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.

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.

norwest.com - AEO Audit Report | 55/100

norwest.com

Moderate AI visibility with 32 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%9/10+13.5

FAQ Sections10%4/10+4.0

Original Data10%10/10+10.0

Content Freshness7%5/10+3.5

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%10/10+7.0

Fact & Data Density5%10/10+5.0

Definition Patterns4%5/10+2.0

Query-Answer Alignment8%4/10+3.2

Content Cannibalization5%10/10+5.0

Subtotal71%+53.2

Structure5 criteria

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

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%7/10+7.0

Semantic HTML55%6/10+3.0

Table & List Extractability7%5/10+3.5

Schema Coverage3%10/10+3.0

Subtotal40%+31.5

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%8/10+8.0

robots.txt for AI5%5/10+2.5

Internal Linking10%9/10+9.0

Sitemap Completeness5%10/10+5.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+24.5

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%6/10+6.0

Content Licensing4%2/10+0.8

Author & Expert Schema4%4/10+1.6

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%10/10+3.0

Visible Date Signals4%9/10+3.6

Subtotal29%+19.0

Overall Score100%55/100

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 →

↑8 since v1

Citation Avg

Coherence gate active - score capped at 60

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

8/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

7/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

6/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

5/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

7/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 55/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include Schema.org Structured Data, Original Data & Expert Analysis, and Sitemap Completeness. Priority gaps: RSS/Atom Feed, Speakable Schema, and Page Speed: Load Blockers. 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

Page Speed: Load Blockers+10 pts

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How to Improve

Current

55/100

Projected

78/100

38Total Fixes

13Quick Wins

~75hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlersLink orphan pages into site navigationImplement semantic HTML5 elementsAdd definition-style contentAdd direct answer paragraphsAdd ai.txt and content licensingEnhance author and expert schemaImprove query-answer alignmentMake pages solve the user task fasterMake content creators clearly visibleImprove citation-ready writing qualityReduce extraction frictionEliminate cross-page duplicate content

Fix

Impact

Effort

Create complete sitemap.xml

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

critical

medium

Create complete sitemap.xml

critical|medium

Reduce render-blocking resources

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

critical

medium

Reduce render-blocking resources

critical|medium

Reduce document weight

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

critical

medium

Reduce document weight

critical|medium

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

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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

Page Speed: Load Blockers

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Licensing & AI Permissions

critical+8 pts2/10

Extraction Friction Score

critical+8 pts2/10

Page Speed: Page Size

critical+8 pts2/10

Answer Capsule Pattern

critical+8 pts2/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

critical+7 pts3/10

Methodology Transparency

critical+7 pts3/10

Image Context for AI

critical+7 pts3/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.norwest.com/eoy-2024Norwest 2024 Milestones and Recap

D42

content

2,354

www.norwest.com/eoy-2024D42

Norwest 2024 Milestones and Recap

www.norwest.com/resources-blogBlog | Norwest

F37

content

2,274

www.norwest.com/resources-blogF37

Blog | Norwest

www.norwest.com/indiaNorwest India | Venture Capital and Growth Equity Investments

D42

content

2,229

www.norwest.com/indiaD42

Norwest India | Venture Capital and Growth Equity Investments

www.norwest.com/join-norwestJoin Norwest | Norwest

D40

content

1,641

www.norwest.com/join-norwestD40

Join Norwest | Norwest

www.norwest.com/whoWho We Help | Norwest Invests Across Stages and Sectors

D40

content

1,497

www.norwest.com/whoD40

Who We Help | Norwest Invests Across Stages and Sectors

www.norwest.com/resources-allResources | Norwest

F36

resources

1,441

www.norwest.com/resources-allF36

Resources | Norwest

www.norwest.com/growthGrowth Equity | Norwest Investments and Partnerships

F38

content

1,121

www.norwest.com/growthF38

Growth Equity | Norwest Investments and Partnerships

www.norwest.com/healthcareHealthcare Investors | Norwest

F38

content

1,012

www.norwest.com/healthcareF38

Healthcare Investors | Norwest

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Changes since v1Last audited 29 days ago

→

View full comparison →

Criterion

Delta

Semantic HTML5 & Accessibility

4/10

6/10

Content Freshness Signals

7/10

5/10

-2

Content Cannibalization

6/10

10/10

Topic Coherence

3/10

5/10

Content Depth

7/10

9/10

Helpful Purpose Alignment

7/10

6/10

-1

Citation-Ready Writing Quality

5/10

8/10

Answer-First Placement

8/10

10/10

Cross-Page Duplicate Content

7/10

10/10

Page Speed: Server Response

6/10

5/10

-1

Reduce Extraction FrictionAdd Entity DisambiguationIncrease Content DepthImprove Citation-Ready Writing

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 →

Criteria2/10

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 →

Criteria2/10

Extraction Friction: The Invisible Wall Between Your Content and AI

Your content is brilliant. AI can't read it. Sentences averaging 35 words, jargon-packed leads, and hidden content behind toggles create friction that makes AI skip you for a simpler source. Extraction Friction measures how hard AI has to work to pull answers from your pages.

Beginner·5 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

How to Improve

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Top Opportunities10

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Score Breakdown

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