AEO Readiness Checker

Grade how technically ready a page is to be cited by AI engines: crawler access, llms.txt, JS-rendering, freshness, answer-format & entity schema. Free, no API key.

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Free AEO Readiness Checker

Paste a page URL and get a 0-100 AEO score, plus six scored sections covering AI crawler access, llms.txt, server-side readability, freshness signals, answer formatting and entity clarity. You also get a prioritized fix list. Free, no signup, no email.

Scores 6 weighted areasChecks 8 AI crawlersReads raw HTML onlyNo signup needed

What is an AEO readiness checker?

An AEO readiness checker tests whether a web page can be read and quoted by AI answer engines. It scores crawler access in robots.txt, whether the content sits in raw HTML rather than JavaScript, how fresh the page looks, whether it answers questions directly, and how clearly the business is identified. The result is a 0-100 score with fixes.

What it checks

Six things that decide whether AI quotes your page

AI answer engines do not rank pages the way Google does. They fetch a page, read what they can, and either use it in an answer or move on. Most local business sites fail at one of three points: the crawler is blocked, the text only appears after JavaScript runs, or the page never answers a plain question. The checker tests all six areas and tells you which one is costing you most.

Can the crawlers get in?

This is the heaviest check, at 25 points. We read your robots.txt and work out whether eight named AI crawlers are allowed through. If OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot are blocked, nothing else on the page matters, because those engines never see it.

Is the text actually in the HTML?

Worth 20 points. We fetch your page the way a crawler does, without running JavaScript, and count the words that come back. If your content is built by a script after load, many AI crawlers see an almost empty page. The score shows you the word count they get.

Does the page answer a question?

Worth 20 points. We look for FAQPage schema and for headings phrased as questions. AI engines lift short, direct answers. A heading that reads like a question, followed by a two-sentence answer, is far easier to quote than a paragraph buried in a sales page.

How the 100 points are split

Each section is scored on its own, then weighted into the overall number.

AI Crawler Access25 points

Server-Side Readability20 points

Answer-Format Readiness20 points

Entity Clarity15 points

llms.txt Present10 points

Freshness Signals10 points

Overall score0-100

Honest limits

What this score cannot tell you

A high score does not mean ChatGPT will mention you. It means the mechanical barriers are gone. Whether an engine actually cites you still depends on your reputation, reviews, links and how well your content matches the question. We also only read one URL at a time, we cannot see inside Google's systems, and we score what is public right now. Treat the number as a checklist, not a ranking.

Using the results

Fix the heavy checks first

The recommendations come back in priority order, and that order matters. A 25-point crawler fix takes one line in a text file. A 10-point freshness fix might mean rebuilding how your site handles dates. Start at the top, do the cheap heavy items, then re-run the check.

Same-day fixes

Unblocking crawlers in robots.txt, adding a visible last-updated date, and rewriting two headings as questions can all be done in an afternoon. Between them they are worth more than half the score. Robots.txt is usually the fastest of the three.

Jobs for your developer

Server-side rendering and entity schema are not afternoon jobs. If your score is low on readability, your site is probably rendering content with JavaScript, and that needs a developer or a platform change. Send them the section summary rather than the whole report.

Questions

AEO Readiness Checker FAQ

What does AEO stand for?

AEO stands for answer engine optimization. It is the work of making a page easy for AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews to fetch, read and quote. It overlaps heavily with normal SEO, but it puts more weight on crawler permissions, plain HTML text, clear question-and-answer structure, and a business being clearly identified.

Is a good AEO score the same as ranking in AI answers?

No. The score measures whether your page is readable and quotable. It cannot measure whether an AI engine chooses you over a competitor, because that depends on reviews, links, mentions elsewhere and the wording of each question. Think of the score the way you would think of a car passing its safety test: necessary, but it does not make the car fast.

Why does llms.txt only carry 10 points?

Because its value is still unproven. Google has said it does not use llms.txt for Search or AI Overviews, and no major AI company has formally committed to reading it in production. We include it because it costs almost nothing to add and may matter later, but we deliberately keep the weight low so a missing llms.txt file never sinks an otherwise healthy page.

Does FAQ schema still help now that FAQ rich results are gone?

Google's FAQ rich results stopped appearing in Search from May 7, 2026, so you will not get the old dropdown in blue links. The markup still helps AI systems because it labels a question and its answer unambiguously in the page code. We score it as one signal among several, alongside headings that are written as real questions.

Which page should I test first?

Test the page you most want to be quoted. For a local business that is usually your main service page or your homepage, not your blog. Then test one service page and one location page, because those are often built differently and can score very differently. The checker reads one URL per run, so work through them one at a time.

Do I need to sign up or pay?

No. The checker is free, there is no account, and we do not ask for your email to show the score. Run it as often as you like. If you want someone to do the fixes for you, our AI SEO service handles that, but the tool itself is not gated behind a form or a trial.

Keep going

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Want the fixes done for you?

Run the checker, then book a free strategy call. We will walk through your score, tell you honestly which fixes are worth paying for, and which ones your own developer can do in an hour.

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