How to Run an AEO Audit: A Step-by-Step Checklist (2026)

An AEO audit tells you why AI engines aren’t citing your site — and what to fix first. Unlike an SEO audit, which focuses on rankings, an AEO audit focuses on citability: is your content structured so ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews can find it, parse it, and quote it?

Run this checklist in order. Fix technical blockers before touching content.

What is an AEO audit?

An AEO audit covers five areas: AI crawler access (robots.txt, llms.txt), structured data (schema.org), content answer-shaping (direct-answer H1s, FAQ blocks), page speed (Core Web Vitals), and citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Run each check, score gaps, and prioritize technical fixes before content changes.

Step 1 — Check AI crawler access

AI engines can’t cite pages they can’t read. Before anything else, verify your site isn’t blocking them.

robots.txt — Fetch https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Confirm none of the following are disallowed: GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, Google-Extended, CCBot. A single Disallow: / under any of these blocks that crawler completely.

llms.txt — Fetch https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt. If it 404s, you’re missing a low-cost, high-signal file. llms.txt gives AI models a structured summary of your site’s key pages and preferred framing — it’s the difference between an AI guessing what your site is about and knowing.

JavaScript rendering — AI crawlers often skip JavaScript rendering entirely. If your content is only visible after JS executes, it may be invisible to them. Test by fetching your page with curl and checking whether the main content appears in the raw HTML response.

Step 2 — Audit structured data

Schema markup gives AI engines pre-parsed, trusted data. Without it, they have to infer everything from your prose — and they often get it wrong.

Organization schema — Does your homepage include @type: Organization with name, URL, description, and sameAs links to verified social profiles? This is the foundational signal AI engines use to identify and trust your brand.

FAQPage schema — Any page with Q&A content should have @type: FAQPage with acceptedAnswer text for each question. AI engines lift these directly into answers. A heading with no answer text underneath it produces no signal.

Service or Product schema — Service pages should declare what you offer. An AI asked “who does [service] in [location]” needs structured data to identify you as a match.

Validation — Run your schema through Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema.org’s validator. Errors and warnings reduce trust.

Step 3 — Score your content for answer-shaping

This is the highest-leverage step. AI engines cite pages that answer questions clearly, near the top, in plain language.

For each key page, ask:

Does the H1 contain or match a real question your buyer asks? Category labels (“Web Development Services”) don’t get cited. Direct answers (“How to migrate from Squarespace to Astro”) do.
Is there a direct-answer paragraph in the first 100 words? The answer to the page’s core question should appear before any preamble, backstory, or navigation copy.
Does each H2 or H3 ask a question and answer it in the paragraph below? The H2 + paragraph pair is the unit AI engines extract. Headings with no answer copy underneath them produce nothing.
Is there an FAQ block? A dedicated FAQ section with 5–15 Q&A pairs — each answer 40–60 words — gives AI engines multiple extraction targets on a single page.
Is the prose declarative and specific? Vague marketing language (“We deliver results”) is never cited. Specific claims (“Median mobile LCP improvement: 14.5s → 0.8s”) are.

Step 4 — Run a page speed check

Page speed is a prerequisite for AEO, not a bonus. Slow pages get crawled less frequently, and AI engines that do reach them may time out before parsing the content.

Run your homepage and top service pages through PageSpeed Insights. Targets:

Mobile score ≥ 85 (aim for 90+)
Desktop score ≥ 95
LCP < 2.5s on mobile
CLS < 0.1
TBT < 200ms

If you’re on Squarespace, the 1.24MB JS bundle and lack of control over render-blocking resources make hitting these targets difficult without a rebuild. If you’re on a static stack (Astro, Next.js with static export, Eleventy), these targets are achievable without heroics.

Step 5 — Track citations across AI engines

Citation tracking is the only metric that tells you whether the rest of the audit is working.

Manual spot checks — Search your target queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. Is your brand named? Is your content quoted? Is your URL linked? Do this for 5–10 priority queries and record the results. Repeat monthly.

Non-branded queries matter most — Branded queries (“WebbROI AEO”) confirm awareness. Non-branded queries (“best AEO agency for small business,” “how to run an AEO audit”) are where new revenue comes from. If you’re only cited on branded queries, you have an awareness problem, not a citation problem.

GSC as a proxy — Google Search Console impressions for your target queries are a reasonable proxy for AI Overviews inclusion, since AI Overviews draw from the same indexed content. If impressions are flat or falling on key queries, your content isn’t being surfaced.

How to prioritize fixes

Not every finding carries equal weight. Use this order:

Unblock AI crawlers first. A blocked crawler makes every other fix irrelevant.
Add Organization + FAQPage schema. High impact, low effort, ships in one commit.
Fix direct-answer content on your top service pages. Restructure, don’t rewrite — add a direct-answer lead paragraph and answer copy under each FAQ heading.
Add llms.txt if missing.
Fix page speed if below targets.
Build citation tracking into your monthly reporting.

Get a professional AEO audit

If you’d rather have this done for you, we run a fixed-price AEO audit that covers all five areas and delivers a prioritized fix list within 5 business days. We measure your current citation rate across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, identify every technical blocker, and give you a commit-ready fix plan.

AEO audit FAQ

What does an AEO audit include?

An AEO audit covers AI crawler access (robots.txt, llms.txt), structured data (schema.org markup), content answer-shaping (direct-answer headings and FAQ blocks), page speed (Core Web Vitals), and citation tracking across major AI engines. The output is a prioritized fix list ordered by impact and effort.

How is an AEO audit different from an SEO audit?

An SEO audit optimizes for rankings in Google’s blue-link results. An AEO audit optimizes for citations inside AI-generated answers in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. The technical foundations overlap — crawlability, speed, structured data — but AEO adds content answer-shaping and citation tracking as distinct layers.

How often should I run an AEO audit?

Run a full audit quarterly. Do monthly spot-checks on citation rates for your 5–10 priority queries. AI engines update their indexes and ranking signals frequently enough that a site that was well-cited in January may have gaps by April without active maintenance.

Can I run an AEO audit myself?

Yes — this checklist covers the core process. The steps that require judgment are content scoring (knowing what “direct-answer” looks like vs. what just sounds like it) and citation tracking across multiple engines. If those feel fuzzy, a professional audit removes the guesswork.

Does AEO work for Squarespace sites?

Yes, with limitations. Squarespace sites can be optimized for AI crawler access (the Crawlers toggle in Settings), content structure, and some schema via code injection. The limitations are speed (the platform JS bundle is unavoidable) and full schema control (you can inject JSON-LD but can’t modify the platform’s auto-generated markup). For sites where speed or technical control are the ceiling, a migration to Astro + Cloudflare Pages is the next step.