What are the 48 AEO criteria?

The 48 criteria are organized into 5 pillars with fixed target shares: Answer Readiness 40%, Content Structure 25%, Trust & Authority 15%, Technical Foundation 10%, and AI Discovery 10%. Inside those pillars, criteria cover topic coherence, original data, depth, fact density, direct answers, Q&A structure, entity authority, freshness, visible dates, schema, semantic HTML, extraction friction, llms.txt, robots.txt, licensing, canonicals, sitemap coverage, and RSS. Each criterion is scored 0–10, converted into an effective weight after confidence and overlap controls, then rolled into the final score.

What does the RSS feed audit check?

The audit verifies your site has a discoverable RSS or Atom feed with proper metadata. It checks feed existence at common paths, a link tag in the HTML head, adequate item count, and pubDate per item. RSS feeds let AI indexing systems detect new content automatically without waiting for a full crawl.

What content licensing signals does the audit check?

The audit looks for machine-readable licensing metadata: CreativeWork license properties in JSON-LD, meta tags indicating reuse policy, copyright notices, ai.txt declarations, and TDM Reservation Protocol headers. Clear licensing tells AI systems whether they can quote or reference your content in their answers.

What is content cannibalization and how does it hurt AI visibility?

Content cannibalization happens when multiple pages on your site target the same topic, forcing AI to guess which one to cite. The scorer compares page titles and content similarity across your site. Fix it by consolidating competing pages into one authoritative resource with 301 redirects from the old URLs. When Topic Coherence is low, the cannibalization penalty becomes more aggressive.

How does canonical URL strategy affect AI visibility?

When multiple URLs serve the same content — with/without www, HTTP/HTTPS, trailing slashes — AI crawlers split signals across duplicates. The audit checks every page for a rel=canonical link pointing to the correct URL. Missing or conflicting canonicals confuse crawlers about which version to index, diluting your AI visibility.

firecrawl.dev - AEO Audit Report | 66/100

SUMMER 2022 firecrawl.dev

Moderate AI visibility with 35 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: rss/atom feed.

Developer Tools & Infrastructure Developer Platforms

Scoring Methodology

How Your AEO Site Rank Is Calculated

A weighted average of 48 deterministic criteria. Each scored 0-10, each with a specific weight. No AI judgment calls - every point is traceable.

Moderate visibilityOut of 100 possible points

The Formula

Score = sum(criterion_score / 10 * weight * 100) / sum(weights)

Each criterion is scored 0-10 by deterministic checks, multiplied by its weight, and summed to produce a 0-100 overall score.

Your Score Breakdown

Content9 criteria

Q&A Content Format15%10/10+15.0

FAQ Sections10%4/10+4.0

Original Data10%8/10+8.0

Content Freshness7%5/10+3.5

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%10/10+7.0

Fact & Data Density5%10/10+5.0

Definition Patterns4%7/10+2.8

Query-Answer Alignment8%7/10+5.6

Content Cannibalization5%10/10+5.0

Subtotal71%+55.9

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%8/10+12.0

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%9/10+9.0

Semantic HTML55%9/10+4.5

Table & List Extractability7%10/10+7.0

Schema Coverage3%8/10+2.4

Subtotal40%+34.9

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%3/10+1.5

Internal Linking10%5/10+5.0

Sitemap Completeness5%9/10+4.5

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+21.0

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%4/10+4.0

Content Licensing4%0/10+0.0

Author & Expert Schema4%9/10+3.6

Canonical URL4%0/10+0.0

Content Velocity3%10/10+3.0

Visible Date Signals4%8/10+3.2

Subtotal29%+13.8

Overall Score100%66/100

Score Ranges

86-100AI-first content architecture

71-85Strong AI visibility

56-70Moderate visibility

41-55Weak visibility

26-40Minimal visibility

0-25Not on the radar

Key Points

Topic Coherence carries the highest weight at 14%, followed by Original Data at 10%, across 48 total criteria.

No HTTPS means Clean HTML is capped at 3/10, costing approximately 3-4 overall points.

Every criterion uses deterministic checks. Same site, same audit, same score - every time.

Read full scoring methodology →

↑3 since v2

Citation Avg

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

7/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

9/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

6/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

6/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

7/10

Verdict

Moderate AEO readiness at 66/100 with significant gaps to address. Key strengths include llms.txt File, Q&A Content Format, and Table & List Extractability. Priority gaps: RSS/Atom Feed, Content Licensing & AI Permissions, and Canonical URL Strategy.

Top priorities

RSS/Atom FeedDiscovery+10 pts

Content Licensing & AI PermissionsDiscovery+10 pts

Canonical URL StrategyDiscovery+10 pts

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How to Improve

Current

66/100

Projected

85/100

37Total Fixes

5Quick Wins

~72hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlersAdd ai.txt and content licensingFix canonical URL strategyPackage evidence for AI enginesImprove server response efficiency

Fix

Impact

Effort

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

Update robots.txt to explicitly allow AI crawlers and include sitemap directive.

critical

low

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

critical|low

Fix canonical URL strategy

Add rel="canonical" tags to all pages to prevent duplicate content confusion.

critical

low

Fix canonical URL strategy

critical|low

Add internationalization signals

Implement hreflang tags and lang attributes so AI engines serve the correct language version when answering queries.

critical

medium

Add internationalization signals

critical|medium

Improve server response efficiency

Optimize compression, cache headers, redirect chains, and HTML payload size for faster AI crawler access.

high

low

Improve server response efficiency

high|low

Reduce document weight

Trim oversized HTML, excessive DOM nodes, and large inline payloads that slow AI crawlers.

medium

low

Reduce document weight

medium|low

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Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI36

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Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

RSS/Atom Feed

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Licensing & AI Permissions

critical+10 pts0/10

Canonical URL Strategy

critical+10 pts0/10

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Image Context for AI

critical+9 pts1/10

robots.txt for AI Crawlers

critical+7 pts3/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

critical+7 pts3/10

Methodology Transparency

critical+7 pts3/10

Extraction Friction Score

critical+7 pts3/10

Internationalization Signals

critical+7 pts3/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

docs.firecrawl.dev/introductionQuickstart | Firecrawl

F39

docs

3,087

docs.firecrawl.dev/introductionF39

Quickstart | Firecrawl

www.firecrawl.dev/blogFirecrawl - Search, Scrape, and Interact with the Web for AI

F31

blog

2,293

www.firecrawl.dev/blogF31

Firecrawl - Search, Scrape, and Interact with the Web for AI

Changes since v2Last audited 29 days ago

→

View full comparison →

Criterion

Delta

Entity Authority & NAP Consistency

5/10

4/10

-1

Internal Linking Structure

2/10

5/10

Semantic HTML5 & Accessibility

8/10

9/10

Definition Patterns

9/10

7/10

-2

Content Depth

8/10

10/10

Evidence Packaging

4/10

6/10

Entity Disambiguation

2/10

10/10

Improve Citation-Ready WritingReduce Extraction FrictionAdd Entity DisambiguationPackage Evidence for AI

Improve Your Score

Guides for the criteria with the most room for improvement

Criteria0/10

RSS Feed Presence & Quality

Sitemaps tell crawlers what exists. RSS feeds tell them what changed. If you don't have one, your new content waits days -or weeks -to be discovered.

Beginner·3 min readRead guide →

Criteria0/10

Content Licensing Signals

You want AI engines to cite your content. But have you actually told them they're allowed to? Most sites haven't -and AI systems default to conservative behavior.

Beginner·3 min readRead guide →

Criteria0/10

Canonical URL Strategy

Same content, three URLs, zero canonical tags. Congratulations -you just split your authority three ways and gave AI crawlers a headache.

Intermediate·5 min readRead guide →

supplementary0/10

Speakable Schema Markup

Voice assistants need to pick which paragraph to read aloud from your page. Without Speakable markup, they guess -and they frequently guess wrong, reading your cookie notice.

Beginner·3 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

How to Improve

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI36

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Score Breakdown

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