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 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 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.

Why do I need visible dates on my content pages?

Visible Date Signal checks whether your pages display clear publication and update dates. AI engines have a recency bias - content without visible dates gets treated as potentially stale, even if it was published recently. Add both "Published" and "Last Updated" dates to your article template, and match them with datePublished and dateModified in your Article schema.

mendral.com - AEO Audit Report | 52/100

WINTER 2026 mendral.com

Moderate AI visibility with 35 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: content licensing & ai permissions.

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.

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%10/10+15.0

FAQ Sections10%6/10+6.0

Original Data10%8/10+8.0

Content Freshness7%10/10+7.0

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%10/10+7.0

Fact & Data Density5%8/10+4.0

Definition Patterns4%7/10+2.8

Query-Answer Alignment8%10/10+8.0

Content Cannibalization5%5/10+2.5

Subtotal71%+60.3

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%10/10+15.0

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%8/10+8.0

Semantic HTML55%10/10+5.0

Table & List Extractability7%10/10+7.0

Schema Coverage3%10/10+3.0

Subtotal40%+38.0

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%5/10+2.5

Internal Linking10%4/10+4.0

Sitemap Completeness5%8/10+4.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%10/10+3.0

Subtotal33%+23.5

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%6/10+6.0

Content Licensing4%0/10+0.0

Author & Expert Schema4%9/10+3.6

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%7/10+2.1

Visible Date Signals4%3/10+1.2

Subtotal29%+16.9

Overall Score100%52/100

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 →

↓4 since v1

Citation Avg

Coherence gate active - score capped at 55

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

6/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

9/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

7/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

6/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

7/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 52/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include llms.txt File, Schema.org Structured Data, and Q&A Content Format. Priority gaps: Content Licensing & AI Permissions, Speakable Schema, and Image Context for AI. Topic coherence is 4/10, which caps the overall score at 55. Focusing content on core expertise areas is the single highest-impact improvement.

Top priorities

Content Licensing & AI PermissionsDiscovery+10 pts

Speakable SchemaTechnical+10 pts

Image Context for AITechnical+8 pts

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How to Improve

Current

52/100

Projected

81/100

30Total Fixes

8Quick Wins

~49hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlersAdd ai.txt and content licensingAdd visible date signalsFocus blog content on core expertiseAdd first-hand experience signalsPackage evidence for AI enginesReduce extraction frictionEliminate cross-page duplicate content

Fix

Impact

Effort

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

Fix HTML structure and meta tags

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

low

Fix HTML structure and meta tags

low|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

Create complete sitemap.xml

Generate a comprehensive sitemap with lastmod dates for all important pages.

low

Create complete sitemap.xml

low|low

Improve server response efficiency

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

low

Improve server response efficiency

low|low

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Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI34

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Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

Content Licensing & AI Permissions

critical+10 pts0/10

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Image Context for AI

critical+8 pts2/10

Visible Date Signal

critical+7 pts3/10

Methodology Transparency

critical+7 pts3/10

Internationalization Signals

critical+7 pts3/10

Internal Linking Structure

moderate+6 pts4/10

Topic Coherence

moderate+6 pts4/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

moderate+6 pts4/10

Evidence Packaging

moderate+6 pts4/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.mendral.com/securitySecurity | Mendral

D41

content

629

www.mendral.com/securityD41

Security | Mendral

Changes since v1Last audited 30 days ago

→

-4

View full comparison →

Criterion

Delta

llms.txt File

0/10

10/10

+10

Schema.org Structured Data

2/10

10/10

Q&A Content Format

5/10

10/10

Comprehensive FAQ Section

0/10

6/10

Original Data & Expert Analysis

7/10

8/10

Internal Linking Structure

5/10

4/10

-1

Semantic HTML5 & Accessibility

9/10

10/10

Sitemap Completeness

7/10

8/10

Table & List Extractability

8/10

10/10

Direct Answer Paragraphs

4/10

10/10

Author & Expert Schema

7/10

9/10

Content Publishing Velocity

5/10

7/10

Schema Coverage & Depth

5/10

10/10

Query-Answer Alignment

7/10

10/10

Content Cannibalization

10/10

5/10

-5

Topic Coherence

5/10

4/10

-1

Content Depth

8/10

7/10

-1

Helpful Purpose Alignment

7/10

6/10

-1

First-Hand Experience Signals

6/10

4/10

-2

Creator Transparency

1/10

6/10

Methodology Transparency

4/10

3/10

-1

Evidence Packaging

5/10

4/10

-1

Entity Disambiguation

4/10

6/10

Extraction Friction Score

5/10

4/10

-1

Image Context for AI

4/10

2/10

-2

Cross-Page Duplicate Content

10/10

5/10

-5

Page Speed: Page Size

10/10

9/10

-1

Entity Density

8/10

6/10

-2

Owned Data Density

6/10

4/10

-2

Increase Entity DensityIncrease Content DepthEliminate Cross-Page Duplicate ContentAdd Owned Data SignalsAdd First-Hand Experience SignalsBuild Comprehensive FAQ SectionAdd Direct Answer ParagraphsAdd Original Data & Case StudiesRestructure Content as Q&AAdd Schema.org Structured Data

Improve Your Score

Guides for the criteria with the most room for improvement

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 →

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 →

Criteria2/10

Image Context for AI: Your Pictures Are Worth Zero Words Without Markup

AI can't see your images. It reads the markup around them. A product photo with alt="image1.jpg" tells AI nothing. A figure with a descriptive figcaption and 8-word alt text tells AI exactly what it's looking at - and that context feeds directly into citation decisions.

Beginner·3 min readRead guide →

Criteria3/10

Visible Date Signal: The Freshness Cue AI Checks Before Citing You

AI engines are biased toward recency. An article with no visible date is an article AI can't trust to be current. Visible Date Signal measures whether your pages show clear publication and update dates that both humans and machines can read.

Beginner·5 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

How to Improve

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Top Opportunities10

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