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 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.

What happens after the audit?

You get detailed findings and our Knowledge Base guides to implement improvements yourself. Each criterion has an in-depth guide with code examples and common mistakes. If you want hands-on help, we offer AEO Content Optimization services to deploy the changes for you.

Does AEO replace SEO?

No. They're complementary. SEO optimizes for search rankings and click-through traffic. AEO optimizes for AI citations and answer engine visibility. Many AEO improvements — structured data, semantic HTML, internal linking — also boost SEO. Implement both.

What is topic coherence and why is it the heaviest AEO criterion?

Topic coherence measures how tightly your blog content clusters around related themes. It is still the single heaviest criterion in the framework. The scorer analyzes sampled pages, building term frequency maps and bigram clusters to detect thematic focus. Sites with scattered topics (AI, recipes, fitness) score low. When coherence drops below 6/10, a "coherence gate" caps your entire AEO Site Rank - no matter how perfect your technical implementation.

yas.io - AEO Audit Report | 38/100

yas.io

Weak AI visibility with 16 of 48 criteria passing. Biggest gap: internal linking structure.

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.

Minimal 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%3/10+4.5

FAQ Sections10%8/10+8.0

Original Data10%4/10+4.0

Content Freshness7%2/10+1.4

Direct Answer Paragraphs7%0/10+0.0

Fact & Data Density5%10/10+5.0

Definition Patterns4%7/10+2.8

Query-Answer Alignment8%7/10+5.6

Content Cannibalization5%5/10+2.5

Subtotal71%+33.8

Structure5 criteria

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

Clean, Crawlable HTML10%5/10+5.0

Semantic HTML55%2/10+1.0

Table & List Extractability7%0/10+0.0

Schema Coverage3%4/10+1.2

Subtotal40%+22.2

Discovery5 criteria

llms.txt10%8/10+8.0

robots.txt for AI5%3/10+1.5

Internal Linking10%0/10+0.0

Sitemap Completeness5%0/10+0.0

RSS/Atom Feed3%0/10+0.0

Subtotal33%+9.5

Trust Signals6 criteria

Entity Authority10%4/10+4.0

Content Licensing4%2/10+0.8

Author & Expert Schema4%4/10+1.6

Canonical URL4%0/10+0.0

Content Velocity3%0/10+0.0

Visible Date Signals4%0/10+0.0

Subtotal29%+6.4

Overall Score100%38/100

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 →

↓3 since v6

Citation Avg

Coherence gate active - score capped at 55

Answer Readiness

~40% weight

5/10

Content Structure

~25% weight

4/10

Trust & Authority

~15% weight

3/10

Technical Foundation

~10% weight

3/10

AI Discovery

~10% weight

3/10

Verdict

Critical AEO gaps at 38/100 - yas.io is largely invisible to AI engines. Key strengths include Schema.org Structured Data, Fact & Data Density, and Duplicate Content Blocks. Priority gaps: Internal Linking Structure, Sitemap Completeness, and RSS/Atom Feed. Topic coherence is 4/10, which caps the overall score at 55. Focusing content on core expertise areas is the single highest-impact improvement.

Top priorities

Internal Linking StructureTrust+10 pts

Sitemap CompletenessDiscovery+10 pts

RSS/Atom FeedDiscovery+10 pts

#10369of 13300

View full rankings →

How to Improve

Current

38/100

Projected

75/100

40Total Fixes

13Quick Wins

~102hEst. Effort

Quick Wins

Fix HTML structure and meta tagsStrengthen entity authority (NAP)Configure robots.txt for AI crawlersLink orphan pages into site navigationAdd ai.txt and content licensingEnhance author and expert schemaFix canonical URL strategyExtend schema to inner pagesAdd visible date signalsFocus blog content on core expertiseMake pages solve the user task fasterAdd image context for AI enginesImprove 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

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

Fix canonical URL strategy

Add rel="canonical" tags to all pages to prevent duplicate content confusion.

critical

low

Fix canonical URL strategy

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

Unlock Full Improvement Plan

Top Opportunities10

Unlock Opportunities

Fix It With AI43

Unlock AI Fix Prompts

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

Score Breakdown

Criteria

Status

Potential

Score

Internal Linking Structure

critical+10 pts0/10

Sitemap Completeness

critical+10 pts0/10

RSS/Atom Feed

critical+10 pts0/10

Table & List Extractability

critical+10 pts0/10

Direct Answer Paragraphs

critical+10 pts0/10

Canonical URL Strategy

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Publishing Velocity

critical+10 pts0/10

Speakable Schema

critical+10 pts0/10

Visible Date Signal

critical+10 pts0/10

Content Depth

critical+10 pts0/10

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

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Site Pages

URLCitationSiteIn-linksCategoryIssuesWords

yas.io/page-data/index/page-data.json

F29

content

910

yas.io/page-data/index/page-data.jsonF29

Changes since v6Last audited 9 days ago

→

-3

View full comparison →

Improve Your Score

Guides for the criteria with the most room for improvement

Criteria0/10

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 →

Criteria0/10

Sitemap Completeness

Your sitemap says 500 pages exist. Our crawl finds 700. Those 200 missing URLs? AI crawlers will never know they exist.

Beginner·5 min readRead guide →

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

Table & List Extractability

Your comparison table looks great in the browser. But it's built with divs and CSS Grid, so ChatGPT sees a blob of text. Here's what that costs you.