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 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.

withgale.com - AEO Audit Report | 50/100

withgale.com

Moderate AI visibility with 24 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: rss/atom feed.

Healthcare & Patient Advocacy Healthcare Technology

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%4/10+6.0

FAQ Sections10%2/10+2.0

Original Data10%5/10+5.0

Content Freshness7%2/10+1.4

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%4/10+2.8

Fact & Data Density5%10/10+5.0

Definition Patterns4%5/10+2.0

Query-Answer Alignment8%0/10+0.0

Content Cannibalization5%10/10+5.0

Subtotal71%+29.2

Structure5 criteria

Schema.org JSON-LD15%7/10+10.5

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%9/10+9.0

Semantic HTML55%4/10+2.0

Table & List Extractability7%5/10+3.5

Schema Coverage3%4/10+1.2

Subtotal40%+26.2

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%6/10+6.0

robots.txt for AI5%5/10+2.5

Internal Linking10%5/10+5.0

Sitemap Completeness5%5/10+2.5

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%2/10+0.8

Canonical URL4%10/10+4.0

Content Velocity3%2/10+0.6

Visible Date Signals4%0/10+0.0

Subtotal29%+11.4

Overall Score100%50/100

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 →

↓6 since v5

Citation Avg

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

7/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

5/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

4/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

4/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

5/10

Verdict

Below-average AEO readiness at 50/100 - multiple areas need attention. Key strengths include Fact & Data Density, Canonical URL Strategy, and Content Cannibalization. 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

#4178of 13300

#481of 1359 in Healthcare & Patient Advocacy

Ahead of you

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netacare.org50

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How to Improve

Current

50/100

Projected

80/100

38Total Fixes

14Quick Wins

~75hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Add question-based headingsConfigure robots.txt for AI crawlersImplement semantic HTML5 elementsCreate complete sitemap.xmlAdd structured tables and listsAdd definition-style contentAdd direct answer paragraphsAdd ai.txt and content licensingExtend schema to inner pagesAdd visible date signalsAdd first-hand experience signalsAdd answer-first content placementClarify entity boundariesReduce extraction friction

Fix

Impact

Effort

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.

high

low

Create complete sitemap.xml

high|low

Create /llms.txt file

Add a machine-readable llms.txt file at your domain root that describes your site, services, and key pages for AI engines.

medium

trivial

Create /llms.txt file

medium|trivial

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

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Top Opportunities10

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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

Query-Answer Alignment

critical+10 pts0/10

Visible Date Signal

critical+10 pts0/10

Owned Data Density

critical+10 pts0/10

Evidence Packaging

critical+9 pts1/10

Image Context for AI

critical+9 pts1/10

Comprehensive FAQ Section

critical+8 pts2/10

Content Freshness Signals

critical+8 pts2/10

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

www.withgale.com/ecommerceGale: HSA & FSA Payments for eCommerce & Retailers

F32

content

803

www.withgale.com/ecommerceF32

Gale: HSA & FSA Payments for eCommerce & Retailers

Changes since v5Last audited 6 days ago

→

-6

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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 →

Criteria0/10

Query-Answer Alignment: Does Your Content Match What People Actually Ask?

You wrote a 3,000-word guide on "customer support automation." But people ask AI "how do I reduce support ticket volume?" If your content doesn't match the actual queries, AI can't connect the dots.

Beginner·8 min readRead guide →

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Verdict

How to Improve

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Top Opportunities10

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Fix It With AI42

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Score Breakdown

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