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AEO Score (AI Engine Optimization)

Measure your site's readiness for AI-powered search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Brave). Score 0–100 with component breakdown and historical tracking.

Updated

AEO Score

AI-powered search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Brave) are pulling from a smaller, more selective content pool than Google. Your AEO Score measures how ready your site is to be cited in AI answers.

What is AEO?

AI Engine Optimization (AEO) prepares your site for discovery and citation in generative AI search:

  • ChatGPT + Perplexity pull from their training data + web crawls
  • Brave AI Answers cite sources with links
  • These engines favor schema, structured FAQs, fresh content, strong citations
  • A site strong in AEO will earn traffic from AI engines — even if Google rankings are flat

Your AEO Score is 0–100, with component breakdown so you know what to improve.

How to use

  1. Go to Dashboard → AEO Score
  2. View your overall 0–100 score with tier badge (weak/fair/strong)
  3. See component breakdown (each weighted differently)
  4. View 30-day history graph (recompute triggers)
  5. Click a component to see details and improvement suggestions

The 5 components

Your score is calculated from:

ComponentWeightWhat it measures
Schema Markup Coverage25%Percentage of pages with Article, NewsArticle, or FAQ schema
FAQ Structured Content20%Count of FAQ sections with proper schema, clarity, and relevance depth
Content Freshness20%Recency of publish/update dates; how often you refresh stale content
Indexation Status20%Percentage of published URLs indexed by Google
Citation Density / GEO15%Internal link density, external backlinks citing your domain, geo signals

Each score is 0–100. Your overall AEO = weighted average.

Interpreting your score

  • 90–100 (Strong) — excellent AEO readiness; your content is citation-worthy for AI engines
  • 70–89 (Fair) — good potential, but missing schema or freshness; improve and you’ll get more AI citations
  • 50–69 (Weak) — significant gaps in structure or freshness; AI engines will skip most of your content
  • Below 50 (Critical) — almost no AI-ready content; major overhaul needed

Components explained

Schema Markup Coverage (25%)

AI engines favor pages with structured data (JSON-LD).

  • Article schema: tells AI engines “this is a news/blog article”
  • NewsArticle schema: improves trust for breaking news / timely content
  • FAQ schema: lets AI engines pull direct Q&A without parsing prose

How to improve:

  • Add Article schema to every blog post (author, datePublished, dateModified, headline, description)
  • Add FAQ schema to pages with actual Q&A sections (min 3 Q/A pairs)
  • Verify schema in Google Rich Results Test

Kyni auto-adds schema when generating articles. For manually written content, you’ll need to add it yourself or use a WordPress plugin.

FAQ Structured Content (20%)

AI engines rely on FAQ sections to build concise answers.

Measures:

  • Count of FAQ sections on your site
  • Clarity of Q&A (good: questions are specific; bad: vague questions)
  • Depth of answers (good: 150+ word answers; bad: one-liners)

How to improve:

  • Add FAQ sections to existing content (especially how-to, guide, troubleshooting pages)
  • Ask real questions your visitors search for (use GSC or keyword data)
  • Answer each question in 150+ words with context and examples
  • Structure as <h3>Question here?</h3><p>Answer...</p> with FAQ schema

Content Freshness (20%)

AI engines favor recent, regularly-updated content.

Measures:

  • Median publish date of your articles (newer is better)
  • How often you update old articles
  • Update dates visible to crawlers

How to improve:

  • Publish new content regularly (at least 2–4 per month)
  • Refresh top-ranking articles every 60–90 days (update dates, add new data, fix outdated stats)
  • Update publish dates when you refresh (dateModified field in schema)
  • Use Kyni’s auto-refresh to keep old content current

Indexation Status (20%)

AI engines only cite content Google has indexed.

Measures:

  • Percentage of your published URLs that are indexed by Google
  • Days-to-indexation (faster = better signal)

How to improve:

  • Monitor via Indexation Intelligence
  • Fix crawl/fetch errors (robots.txt blocks, 500 errors)
  • Add internal links to unindexed pages
  • Expand thin content (add examples, data, depth)
  • Use Site Vitals to improve speed (faster indexation)

Citation Density / GEO Signals (15%)

AI engines look at how often your domain is cited elsewhere + local authority.

Measures:

  • Backlinks to your domain (external mentions)
  • Internal link density (how well your content links together)
  • Geo signals (local address, local schema, local mentions)

How to improve:

  • Build internal links (use Kyni’s auto-link injection when generating content)
  • Create content worth citing (original data, research, unique angle)
  • Get backlinks (guest posts, partnerships, industry mentions)
  • Add local schema if you’re location-based (address, hours, phone)
  • Build local citations (list on Google Business Profile, Yelp, directories)

When AEO score updates

Kyni recomputes your AEO daily and logs changes. Score updates trigger on:

  • New article published (schema added)
  • Old article refreshed (freshness updated)
  • Article indexed (indexation % changes)
  • New FAQ section added (FAQ count changes)
  • New backlinks detected (citation signal improves)

View your 30-day AEO trend in the dashboard to see impact of recent work.

How it works

Kyni pulls data from:

  1. Your site crawl — schema detection, FAQ parsing, content structure
  2. Google Search Console — indexed URLs, indexation timeline
  3. Link indexing — estimated backlinks + internal link density
  4. Published content library — publish dates, update dates, refresh history

Score recomputes daily at 04:00 UTC using the latest available data.

Cost

Included in all plans — no per-check credit cost. Daily updates are automatic.

Why AEO matters

AI-powered search is growing fast:

  • Perplexity hit 500M monthly users in 2025
  • ChatGPT search now competes with Google for research queries
  • Brave AI Answers cite sources — being cited = traffic

Sites strong in AEO (good schema, fresh content, high indexation) will earn citations from these engines. Sites weak in AEO will be ignored.

Unlike Google SEO (which takes months to rank), AEO improvements can show results in weeks — AI engines crawl and re-train frequently.

FAQ

Does AEO Score affect Google rankings? No. Google uses different signals (E-E-A-T, backlinks, Core Web Vitals). AEO specifically measures readiness for AI engines. Strong AEO usually correlates with strong Google SEO, but they’re separate.

Should I prioritize AEO or Google SEO? Both. Google still sends 80%+ of search traffic. But AI engines are growing fast. Build for both: fresh content + schema + internal links works for both.

How do I know if AI engines are citing me? Perplexity and Brave show source links. If you see traffic from these engines in your analytics, you’re being cited. You can also search your brand/keywords in Perplexity and Brave to see if your content shows up.

Can I improve my AEO Score without hiring help? Yes. The biggest gains come from:

  • Adding FAQ schema to existing pages (1–2 hours per page)
  • Refreshing stale content (add new data, update dates)
  • Improving site speed (impacts indexation)

Kyni automates schema generation for new articles, so the hardest work is backfilling old content.

What if my AEO Score is high but AI engines don’t cite me? High AEO is necessary but not sufficient. AI engines also consider:

  • Domain authority (backlinks matter)
  • Query relevance (your content must match the search query)
  • Freshness (very recent content wins for news-y queries)
  • Citation diversity (they prefer multiple sources, not just one)

High AEO makes you eligible for citations. Getting cited also depends on backlinks and query fit.