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 is query-answer alignment and how do I improve it?

Query-Answer Alignment measures how well your content's headings and phrasing match the natural language questions users ask AI engines. Generic headings like "Overview" or "Features" don't match any real queries. Rewrite them as questions users actually ask: "How Much Does Live Chat Cost?" or "How Do I Set Up AI Support?" Use your visibility report's MISS queries as a roadmap.

How does direct answer density work?

Direct Answer Density (5% weight) measures how consistently your content leads with the answer right after each heading. AI doesn't read full articles - it scans headings and grabs the first 1-2 sentences. If those sentences contain filler ("In today's fast-paced world..."), AI moves on. Lead every section with a concrete fact or answer, then elaborate. This applies to all headings, not just questions.

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.

dyad.com - AEO Audit Report | 43/100

dyad.com

Weak AI visibility with 20 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: rss/atom feed.

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%1/10+1.5

FAQ Sections10%6/10+6.0

Original Data10%3/10+3.0

Content Freshness7%2/10+1.4

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%0/10+0.0

Fact & Data Density5%6/10+3.0

Definition Patterns4%7/10+2.8

Query-Answer Alignment8%5/10+4.0

Content Cannibalization5%5/10+2.5

Subtotal71%+24.2

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%5/10+7.5

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%3/10+3.0

Semantic HTML55%4/10+2.0

Table & List Extractability7%3/10+2.1

Schema Coverage3%1/10+0.3

Subtotal40%+14.9

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%10/10+10.0

robots.txt for AI5%3/10+1.5

Internal Linking10%2/10+2.0

Sitemap Completeness5%2/10+1.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+14.5

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%3/10+3.0

Content Licensing4%4/10+1.6

Author & Expert Schema4%2/10+0.8

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%2/10+0.6

Visible Date Signals4%0/10+0.0

Subtotal29%+10.0

Overall Score100%43/100

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 →

↓5 since v4

Citation Avg

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

6/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

4/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

2/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

3/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

4/10

Verdict

Critical AEO gaps at 43/100 - dyad.com is largely invisible to AI engines. Key strengths include llms.txt File, Canonical URL Strategy, and Topic Coherence. Priority gaps: RSS/Atom Feed, Direct Answer Paragraphs, and Speakable Schema. HTTPS is not enabled, which caps several criteria scores and reduces AI crawler trust.

Top priorities

RSS/Atom FeedDiscovery+10 pts

Direct Answer ParagraphsStructure+10 pts

Speakable SchemaTechnical+10 pts

#7912of 13300

View full rankings →

How to Improve

Current

43/100

Projected

77/100

40Total Fixes

10Quick Wins

~102hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Add JSON-LD structured dataConfigure robots.txt for AI crawlersLink orphan pages into site navigationImplement semantic HTML5 elementsAdd ai.txt and content licensingImprove query-answer alignmentAdd visible date signalsAdd first-hand experience signalsExplain how content was tested or reviewedImprove server response efficiency

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.

critical

medium

Fix HTML structure and meta tags

critical|medium

Create complete sitemap.xml

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

critical

medium

Create complete sitemap.xml

critical|medium

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

Update robots.txt to explicitly allow AI crawlers and include sitemap directive.

critical

low

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

critical|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.

high

low

Improve server response efficiency

high|low

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Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI43

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Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

RSS/Atom Feed

critical+10 pts0/10

Direct Answer Paragraphs

critical+10 pts0/10

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Visible Date Signal

critical+10 pts0/10

Evidence Packaging

critical+10 pts0/10

Image Context for AI

critical+10 pts0/10

Answer Capsule Pattern

critical+10 pts0/10

Owned Data Density

critical+10 pts0/10

Q&A Content Format

critical+9 pts1/10

Schema Coverage & Depth

critical+9 pts1/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.dyad.comDyad Mentorship

F24

homepage

202

www.dyad.comF24

Dyad Mentorship

Changes since v4Last audited 9 days ago

→

-5

View full comparison →

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

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 →

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 AI43

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Score Breakdown

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