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 role do internal links play in AEO?

Internal links help AI systems map relationships between your content. Topic hubs, Related Articles sections, breadcrumbs, cross-references — they create a navigable content graph that AI crawlers follow. Strong internal linking distributes authority across pages and ensures important content is discoverable no matter where a crawler enters your site.

What happens after the audit?

You get detailed findings and our Knowledge Base guides to implement improvements yourself. Each criterion has an in-depth guide with code examples and common mistakes. If you want hands-on help, we offer AEO Content Optimization services to deploy the changes for you.

Does AEO replace SEO?

No. They're complementary. SEO optimizes for search rankings and click-through traffic. AEO optimizes for AI citations and answer engine visibility. Many AEO improvements — structured data, semantic HTML, internal linking — also boost SEO. Implement both.

What is topic coherence and why is it the heaviest AEO criterion?

Topic coherence measures how tightly your blog content clusters around related themes. It is still the single heaviest criterion in the framework. The scorer analyzes sampled pages, building term frequency maps and bigram clusters to detect thematic focus. Sites with scattered topics (AI, recipes, fitness) score low. When coherence drops below 6/10, a "coherence gate" caps your entire AEO Site Rank - no matter how perfect your technical implementation.

mentorspaces.com - AEO Audit Report | 49/100

mentorspaces.com

Weak AI visibility with 28 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: internal linking structure.

Design & Collaboration Design Tools

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%4/10+4.0

Original Data10%2/10+2.0

Content Freshness7%0/10+0.0

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%6/10+4.2

Fact & Data Density5%0/10+0.0

Definition Patterns4%0/10+0.0

Query-Answer Alignment8%10/10+8.0

Content Cannibalization5%10/10+5.0

Subtotal71%+38.2

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%7/10+10.5

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%7/10+7.0

Semantic HTML55%2/10+1.0

Table & List Extractability7%3/10+2.1

Schema Coverage3%5/10+1.5

Subtotal40%+22.1

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%10/10+5.0

Internal Linking10%0/10+0.0

Sitemap Completeness5%8/10+4.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+19.0

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%6/10+6.0

Content Licensing4%0/10+0.0

Author & Expert Schema4%5/10+2.0

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%7/10+2.1

Visible Date Signals4%0/10+0.0

Subtotal29%+14.1

Overall Score100%49/100

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 →

↑16 since v1

Citation Avg

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

5/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

6/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

3/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

4/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

8/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 49/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include llms.txt File, Q&A Content Format, and robots.txt for AI Crawlers. Priority gaps: Internal Linking Structure, Content Freshness Signals, and RSS/Atom Feed.

Top priorities

Internal Linking StructureTrust+10 pts

Content Freshness SignalsTrust+10 pts

RSS/Atom FeedDiscovery+10 pts

#6051of 13362

#63of 160 in Design & Collaboration

Ahead of you

renderro.com49

fishbuddy.app49

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How to Improve

Current

49/100

Projected

80/100

33Total Fixes

9Quick Wins

~77hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Build FAQ sections with schemaAdd ai.txt and content licensingEnhance author and expert schemaExtend schema to inner pagesAdd visible date signalsExplain how content was tested or reviewedImprove citation-ready writing qualityReduce extraction frictionAdd image context for AI engines

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

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.

medium

low

Improve server response efficiency

medium|low

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

Unlock Opportunities

Fix It With AI35

Unlock AI Fix Prompts

35 copy-paste prompts ready - sign in to access.

Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

Internal Linking Structure

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Freshness Signals

critical+10 pts0/10

RSS/Atom Feed

critical+10 pts0/10

Definition Patterns

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Licensing & AI Permissions

critical+10 pts0/10

Fact & Data Density

critical+10 pts0/10

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Visible Date Signal

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Depth

critical+10 pts0/10

Creator Transparency

critical+10 pts0/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

mentorspaces.comMentor Spaces — Structured Mentorship Platform for Nonprofits & Universities

D45

homepage

131

mentorspaces.comD45