What is AEO (AI Engine Optimization)?

AEO is the practice of structuring your website so AI answer engines - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude - can find, understand, and cite it. SEO gets you ranked in search results. AEO gets you into AI-generated answers. Different game, different rules.

What does the free AEO audit include?

The free audit analyzes your website across 48 criteria that determine AI visibility, including llms.txt, Schema.org structured data, Q&A content format, clean crawlable HTML, entity authority, robots.txt AI policy, FAQ sections, original data, content freshness, fact density, canonical URLs, and more. You get a score out of 100 with specific findings and actionable recommendations.

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 happens if my site scores below 20?

A score below 20 means most fundamental AEO infrastructure is missing - no llms.txt, no relevant schema, likely blocking AI crawlers, no FAQ content. The good news is the fastest gains come from this starting point. Adding llms.txt, basic Organization schema, and unblocking AI crawlers in robots.txt can double your score in a single day.

What is llms.txt and do I need one?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at your domain root — like robots.txt — that gives AI assistants a structured summary of your website. What your business does, key content areas, how to navigate your site. It helps AI systems understand your business without crawling every page. If you want AI visibility, you need one.

baseframe.co - AEO Audit Report | 6/100

WINTER 2026 baseframe.co

Weak AI visibility with 0 of 22 criteria passing. Biggest gap: llms.txt file.

SaaS & Productivity Project Management

Scoring Methodology

How Your AEO Site Rank Is Calculated

A weighted average of 22 deterministic criteria. Each scored 0-10, each with a specific weight. No AI judgment calls - every point is traceable.

Not on the radarOut 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

Content7 criteria

Q&A Content Format15%0/10+0.0

FAQ Sections10%3/10+3.0

Original Data10%0/10+0.0

Content Freshness7%0/10+0.0

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%0/10+0.0

Fact & Data Density5%0/10+0.0

Definition Patterns4%0/10+0.0

Subtotal58%+3.0

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%0/10+0.0

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%2/10+2.0

Semantic HTML55%2/10+1.0

Table & List Extractability7%0/10+0.0

Schema Coverage3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal40%+3.0

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%0/10+0.0

robots.txt for AI5%2/10+1.0

Internal Linking10%0/10+0.0

Sitemap Completeness5%2/10+1.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+2.0

Trust Signals5 criteria

Entity Authority10%1/10+1.0

Content Licensing4%0/10+0.0

Author & Expert Schema4%0/10+0.0

Canonical URL4%0/10+0.0

Content Velocity3%2/10+0.6

Subtotal25%+1.6

Overall Score100%6/100

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 22 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 →

Client-side rendering - AI crawlers see a blank page

Content

Answer Readiness

1/10

Structure

Machine Readability

1/10

Discovery

AI Discoverability

1/10

Trust Signals

Source Credibility

1/10

Verdict

baseframe.co currently has very low AEO readiness (overall score: 6) because foundational machine-readable signals are missing across discovery, structure, and trust layers. The crawl found no JSON-LD (`schema_block_count: 0`, `schema_types_found: []`), no `llms.txt`, no `robots.txt`, no canonical tag, and no valid sitemap URL entries (`sitemap_url_count: 0`). What works today is limited to basic metadata and availability (`has_title: true`, `has_meta_description: true`, FAQ endpoint returns `faq_page_status: 200`, sitemap endpoint returns `sitemap_status: 200`), but those endpoints are not delivering usable AEO signals. The site also runs on HTTP only (`has_https: false`), which materially weakens crawler trust and indexability.

Top priorities

llms.txt FileDiscovery+10 pts

Schema.org Structured DataTrust+10 pts

Q&A Content FormatStructure+10 pts

#13298of 13300

#530of 531 in SaaS & Productivity

Ahead of you

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Top Opportunities10

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Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

llms.txt File

critical+10 pts0/10

Schema.org Structured Data

critical+10 pts0/10

Q&A Content Format

critical+10 pts0/10

Original Data & Expert Analysis

critical+10 pts0/10

Internal Linking Structure

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Freshness Signals

critical+10 pts0/10

RSS/Atom Feed

critical+10 pts0/10

Table & List Extractability

critical+10 pts0/10

Definition Patterns

critical+10 pts0/10

Direct Answer Paragraphs

critical+10 pts0/10

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Guides for the criteria with the most room for improvement

Criteria0/10

llms.txt -The File That Separates 63 from 34

Tidio has a 251-line llms.txt. Crisp has zero. The score gap: +29 points. This single file tells AI assistants exactly what your site does -and without it, they're guessing.

Beginner·8 min readRead guide →

Criteria0/10

Schema.org JSON-LD: The Scoreboard AI Actually Reads

Tidio runs 4 JSON-LD schema types. Crisp runs zero. That's not a coincidence -it's the difference between a 63 and a 34. Structured data is the machine-readable layer AI trusts most.

Intermediate·8 min readRead guide →

Criteria0/10

Q&A Content Format: Write Like AI Reads

AI assistants are question-answering machines. When your content is already shaped as questions and answers, you're handing AI a pre-formatted citation. Sites that do this right get extracted -sites that don't get skipped.

Beginner·8 min readRead guide →

Criteria0/10

Original Data: The Content AI Can't Find Anywhere Else

AI has a trust hierarchy for sources. At the top: proprietary data and first-hand expert analysis. At the bottom: rewritten Wikipedia articles. We've watched AI preferentially cite sites with original benchmarks -even over bigger competitors.

Advanced·8 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI22

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Score Breakdown

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