Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) Audit Tool for AI Search
AEO is the new SEO. When millions ask AI assistants instead of searching, the brands that get cited win. Our AEO audit tool measures whether answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity can crawl, parse, and confidently cite your content, then tells you exactly what to fix.
AEO checks across 3 categories
AI crawlers verified: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Googlebot, Bytespider, CCBot, Applebot
point AI-readiness score
What this audit actually checks
Every check below runs on every scan. No black boxes: this is the exact coverage you get.
| Category | Checks |
|---|---|
| AI crawlability | 10 |
| Answer-ready content structure | 9 |
| Citation-readiness | 7 |
AI crawlability
Before an answer engine can cite you, its crawler has to be allowed in - and it has to be able to read your content without running JavaScript. Most sites block AI bots without knowing it.
OpenAI GPTBot access
Verifies ChatGPT's crawler can ingest your content, the prerequisite for being cited in its answers.
Anthropic ClaudeBot access
Confirms Claude's crawler isn't blocked in your robots.txt.
PerplexityBot access
Perplexity cites sources in real time. A blocked crawler means zero visibility in its answers.
Google-Extended & Googlebot access
Checks the Google-Extended directive that governs Gemini training, plus Googlebot itself - which generates Google's AI Overviews in Search.
Expanded bot coverage (Starter)
Also verifies ByteDance Bytespider (TikTok AI), Common Crawl CCBot (a core LLM training set), and Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence).
Meta AI indexing directives
Flags noai / noimageai meta tags that explicitly opt your page out of AI indexing.
Crawl delay limits
Flags aggressive crawl-delay rules that throttle AI crawlers out of your content.
llms.txt & ai.txt presence
Detects the emerging llms.txt / ai.txt standards that give AI models a clean, structured summary of your site.
JavaScript rendering dependency (Pro)
Most AI bots don't execute JavaScript. This flags pages whose content only appears after client-side rendering, invisible to those crawlers.
Bot-optimized response time (Pro)
AI crawlers use strict timeout budgets. Measures your TTFB against the tighter threshold they abandon a fetch at.
Answer-ready content structure
AI engines extract answers, not pages. Content structured as questions, direct answers, definitions, and lists gets reproduced; walls of text get skipped.
Q&A formatting
Checks whether headings are phrased as the questions users actually ask AI assistants.
Direct answer paragraphs
Verifies each heading is followed by a concise, definitive paragraph, the snippet AI engines lift verbatim.
Definition / summary block
Checks for a short opening paragraph (under 60 words) near the H1 - the ideal length AIs extract as a direct answer.
Heading hierarchy depth
Confirms heading levels nest without skipping ranks so engines can follow your topic tree.
Structured lists & data tables
Confirms complex information is broken into lists and tables, the formats LLMs parse and compare most reliably.
FAQ & HowTo schema
Validates the rich Schema.org types that hand answer engines pre-structured Q&A data.
Answer box formatting score (Starter)
Scores whether your Q&A answers are concise (under 50 words) and open with a definitive, non-hedging statement - the shape of a clean answer box.
Code examples & snippets (Starter)
Detects runnable code blocks. AI coding assistants preferentially cite pages with concrete examples.
Structured data completeness (Pro)
Validates that your FAQ / HowTo JSON-LD has every required field populated (question name, answer text, step arrays), not just present.
Citation-readiness
AI engines weigh trust signals when choosing whom to cite. These checks measure whether your content earns the citation.
Author & freshness signals
Verifies identifiable authorship and visible publication dates. AI engines prefer accountable, current sources.
Canonical source attribution
Ensures your domain gets credited as the original source, not a scraper or syndicator.
Expert credentials (E-E-A-T)
Checks author bios and Person schema that establish the expertise behind your content.
Publisher identity schema
Looks for Organization / WebSite JSON-LD that tells AI engines who stands behind the content.
Last-modified freshness
Checks for article:modified_time or dateModified signals. AIs deprioritize stale content.
Source citations
Confirms outbound links to authoritative references. Models trust content that shows its work.
Internal link context (Starter)
Flags generic anchor text ("click here", "read more") that wastes the signals AIs use to map how your pages relate.
Everything your team needs to act
A score without a fix list is trivia. Every report pairs measurement with prioritized, copy-ready remediation, including AI-native fix prompts for your coding assistant.
AI-readiness score with category breakdown: Crawlability, Content Structure, Citation-Readiness
Findings organized by plan tier - Free, Starter, and Pro - so you see exactly what each level unlocks
An AI answer preview showing how an answer engine would extract and present your content
Competitor AEO comparison that shows who's better positioned to be cited in your space
Pro AI intelligence: answer-engine simulation, question-coverage gap analysis, factual-density scoring, and content-freshness AI scoring
From URL to fix list in three steps
Enter any URL
No installs, no code snippets, no DNS changes. Every audit starts from a single URL, yours or a competitor's.
Scanners do the work
Purpose-built engines audit security, SEO, AEO, GEO, brand visibility, and site health, with each check scored and severity-ranked.
Fix with AI-ready prompts
Every finding ships with plain-language remediation and an agent-native fix prompt you can paste straight into your AI coding assistant.
Frequently asked questions
Sources & further reading
- Question answering- Wikipedia
- The llms.txt specification- llmstxt.org