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.

symphony.is - AEO Audit Report | 46/100

symphony.is

Weak AI visibility with 25 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: internal linking structure.

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%3/10+3.0

Original Data10%3/10+3.0

Content Freshness7%0/10+0.0

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%0/10+0.0

Fact & Data Density5%7/10+3.5

Definition Patterns4%7/10+2.8

Query-Answer Alignment8%10/10+8.0

Content Cannibalization5%10/10+5.0

Subtotal71%+40.3

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%9/10+13.5

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%7/10+7.0

Semantic HTML55%2/10+1.0

Table & List Extractability7%3/10+2.1

Schema Coverage3%7/10+2.1

Subtotal40%+25.7

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%10/10+5.0

Internal Linking10%0/10+0.0

Sitemap Completeness5%9/10+4.5

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+19.5

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%46/100

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 →

Citation Avg

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

6/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

5/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

3/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

5/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

7/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 46/100 - 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

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View improvement plan

How to Improve

Current

46/100

Projected

78/100

34Total Fixes

5Quick Wins

~85hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Add ai.txt and content licensingEnhance author and expert schemaAdd visible date signalsMake pages solve the user task fasterAdd 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

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

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.

low

Reduce render-blocking resources

low|low

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Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI37

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37 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

Direct Answer Paragraphs

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

Content Depth

critical+10 pts0/10

Citation-Ready Writing Quality

critical+10 pts0/10

Evidence Packaging

critical+10 pts0/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

symphony.isSymphony - AI-Native Engineering Solutions | Transform Your Business

F35

homepage

123

symphony.isF35

Symphony - AI-Native Engineering Solutions | Transform Your Business

symphony.is/faqSymphony - AI-Native Engineering Solutions | Transform Your Business

F35

faq

123

symphony.is/faqF35

Symphony - AI-Native Engineering Solutions | Transform Your Business

Improve Your Score

Guides for the criteria with the most room for improvement

Criteria0/10

Internal Linking: The Web AI Uses to Map Your Expertise

AI crawlers follow internal links to discover and contextualize content. A page with zero inbound links is a page AI will never find. Hub pages linking to 20+ related articles signal topical authority that both engines reward.

Intermediate·5 min readRead guide →

Criteria0/10

Content Freshness Signals

No date on your page? AI engines treat it like a rumor -undated and deprioritized. Here's how we audit whether your timestamps are actually machine-readable.

Beginner·5 min readRead guide →

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

Direct Answer Paragraphs: The First Sentence AI Steals

AI engines don't read your article top to bottom. They scan headings, grab the first 1-2 sentences underneath, and move on. If those sentences are throat-clearing preamble instead of a direct answer - you just lost a citation to someone who leads with the point.

Beginner·8 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

How to Improve

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI37

Unlock AI Fix Prompts

Score Breakdown

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