txt allows.
XML sitemap
Confirms a sitemap exists, at the standard location or listed in robots.txt, so crawlers can find every page you want read.
llms.txt
Reports whether you publish an llms.txt file. Not scored: Google says it is not needed, and no AI engine documents reading it.
Page speed
Times how long your homepage takes to download. It only warns, since no engine documents a speed threshold for AI answers.
Meta descriptions
Checks your homepage has a real meta description, which Microsoft lists among the signals AI systems use to understand a page.
Organization schema
Checks for an Organization node that tells engines whose site this is.
Person schema
Checks for author and founder Person markup that ties your people to your company.
FAQPage schema
Checks that a visible FAQ carries matching FAQPage markup. Only asked for when your pages show an FAQ.
Article schema
Checks articles carry Article or BlogPosting markup with dates and authorship.
Entity graph depth
Grades how many of your official profiles (LinkedIn, Crunchbase, X and others) your Organization schema links with sameAs, so engines can tell you apart from similarly named companies.
Schema @id connectivity
Checks your JSON-LD nodes reference each other into one connected graph instead of isolated islands.

Content (8 checks)

Once a crawler can read you, is there anything worth quoting? These checks cover extraction: whether your pages are structured the way AI answers are assembled.

FAQ content
Looks for visible question-and-answer sections, the format Microsoft says assistants can often lift word for word.
Direct answers
Looks for self-contained direct-answer paragraphs that open pages and sections.
Answer blocks
Checks each heading is followed by a concise, extractable answer rather than a slow wind-up.
Question headings
Looks for headings phrased as the questions people actually ask AI engines.
Heading hierarchy
One H1, then H2s and H3s: a clear outline of what each section covers.
Content depth
Flags a homepage with too little readable text to quote. Google says there is no ideal page length, so only near-empty pages are flagged.
Content freshness
Checks your dated content, such as articles, was updated recently. Undated pages like pricing are not counted against you.
Data attribution
Checks statistical claims name or link their sources. Bing says cited sources help build trust when content is reused in AI answers.

Authority (5 checks)

Would an engine trust you as a source? These checks cover the entity: who you are, whether that is stated plainly, and whether anyone else corroborates it.

Brand description
Checks the homepage states plainly what the company is, matched by Organization schema.
About page
Looks for a real about page anchoring the entity: who, where, since when.
Social proof
Looks for testimonials, reviews, or customer evidence engines can corroborate elsewhere.
Blog section
Checks for a maintained blog, the surface where topical authority accrues.
External citations
Checks you cite outward to authoritative sources instead of being a dead end.

For the concept behind the tool, see the glossary entries for AEO audit and AEO score, or the full guide to improving an AEO score.

Frequently asked questions

What does the free AEO audit tool check?

It runs 29 checks across three categories: 16 technical checks (search and AI crawler access, including noindex and nosnippet tags, Cloudflare and WAF interference, server-side rendering completeness, schema markup including the Organization, Person, FAQPage, and Article types, entity-graph depth, sitemap, llms.txt (reported, not scored), page speed, and meta descriptions), 8 content checks (FAQ sections, direct-answer paragraphs, answer blocks, question headings, heading hierarchy, content depth, freshness, and data attribution), and 5 authority checks (brand description, about page, social proof, blog presence, and external citations). Every check is listed on this page.

How long does an AEO audit take and do I need to sign up?

Under 60 seconds, and no. Enter a domain and the audit fetches your live site, runs the 29 checks, and returns an overall score with technical, content, and authority sub-scores. No account, no credit card, no email required to see your score.

Are all 29 checks always run?

29 is the full-coverage figure. The five detailed schema checks need JSON-LD on the site to evaluate; a site with no structured data gets one consolidated schema check instead, and a site without a blog skips blog-dependent checks. Most established B2B sites hit the full 29.

How is an AEO audit different from an SEO audit?

An SEO audit optimizes for ranking in a list of blue links; an AEO audit optimizes for being read, extracted, and cited inside AI answers. The overlap is real (crawlability, structure, speed), but AEO adds checks SEO tools skip: whether AI crawlers specifically can reach you, whether your content survives without JavaScript, whether answers are extractable as self-contained blocks, and whether your entity graph lets engines resolve who you are.

What do I get beyond the free score?

The free audit shows your overall score, the three category scores, and top findings. The AI-Advisors platform runs the full audit with page-level detail, prioritized recommendations with implementation guides, scheduled re-audits that catch regressions, and score projections for planned fixes. Plans start at $49 per month with a 14-day free trial.

Why does my site score low if it ranks well on Google?

Because some failure modes are specific to AI crawlers. Typical gaps on well-ranking sites are text that only appears after JavaScript runs, which most AI crawlers cannot read, a WAF or Cloudflare rule silently blocking or challenging AI bots, no direct-answer paragraphs, and an Organization schema that links none of your official profiles. Classic rank tracking does not show any of these, and each can keep your pages out of AI answers.

The audit finds the gaps. The platform closes them.

The Answer Engine Optimization module runs the same audit continuously: page-level detail, prioritized recommendations with implementation guides, scheduled re-audits that catch regressions, and score projections for planned fixes.