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 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.

sammylabs.com - AEO Audit Report | 51/100

WINTER 2025 sammylabs.com

Moderate AI visibility with 28 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: rss/atom feed.

SaaS & Productivity Knowledge Management

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%3/10+3.0

Original Data10%5/10+5.0

Content Freshness7%2/10+1.4

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%5/10+3.5

Fact & Data Density5%6/10+3.0

Definition Patterns4%9/10+3.6

Query-Answer Alignment8%4/10+3.2

Content Cannibalization5%5/10+2.5

Subtotal71%+38.7

Structure5 criteria

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

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%6/10+6.0

Semantic HTML55%8/10+4.0

Table & List Extractability7%3/10+2.1

Schema Coverage3%9/10+2.7

Subtotal40%+29.8

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%10/10+5.0

Internal Linking10%2/10+2.0

Sitemap Completeness5%8/10+4.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+21.0

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%6/10+6.0

Content Licensing4%0/10+0.0

Author & Expert Schema4%4/10+1.6

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%3/10+0.9

Visible Date Signals4%0/10+0.0

Subtotal29%+12.5

Overall Score100%51/100

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 →

↑11 since v1

Citation Avg

Coherence gate active - score capped at 60

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

5/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

6/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

5/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

5/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

6/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 51/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include llms.txt File, Schema.org Structured Data, and robots.txt for AI Crawlers. Priority gaps: RSS/Atom Feed, Content Licensing & AI Permissions, and Speakable Schema. 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

Content Licensing & AI PermissionsDiscovery+10 pts

Speakable SchemaTechnical+10 pts

#4443of 13362

#183of 531 in SaaS & Productivity

Ahead of you

lopus.ai51

bondapp.io51

View full rankings →

View improvement plan

How to Improve

Current

51/100

Projected

80/100

39Total Fixes

10Quick Wins

~89hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Link orphan pages into site navigationAdd direct answer paragraphsAdd ai.txt and content licensingEnhance author and expert schemaImprove query-answer alignmentAdd visible date signalsFocus blog content on core expertiseMake content creators clearly visibleReduce extraction frictionEliminate cross-page duplicate content

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

Reduce render-blocking resources

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

medium

low

Reduce render-blocking resources

medium|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

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI41

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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

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Visible Date Signal

critical+10 pts0/10

Image Context for AI

critical+9 pts1/10

Internal Linking Structure

critical+8 pts2/10

Content Freshness Signals

critical+8 pts2/10

Methodology Transparency

critical+8 pts2/10

Evidence Packaging

critical+8 pts2/10

Entity Disambiguation

critical+8 pts2/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.sammylabs.com/regulatorsRegulators · SAMMY Labs | SAMMY Labs

F37

content

1,028

www.sammylabs.com/regulatorsF37

Regulators · SAMMY Labs | SAMMY Labs

Changes since v1Last audited 29 days ago

→

+11

View full comparison →

Criterion

Delta

llms.txt File

0/10

10/10

+10

Schema.org Structured Data

0/10

10/10

+10

Q&A Content Format

7/10

9/10

Entity Authority & NAP Consistency

1/10

6/10

robots.txt for AI Crawlers

2/10

10/10

Comprehensive FAQ Section

0/10

3/10

Original Data & Expert Analysis

3/10

5/10

Sitemap Completeness

0/10

8/10

Table & List Extractability

0/10

3/10

Definition Patterns

0/10

9/10

Direct Answer Paragraphs

3/10

5/10

Author & Expert Schema

2/10

4/10

Fact & Data Density

4/10

6/10

Canonical URL Strategy

0/10

10/10

+10

Content Publishing Velocity

0/10

3/10

Schema Coverage & Depth

0/10

9/10

Topic Coherence

10/10

5/10

-5

Content Depth

0/10

6/10

Helpful Purpose Alignment

5/10

6/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

4/10

3/10

-1

Creator Transparency

3/10

4/10

Methodology Transparency

3/10

2/10

-1

Answer-First Placement

4/10

6/10

Evidence Packaging

0/10

2/10

Entity Disambiguation

0/10

2/10

Extraction Friction Score

6/10

4/10

-2

Cross-Page Duplicate Content

10/10

5/10

-5

Answer Capsule Pattern

0/10

4/10

Entity Density

10/10

8/10

-2

Owned Data Density

0/10

6/10

Focus Content on Core TopicsImprove Internal Linking ArchitectureImprove Question-Answer AlignmentAdd Content Freshness SignalsStrengthen Entity Authority (NAP)Add Answer Capsule PatternsBuild Comprehensive FAQ SectionAdd Owned Data Signals

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 →

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

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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Fix It With AI41

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Score Breakdown

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