AEO Readiness Checker — Free by AEO Insider Skip to content

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Is Your Page Ready for AI Search?

Paste any URL and get an instant AEO readiness score — with a plain-English fix plan showing exactly what to improve.

Your website URL

Compare with competitor URL

Analyzing your page…

○Fetching page (trying proxies…)

○Parsing HTML structure

○Fetching & parsing robots.txt

○Scoring 7 AEO dimensions

○Building fix plan

FETCH_FAILED

Couldn’t fetch this page

All proxy attempts failed. No analysis has been run.

Common causes

Bot/proxy protection (Cloudflare, etc.) — the most common cause. The site blocks requests from known proxy IPs.

The page requires login or authentication

The URL is incorrect or returns a 404

The proxy services are temporarily overloaded — try again in a moment

Try a simpler page — blog posts and documentation sites work best

Your AEO Readiness Report

Scored across 7 categories · Generated

Results

Category Breakdown

How your page performs across the 7 AEO scoring dimensions.

Action Plan

Your Fix Plan

Prioritised by impact. Fix high-priority items first — they move your score the most.

Methodology

How the Score Is Calculated

We analyse 7 dimensions that AI engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — use when deciding whether to cite your content.

Answer Readiness

Direct answers, question headings, tables, and step-by-step lists — checked against the actual DOM.

Schema Markup

JSON-LD blocks are parsed and validated. FAQPage, HowTo, Article and Organization types checked.

Entity Clarity

Author bylines, bio elements, About page links, and contact info detected from actual markup.

Content Structure

H1 uniqueness, key takeaway blocks, list elements, and paragraph length from parsed DOM.

Technical Access

Indexability, canonical tag, OG tags — plus live robots.txt fetch to check GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot access.

Trust & Authority

Publication and modified dates from schema and DOM, outbound citations, and sources sections.

Freshness

Current year references in body text and dateModified signals in markup.

AEO Insider Editorial Updated May 2026 · 9 min read · GEO & AEO

AEO Readiness Explained: What AI Engines Check Before They Cite You

AEO readiness is a measure of how well a page is structured for discovery, extraction, and citation by AI engines. A page can rank well in Google and still score poorly on AEO readiness — because AI engines evaluate content differently from traditional search crawlers. This checker analyses the 7 dimensions that matter most to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.

Why AEO Readiness Differs From Traditional SEO

Traditional SEO optimisation focuses on ranking signals: keyword density, backlink profile, page speed, and Core Web Vitals. These signals help Google decide where to position a page in search results. AI engines work differently — they are not ranking pages. They are selecting sources to cite in generated answers.

The selection criteria AI engines use are much closer to editorial judgement than algorithmic ranking. They favour content that is clearly structured, explicitly attributed to a named author or organisation, contains direct answers to specific questions, and signals freshness through publication dates and recent year references. A technically perfect SEO page with no byline, no FAQ schema, and no question-based headings will consistently lose citation opportunities to a simpler page that answers questions directly.

The core difference

Google ranks pages based on authority and relevance signals. AI engines cite pages based on answer quality, attribution clarity, and structural extractability. Optimising for one does not automatically optimise for the other — which is why AEO readiness requires its own diagnostic framework.

How to Interpret Your AEO Score

The checker scores your page out of 100 across 7 weighted categories. Scores are graded as follows:

Score	Grade	What it means	Typical profile
85 – 100	Excellent	Well-optimised for AI citation	FAQPage schema, question headings, author bio, fresh content with dates
70 – 84	Good	Strong foundation, minor gaps	Has schema and structure, missing a few citation signals like Speakable or author bio
50 – 69	Needs Work	Several important gaps	Good content but no structured data, missing author attribution, or no question headings
0 – 49	Critical	Significant improvements needed	No schema, no author, long paragraphs, no direct answers — typical of unoptimised pages

A score in the Needs Work or Critical range is not a failure — it is a prioritised list of improvements. Most pages are in this range. The fix plan below your score shows exactly which items to address first, ordered by impact on citation eligibility.

The Priority Order for AEO Fixes

Not all fixes carry equal weight. Based on what AI engines like Perplexity and ChatGPT have been observed to prioritise in citation selection, here is the recommended order of implementation:

Add FAQPage Schema FAQPage JSON-LD is the single highest-impact schema type for AI citation. It gives AI engines explicit, machine-readable Q&A pairs to extract. Any page with question-based content should have this — add it using the Schema Markup tool or the AEO Schema Generator.

Add a Quick Answer Block A 40–60 word direct answer near the top of the page is the most-cited element in Google AI Overviews. Place it immediately after the H1, before any background context. Label it with a class like .quick-answer so it can be targeted by Speakable schema.

Rewrite Headings as Questions AI engines prefer headings phrased as direct questions (“What is AEO?”) over topic labels (“About AEO”). Rewrite at least 3 H2 or H3 headings as questions that mirror how your audience would search for this content.

Add Author Byline and Bio Author attribution is a primary E-E-A-T signal. AI engines use the author’s name, credentials, and organisation to evaluate source credibility. Add a visible byline with the author name and a short bio (50–80 words) stating their relevant expertise.

Mark Up Publication and Modified Dates Add datePublished and dateModified in Article schema. AI engines weight freshness — a page with an explicit modified date signals active maintenance. Without it, the original publication date is the only freshness signal available.

Add Outbound Citations AI engines trust pages that cite authoritative external sources. Add at least 2–3 outbound links to primary sources: official documentation, research papers, or reputable industry sites. Include a visible “Sources” or “References” section.

Why the Robots.txt Check Matters for AI Visibility

This checker performs a live fetch of your robots.txt file and checks whether three specific AI crawlers are permitted: GPTBot (OpenAI / ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Anthropic / Claude), and PerplexityBot (Perplexity). If any of these bots are blocked in your robots.txt, those AI engines cannot crawl your content — meaning your page will never be selected as a citation source regardless of how well it is structured.

Many sites inadvertently block AI bots through overly broad Disallow: / rules or by blocking all bots via wildcard rules without explicitly allowing AI crawlers. The robots.txt check in this tool gives you a real-time report on which bots are allowed, blocked, or covered only by wildcard rules.

If your robots.txt is inaccessible via proxy (a common result for sites with aggressive bot protection), the checker notes this rather than making assumptions. A manually verified check is recommended in that case.

What the Competitor Comparison Mode Tells You

The compare feature runs the full 7-dimension analysis on a second URL simultaneously and displays both scores side by side. This is most useful for:

Client reporting — showing a client where they stand relative to a direct competitor on the same topic
Content gap analysis — identifying which specific dimensions your page underperforms on relative to a competing page that ranks or gets cited for the same query
Before/after validation — running the same URL before and after making AEO improvements to measure the delta

Note that the comparison is a structural snapshot based on live HTML — it does not factor in domain authority, backlink profiles, or ranking history. Two pages with the same AEO score can have very different citation rates depending on their overall domain trust.

How to Use This Checker With the Other AEO Insider Tools

This checker is most effective as part of a workflow, not a one-off audit. The recommended sequence:

Run the AEO Readiness Checker on your page to identify the gaps and get a prioritised fix list.
Use the Schema Markup for AI Engines tool to generate FAQPage and Speakable schema for the specific page. This directly addresses the highest-impact fixes the checker identifies.
Use the AEO Schema Generator to generate Article, Author, BreadcrumbList, and Service schema — covering the entity and attribution signals the checker evaluates.
Re-run the checker after implementing changes to confirm the score has improved and no regressions have been introduced.

A page that scores 85+ on this checker and uses the correct schema markup from the generator tools is as well-positioned for AI citation as it can be without changes to the content itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is AEO readiness?

AEO readiness is a measure of how well a web page is structured for discovery, extraction, and citation by AI engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. It covers 7 dimensions: Answer Readiness, Schema Markup, Entity Clarity, Content Structure, Technical Access, Trust & Authority, and Freshness. A page can rank well in traditional search and still have low AEO readiness if it lacks structured data, author attribution, or question-based content.

How accurate is the AEO readiness score?

The score is based on a DOM analysis of your page’s live HTML — it checks actual markup, not assumptions. It is accurate for everything that can be detected from the page source: schema types, heading structure, author elements, robots.txt directives, canonical tags, and content signals. It does not measure domain authority, backlink profile, or ranking history. Think of it as a structural audit, not a full SEO assessment. Pages blocked by Cloudflare or other bot protection cannot be fetched via proxy and will return an error.

Why does my page fail the robots.txt check even though it’s publicly accessible?

This usually means one of three things: your robots.txt contains a Disallow: / rule for the wildcard user-agent (*) that also catches AI bots, you have explicitly blocked GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot by name, or your robots.txt could not be fetched via proxy due to bot protection on your server. Check your robots.txt at yourdomain.com/robots.txt directly. If you intentionally want AI engines to access your content, ensure none of the three specific bot names appear in a Disallow rule.

What is the single most impactful change I can make to improve my score?

For most pages, adding FAQPage schema delivers the largest score increase because it directly addresses both the Schema Markup dimension and, indirectly, the Answer Readiness dimension. FAQPage JSON-LD gives AI engines explicit Q&A pairs to extract and cite. The second most impactful change is adding a Quick Answer block — a 40–60 word direct answer near the top of the page. Together, these two changes typically lift a page from the Needs Work to the Good range.

Does a high AEO readiness score guarantee AI citations?

No. A high AEO readiness score means your page has the structural signals that AI engines look for when selecting citation sources — it maximises your eligibility. Actual citation frequency also depends on factors this tool does not measure: domain authority, content accuracy and completeness, how many competing pages cover the same query, and whether your content matches the specific phrasing of the AI engine’s query. AEO readiness is a necessary condition for consistent AI citation, not a sufficient one on its own.

Why can’t the checker analyse some URLs?

The checker fetches pages via three CORS proxy services. Sites protected by Cloudflare, Akamai, or other bot mitigation systems often block proxy IP ranges with a 403 Forbidden response — this is the most common failure case. Login-gated pages, pages returning 404 or 500 errors, and pages on very slow servers that time out before the 10-second limit are also unfetchable. Blog posts, documentation sites, and public editorial content work best. If a page cannot be fetched, no analysis is run and no score is displayed.

Sources & References

Google Developers — Google crawlers overview. Documentation on GPTBot and other AI crawler user-agents and how they interact with robots.txt directives.
OpenAI — GPTBot documentation. Official specification for the GPTBot user-agent including how to allow or disallow it in robots.txt.
Schema.org — FAQPage specification. Official specification for FAQPage structured data, the schema type with the highest observed impact on AI citation selection.
Google Developers — Speakable structured data. Implementation guide for Speakable schema, which explicitly marks content sections for voice assistant and AI extraction.