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 are conditional audit criteria?

Conditional criteria are checks that only apply to certain site types. Product/Offer schema applies only to e-commerce. Hreflang only to multilingual sites. ai.txt/TDM policy only to sites with substantial original content. Speakable schema was previously conditional but is now an active scored criterion in the 48-criteria framework. The remaining conditional criteria supplement the 34 universal audit criteria.

Do I need technical skills to improve my AEO Site Rank?

Some improvements — writing FAQ content, adding author bios — require zero technical skills. Others — deploying JSON-LD schema, modifying robots.txt — require basic HTML knowledge or developer access. Our Knowledge Base guides include code examples for each criterion. For hands-on help, we offer professional services.

What is the fastest way to improve my AI visibility?

Start with high-impact, low-effort wins: (1) Create an llms.txt file, (2) Add Organization JSON-LD to your homepage, (3) Update robots.txt to allow AI crawlers, (4) Add FAQPage schema to existing FAQ content. These four changes take under a day and typically produce noticeable improvements within weeks.

getversive.com - AEO Audit Report | 54/100

WINTER 2023 getversive.com

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

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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.

Weak 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%5/10+7.5

FAQ Sections10%1/10+1.0

Original Data10%7/10+7.0

Content Freshness7%10/10+7.0

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%10/10+7.0

Fact & Data Density5%8/10+4.0

Definition Patterns4%5/10+2.0

Query-Answer Alignment8%7/10+5.6

Content Cannibalization5%10/10+5.0

Subtotal71%+46.1

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%5/10+7.5

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%7/10+7.0

Semantic HTML55%10/10+5.0

Table & List Extractability7%3/10+2.1

Schema Coverage3%6/10+1.8

Subtotal40%+23.4

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%5/10+2.5

Internal Linking10%5/10+5.0

Sitemap Completeness5%9/10+4.5

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+22.0

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%7/10+7.0

Content Licensing4%2/10+0.8

Author & Expert Schema4%5/10+2.0

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%3/10+0.9

Visible Date Signals4%10/10+4.0

Subtotal29%+18.7

Overall Score100%54/100

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 v1

Citation Avg

Coherence gate active - score capped at 60

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

6/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

6/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

6/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

7/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

7/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 54/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include llms.txt File, Semantic HTML5 & Accessibility, and Content Freshness Signals. Priority gaps: RSS/Atom Feed, Speakable Schema, and Entity Disambiguation. Topic coherence is moderate at 5/10, capping the score at 60. Tighter topical focus would lift this ceiling.

Top priorities

RSS/Atom FeedDiscovery+10 pts

Speakable SchemaTechnical+10 pts

Entity DisambiguationStructure+10 pts

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Ahead of you

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View improvement plan

How to Improve

Current

54/100

Projected

82/100

35Total Fixes

10Quick Wins

~64hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Add JSON-LD structured dataAdd question-based headingsConfigure robots.txt for AI crawlersLink orphan pages into site navigationAdd definition-style contentAdd ai.txt and content licensingEnhance author and expert schemaFocus blog content on core expertiseAdd answer-first content placementReduce extraction friction

Fix

Impact

Effort

Fix HTML structure and meta tags

Ensure clean, well-structured HTML with proper meta tags, HTTPS, and parseable content for AI crawlers.

medium

low

Fix HTML structure and meta tags

medium|low

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

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

high

trivial

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

high|trivial

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.

medium

low

Improve server response efficiency

medium|low

Reduce render-blocking resources

Minimize blocking scripts and stylesheets in <head> to improve content availability for AI crawlers.

low

Reduce render-blocking resources

low|low

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Top Opportunities10

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Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

RSS/Atom Feed

critical+10 pts0/10

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Entity Disambiguation

critical+10 pts0/10

Comprehensive FAQ Section

critical+9 pts1/10

Creator Transparency

critical+9 pts1/10

Content Licensing & AI Permissions

critical+8 pts2/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

critical+8 pts2/10

Image Context for AI

critical+8 pts2/10

Answer Capsule Pattern

critical+8 pts2/10

Table & List Extractability

critical+7 pts3/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.getversive.com/llms-full.txt

F34

content

3,120

www.getversive.com/llms-full.txtF34

www.getversive.com/llms.txt

F31

content

1,446

www.getversive.com/llms.txtF31

www.getversive.com/blogCompany updates | Versive

F32

blog

774

www.getversive.com/blogF32

Company updates | Versive

Changes since v1Last audited 30 days ago

→

View full comparison →

Criterion

Delta

Schema.org Structured Data

0/10

5/10

Q&A Content Format

3/10

5/10

Semantic HTML5 & Accessibility

8/10

10/10

Content Freshness Signals

2/10

10/10

Sitemap Completeness

7/10

9/10

Direct Answer Paragraphs

7/10

10/10

Author & Expert Schema

2/10

5/10

Fact & Data Density

6/10

8/10

Canonical URL Strategy

0/10

10/10

+10

Schema Coverage & Depth

0/10

6/10

Visible Date Signal

5/10

10/10

Topic Coherence

9/10

5/10

-4

Content Depth

8/10

6/10

-2

Helpful Purpose Alignment

5/10

6/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

3/10

2/10

-1

Methodology Transparency

4/10

3/10

-1

Citation-Ready Writing Quality

5/10

7/10

Answer-First Placement

1/10

5/10

Evidence Packaging

3/10

6/10

Extraction Friction Score

3/10

5/10

Image Context for AI

3/10

2/10

-1

Entity Density

10/10

8/10

-2

Owned Data Density

4/10

6/10

Focus Content on Core TopicsIncrease Content DepthAdd First-Hand Experience SignalsImprove Internal Linking ArchitectureAdd Answer-First PlacementIncrease Fact & Data DensityAdd Content Freshness SignalsPackage 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 →

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 →

Criteria0/10

Entity Disambiguation: Stop Making AI Guess What You Mean

You say "Mercury" on your homepage. The planet? The element? The banking startup? AI doesn't know - and when it can't tell, it doesn't cite. Entity disambiguation is how you draw clear lines around what your business is and isn't.

Intermediate·5 min readRead guide →

Criteria1/10

FAQ Sections: 87 Questions Turned Our Score Into 88

Our site runs 87 FAQ items across 9 categories with FAQPage schema on every one. That's not excessive -it's how we hit 88/100. Each Q&A pair is a citation opportunity AI can extract in seconds.

Intermediate·8 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

How to Improve

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Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI39

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Score Breakdown

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