Weak AI visibility with 23 of 53 criteria passing. Biggest gap: llms.txt file.
Verdict
Critical AEO gaps at 43/100 - urbanford.ca is largely invisible to AI engines. Key strengths include Sitemap Completeness, Fact & Data Density, and Canonical URL Strategy. Priority gaps: llms.txt File, Comprehensive FAQ Section, and RSS/Atom Feed.
How to Improve
Add a machine-readable llms.txt file at your domain root that describes your site, services, and key pages for AI engines.
Create a comprehensive llms-full.txt with detailed page descriptions, content summaries, and topic taxonomy.
Update robots.txt to explicitly allow AI crawlers and include sitemap directive.
Trim oversized HTML, excessive DOM nodes, and large inline payloads that slow AI crawlers.
Implement hreflang tags and lang attributes so AI engines serve the correct language version when answering queries.
Optimize compression, cache headers, redirect chains, and HTML payload size for faster AI crawler access.
Minimize blocking scripts and stylesheets in <head> to improve content availability for AI crawlers.
196/203 images lack explicit width/height - the most common cause of layout shift (CLS)
Ensure clean, well-structured HTML with proper meta tags, HTTPS, and parseable content for AI crawlers.
Top Opportunities10
View allPublish original research, statistics, case studies, or proprietary data that AI engines can cite. Unique data points make your content a primary source rather than a derivative one.
Add question-based headings (H2/H3) throughout your content. Use "What is...", "How does...", "Why should..." patterns that match how users query AI assistants.
Add inline citations to external sources, "According to [Source]..." attribution phrases, and a Sources section at the end of key articles.
Add more proper nouns throughout content - named sources, organizations, tools, studies, and locations. Cited text averages 20.6% proper nouns; most sites fall well below 15%.
Ensure blog content consistently covers your core expertise areas rather than scattering across unrelated topics. AI engines build authority models - a site about "Medicare coverage" that also publishes about humidifiers and groceries dilutes its topical authority.
Place a concise 40-80 word answer block in the first 300 words of each page. Avoid throat-clearing openers like "In this article..." and lead with the answer.
Create a dedicated FAQ page with FAQPage schema markup. Cover common questions about your products, services, and industry to become a direct answer source for AI engines.
Write concise, standalone answer paragraphs (2-3 sentences) immediately after question headings. These "snippet-ready" paragraphs are ideal for AI engine citations.
Use HTML tables for comparison data and ordered/unordered lists for features, steps, and specifications. Structured data formats are directly extractable by AI engines for answers.
Include "our analysis", "our data", "our testing" phrases backed by original research or proprietary data. 52.2% of AI-cited posts contain owned data signals.