AEO Grader: Score Your Site's AI Search Readiness
An AEO grader scores how ready your site is to be found and cited by AI search. Ours checks ten things — AI crawler access, server-rendered content, indexability, entity markup, answer-ready structure, metadata, sitemap, HTTPS and llms.txt — and returns a 0–100 score with the fix for each gap.
Every point comes from a rule we can show you: your live robots.txt, requests as AI crawlers, the raw HTML and its structured data. Free, no signup. Updated Oct 24, 2026 by the AEOeye team.
What does the AEO grader score?
Ten checks, weighted by how much each one can stop AI search from using your page:
| Check | Points |
|---|---|
| AI search crawlers allowed in robots.txt | 20 |
| AI crawlers actually receive the page (no firewall block) | 15 |
| Main content is in the HTML, no JavaScript needed | 15 |
| Indexable: HTTP 200, no noindex, self-referencing canonical | 10 |
| Organization markup (name, logo, sameAs) | 10 |
| Answer-ready structure: direct answers, question headings, lists | 10 |
| Title and meta description | 5 |
| XML sitemap declared in robots.txt | 5 |
| HTTPS | 5 |
| llms.txt | 5 |
The top three are gates. If a crawler can't get the page, or gets an empty JavaScript shell, nothing else matters. Google renders JavaScript, but Google's own JavaScript SEO guide still recommends server-side rendering — and many AI crawlers don't render at all.
Why does llms.txt only count for 5 points?
Because no AI search engine has said it uses llms.txt to choose sources. We'd rather under-promise than sell you a file. Our llms.txt page covers what it is good for.
How do I read my score?
Treat the score as a triage list, not a grade to frame.
- 85–100: technically ready. What decides citations now is content and reputation.
- 60–84: one or two real gaps, usually rendering or entity markup.
- Below 60: something is blocking AI crawlers or hiding your content. Fix the red items first.
How do real sites compare?
Big brands are not as clean as you'd expect. When we checked 391 well-known sites in October 2026 (dataset), 84.6% declared a sitemap in robots.txt and 70.2% of the homepages we could parse had Organization markup — but 16% of the homepages we requested answered with a bot challenge instead of content.
Is a high score enough?
No. Readiness only means AI can use your site. Whether ChatGPT actually recommends you when a buyer asks is a different test, and that is what the free AI visibility checker runs.
Google's guidance on AI features says the same SEO fundamentals apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode — this grader checks those fundamentals with the AI crawlers added in.
Reachable is step one. Does AI actually recommend you?
Run a free AI visibility audit: we ask ChatGPT the questions your buyers ask and show whether your brand comes up.
FAQ
What is AEO?
+
Answer engine optimization: making your brand easy for AI assistants and AI search to find, understand and cite. It builds on SEO fundamentals such as crawlability and clear content rather than replacing them.
How is this different from HubSpot's AEO grader?
+
HubSpot's AI Search Grader (formerly its AEO Grader) reports what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about your brand from their training data. Ours audits your website's technical readiness with transparent rules; our separate AI visibility checker asks ChatGPT live.
Why did my score drop although I changed nothing?
+
Usually a CDN or firewall setting started challenging AI crawlers, or robots.txt was redeployed from an old template. Run the AI crawler checker to see which bot changed.
Sources
Related free tools
AI Visibility Checker
Free AI visibility checker: we ask ChatGPT your buyers' questions and show whether you're named, where you rank and who wins instead. No signup.
AI Crawler Checker
Every major AI crawler — GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, Bytespider and more — what each does, plus a 1-click check of your site.
llms.txt Checker
What goes in an llms.txt file, where it lives and who reads it. Check your site's llms.txt for format errors and broken links, or copy a valid example.
Schema Validator
Free schema validator: parse every JSON-LD block on a URL and flag syntax errors and missing required properties per Google's structured data docs.
Googlebot Simulator
Free Googlebot tester: fetch a page as Googlebot Smartphone and compare it with a browser fetch — status, robots, noindex, canonical and readable text.