The AEO Checklist: 20 Questions

0 / 20

Checked so far. This doesn't save between visits — it's a one-pass audit tool, not a tracker.

Pillar 1

Machine-Readable Delivery

If a crawler that never runs JavaScript can't see it, it doesn't count.

Does your core pricing, service description, and key claims appear in the raw HTML response, not just the rendered page?Check: view page source (not inspect element), search for the claim.

Does your content read correctly with JavaScript disabled?Check: disable JS in dev tools, reload the page.

Is nothing important locked behind a client-side-only render (a React/Vue app that shows a blank shell until JS executes)?

Pillar 2

Direct-Answer Architecture

AI Overviews and answer engines extract the passage right under a question-style heading — not a scroll away from it.

Does the first sentence on each key page directly answer its core question, with no hedge or warm-up?

Are your FAQ questions phrased the way a person actually types or asks them, not how you'd title a blog section?

Does at least one self-contained passage under each major heading answer that heading's question in roughly 40–90 words, without requiring the rest of the page for context?

Pillar 3

Evidence Density

Confident language isn't evidence. A same-sentence link to something checkable is.

Does every factual claim a skeptical reader could challenge have a same-sentence link to real, independent evidence?

Are your numbers exact rather than rounded for effect?

Do you avoid self-referential loops — citing your own unverified claim on another page as if it were outside evidence?

Pillar 4

Entity Clarity

From this page alone, can a model say in one sentence who you are, where you're based, and why you're credible?

Could a reader (or an AI model) state in one sentence who runs the business, where it's based, and why it's credible — from this page alone, without guessing?

Is your identity (name, location, focus) consistent site-wide, with no conflicting versions on different pages?

Does your Organization/Person/LocalBusiness schema match the visible page text exactly, with no orphaned or contradictory fields?

Pillar 5

Verification Loop

AEO isn't a launch-day task. It has to be re-checked against reality on a real schedule.

Do you periodically re-test a fixed panel of real queries across multiple AI engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity)?

Do you publish the results including the misses, not only the wins?

Is there a stated cadence (a real number, not "regularly") and one named person accountable for running it?

Structural & Technical

Crawlability & AI Overview Readiness

AI Overviews sit on top of organic search — the same crawl, a generative layer above it.

Do you have valid FAQPage, Article, and Organization schema — not just a generic page wrapper with no specific type?

Is your site explicitly crawlable by named AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, PerplexityBot) in robots.txt, not just covered silently by a wildcard?

Do you have an llms.txt file, and is it actually linked from somewhere crawlable — not just sitting on the server unlinked?

Have you actually run your own target queries through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude yourself, recently, to see whether you're cited?

If a competitor is cited instead of you for a query that should be yours, have you checked whether their claim is actually true before assuming they're simply better optimized?

Where This Comes From

Not a generic checklist

5Pillars, each independently verifiable

0/5 vs 3/6Real citation-test gap behind Pillar 3

4wkRe-test cadence behind Pillar 5

Every question above maps directly to a pillar in the AEO Methodology, v1.0, which is itself built from real audit data, not general advice. The last five questions come from independent 2026 research on how Google AI Overviews specifically select and extract source passages.

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