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.

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.

getstrada.com - AEO Audit Report | 54/100

SUMMER 2023 getstrada.com

Moderate AI visibility with 30 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: rss/atom feed.

Finance & Payments Corporate Finance 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%5/10+7.5

FAQ Sections10%4/10+4.0

Original Data10%8/10+8.0

Content Freshness7%2/10+1.4

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%8/10+5.6

Fact & Data Density5%10/10+5.0

Definition Patterns4%7/10+2.8

Query-Answer Alignment8%4/10+3.2

Content Cannibalization5%7/10+3.5

Subtotal71%+41.0

Structure5 criteria

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

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%5/10+5.0

Semantic HTML55%4/10+2.0

Table & List Extractability7%6/10+4.2

Schema Coverage3%10/10+3.0

Subtotal40%+29.2

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%8/10+8.0

robots.txt for AI5%5/10+2.5

Internal Linking10%2/10+2.0

Sitemap Completeness5%7/10+3.5

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+16.0

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%6/10+6.0

Content Licensing4%0/10+0.0

Author & Expert Schema4%9/10+3.6

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%2/10+0.6

Visible Date Signals4%9/10+3.6

Subtotal29%+17.8

Overall Score100%54/100

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 v5

Citation Avg

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

7/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

6/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

4/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

5/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

5/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 54/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include Schema.org Structured Data, Fact & Data Density, and Canonical URL Strategy. Priority gaps: RSS/Atom Feed, Content Licensing & AI Permissions, and Speakable Schema.

Top priorities

RSS/Atom FeedDiscovery+10 pts

Content Licensing & AI PermissionsDiscovery+10 pts

Speakable SchemaTechnical+10 pts

#1994of 13300

#206of 1389 in Finance & Payments

Ahead of you

rovemiles.com54

coba.ai54

View full rankings →

How to Improve

Current

54/100

Projected

82/100

38Total Fixes

10Quick Wins

~70hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Add question-based headingsFix HTML structure and meta tagsConfigure robots.txt for AI crawlersBuild FAQ sections with schemaImplement semantic HTML5 elementsAdd ai.txt and content licensingImprove query-answer alignmentPackage evidence for AI enginesReduce extraction frictionImprove 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.

high

low

Fix HTML structure and meta tags

high|low

Reduce document weight

Trim oversized HTML, excessive DOM nodes, and large inline payloads that slow AI crawlers.

critical

medium

Reduce document weight

critical|medium

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

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

high

trivial

Configure robots.txt for AI crawlers

high|trivial

Create complete sitemap.xml

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

medium

low

Create complete sitemap.xml

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

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

Unlock Opportunities

Fix It With AI42

Unlock AI Fix Prompts

42 copy-paste prompts ready - sign in to access.

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

Owned Data Density

critical+10 pts0/10

Internal Linking Structure

critical+8 pts2/10

Content Freshness Signals

critical+8 pts2/10

Content Publishing Velocity

critical+8 pts2/10

Creator Transparency

critical+8 pts2/10

Image Context for AI

critical+8 pts2/10

First-Hand Experience Signals

critical+7 pts3/10

Unlock Full Audit Report

See all 48 criteria with detailed findings and actionable fix recommendations.

Your competitors are already optimizing for AI

Every day without action is traffic your site loses to AI-ready competitors. We fix that.

Fix My Score

Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.getstrada.com/blogStrada Blog | Voice AI, Automation & Insurance Insights

F30

blog

1,932

www.getstrada.com/blogF30

Strada Blog | Voice AI, Automation & Insurance Insights

www.getstrada.com/customers/clearcoverStrada: Phone, Email, and Chat AI for Insurance Carriers & Brokers

F32

blog

971

www.getstrada.com/customers/clearcoverF32

Strada: Phone, Email, and Chat AI for Insurance Carriers & Brokers

www.getstrada.com/customers/foxquiltStrada: Phone, Email, and Chat AI for Insurance Carriers & Brokers

F30

blog

868

www.getstrada.com/customers/foxquiltF30

Strada: Phone, Email, and Chat AI for Insurance Carriers & Brokers

Changes since v5Last audited 14 days ago

→

-5

View full comparison →

Criterion

Delta

Q&A Content Format

4/10

5/10

Content Depth

9/10

10/10

Helpful Purpose Alignment

6/10

7/10

Creator Transparency

3/10

2/10

-1

Methodology Transparency

2/10

3/10

Citation-Ready Writing Quality

5/10

7/10

Entity Disambiguation

4/10

6/10

Page Speed: Page Size

4/10

3/10

-1

Add First-Hand Experience SignalsImprove Citation-Ready Writing

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 →

Criteria2/10

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 →

Want us to improve your score?

We build citation-ready content that AI engines choose as the answer.

Let's Talk

Verdict

How to Improve

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

Unlock Opportunities

Fix It With AI42

Unlock AI Fix Prompts

Score Breakdown

Unlock Full Audit Report

Your competitors are already optimizing for AI

Site Pages

Improve Your Score

Related Questions

Want us to improve your score?