Free AEO Checker
Enter your domain. We check robots.txt against 15 AI crawlers, look for llms.txt, read your sitemap and your homepage without JavaScript, and score what AI engines can actually read — with the evidence and the fix for each item, on this page.
Free · No signup · about 15 seconds · 10 free checks a day
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An AEO checker — the technical half of an AEO audit, and an AI crawler checker at its core — tests whether AI engines can read a site before they decide whether to cite it. MaxAEO's free checker fetches a domain's robots.txt and matches it against 15 AI crawlers, looks for llms.txt, reads the sitemap and its lastmod dates, loads the homepage without JavaScript, and checks Organization structured data — then scores the site out of 100 with the evidence and a fix for every item, on the page.
What you get on this page
- A readiness score out of 100 across four groups: crawler access, machine-readable index, readability without JavaScript, who you are
- Every one of 15 AI crawlers: allowed or blocked, with the exact robots.txt line that decides it
- Whether llms.txt exists, whether the sitemap carries fresh lastmod dates, and how much of the homepage is readable without scripts
- Organization structured data, with copy-paste JSON-LD when it is missing
- A one-click follow-up: what AI engines say about the brand
How to read your readiness score
- Score out of 100
- Four groups add up to 100: AI crawler access 30, machine-readable index 30, readable without JavaScript 25, who you are 15. Above 80 means engines can read and attribute your site; below 50 usually means at least one thing blocks them outright.
- Pass, Improve, Fix, Note
- Pass scores full marks. Improve is half: the thing exists but is stale or incomplete. Fix is zero: missing or blocked. Note is reported but never scored — training-only crawler blocks live here.
- The evidence line
- Every verdict shows what we actually fetched: the robots.txt line with its number, the HTTP status of /llms.txt, the newest lastmod, the word count with and without scripts. If you disagree with a verdict, the evidence is what to check.
- Search-class vs training-only crawlers
- Only search-class crawlers decide whether an engine can cite you today. Blocking training-only crawlers is a policy choice; it is listed so you know, and it costs no points.
How to improve your score
- 1
Unblock the crawlers that cite
Remove Disallow rules for ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-User, Googlebot and Bingbot. Keep GPTBot or ClaudeBot blocked if that is your policy — it does not affect citation. Check CDN and firewall rules too; most silent blocks live there, not in robots.txt.
- 2
Publish llms.txt
One H1, a one-line summary, four or five sections of linked pages with a description each. Generate it, validate it, upload it to the site root.
- 3
Give the sitemap real lastmod dates
Crawlers use lastmod to decide what to re-fetch. A sitemap where every date is the build time, or none at all, tells them nothing.
- 4
Put the copy in the HTML
Server-render the hero, the product description and the FAQ. Most AI fetchers do not execute JavaScript; a page that is empty without scripts is empty to them.
- 5
Declare who you are
Organization JSON-LD with name, logo and sameAs links, plus About, Contact and Privacy pages linked from the footer. Engines use these to attribute content to the right company.
Compared with other ways to check
| Asking the engine yourself | Traditional SEO tools | AEO Checker | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coverage | View source and hope you know what to look for | Site audits built for Google — one 'robots.txt exists' line | 15 AI crawlers matched individually, plus llms.txt, sitemap freshness and no-JS readability |
| Evidence | Notes in a doc | Issue counts without the offending line | The exact line, count or URL behind each verdict |
| Fixes | Search for the right robots syntax | Generic best-practice tooltips | Copy-paste robots rules and JSON-LD for each failed item |
| Next step | Nothing tells you whether it worked | Rankings, not AI answers | One click to see whether AI engines actually name you |
What does an AEO readiness check look for?
Answer engine optimization has a plumbing layer that gates everything above it. Before an AI engine can recommend you, its crawler has to be allowed in, fetch the page within a time budget, find the text without running scripts, and attribute what it read to the right company. A site can publish excellent content and still be invisible because a security rule blocks OAI-SearchBot, or because the homepage is an empty shell until JavaScript runs. The checks on this page exist because each one maps to a step in that pipeline.
They group into four concerns. AI crawler access: robots.txt is matched against 15 user agents, split into the crawlers that fetch pages for search and citation (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-User, Googlebot, Bingbot and others) and the training-only crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, CCBot) whose blocking is a policy choice rather than a visibility problem. Machine-readable index: llms.txt, and a sitemap with fresh lastmod dates. Readable without JavaScript: how many words of the homepage exist in the raw HTML, and whether there is an H1. Who you are: Organization structured data with a logo and sameAs links.
Every failed item comes with the evidence we found — the robots line that blocks a crawler, the 404 on /llms.txt, the word count with and without scripts — and the fix, as copy-paste code where code is the fix. Most of it is template-level work measured in hours. Then measure the outcome rather than the checklist: the AI visibility checker shows whether the engines actually name you, which is the number the plumbing exists to move. Re-check after any release that touches templates, security or CDN settings; crawler blocks usually appear there silently.
Who this is for
SEO / GEO leads
Turn 'AEO' from a buzzword into a score you can report on and a list you can hand to engineering.
Web and content teams
Know which technical fixes matter for AI engines, with the code to apply.
Agencies
Open a client conversation with their score and the crawlers they are blocking.
800+
brands diagnosed across 8 AI engines
Why MaxAEO
MaxAEO runs these site checks as the first step of every brand diagnosis, then asks eight AI engines ten buyer questions to see what the signals actually produce. That is where the checklist comes from: the items that separated cited sites from invisible ones across 800+ diagnoses, not a generic SEO audit relabelled for AI.
The site check is free and stays on this page. The next step — whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews name you, who they name instead and which pages they cite — is one click away. Tracking it daily starts with a 7-day free trial, no card.
Track it daily with MaxAEO
The free check on this page is a snapshot. Every plan re-runs your buyer questions across the engines daily, with history, alerts and an action plan. Annual billing saves 20% — see full pricing.
Starter
Get one brand tracked
$19 / month
- 1 brand
- 10 prompts
- Any 4 of 8 AI platforms
- 5 competitors per brand
- 1-year history
Growth
The standard setup for an in-house team
$149 / month
- 3 brands
- 100 shared prompts
- Any 6 of 8 AI platforms
- 8 competitors per brand
- 1-year history
Pro
Multiple brands, every platform
$399 / month
- 10 brands
- 400 shared prompts
- All 8 AI platforms
- 8 competitors per brand
- 1-year history
Enterprise
Unlimited, with a dedicated manager
Custom
- Unlimited brands
- Unlimited prompts
- All 8 AI platforms
- Unlimited competitors
- Unlimited history
Every account starts with a 7-day free trial: all AI platforms, checked daily, no card required. When it ends, monitoring pauses and your data stays. Subscribe to any plan to resume.
Frequently asked questions
AEO — answer engine optimization, often called GEO — is about being named and cited in AI-generated answers, rather than appearing as a link on a results page. Most SEO foundations still matter, but AI engines add their own requirements: they read pages through their own crawlers, most of them without running JavaScript, they lift specific passages rather than whole pages, and they rely on structured data and clear question-and-answer formatting to decide what a page is about.
Four groups add up to 100: AI crawler access (30), machine-readable index (30), readability without JavaScript (25), who you are (15). Search-class crawlers being blocked, a missing llms.txt and a homepage that is empty without scripts cost the most, because each one stops an engine from reading you at all. Training-only crawler blocks are reported but never scored.
It is not required, and not every AI engine reads it yet — but it is cheap, harmless and increasingly common among sites competing for AI citations. Think of it as a curated index for AI assistants: a short markdown file at /llms.txt that lists your most important pages with one-line descriptions. The check reports whether one exists and links to the generator; the fix takes minutes.
It depends which bot. GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended only feed training, so blocking them does not affect whether ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini can cite you today. ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-User, Googlebot and Bingbot fetch pages when an engine answers a live question; block those and the engine can only describe you from third-party pages. The check lists every crawler with the exact rule that applies.
After every release that touches templates, structured data, robots.txt or the CDN, and at least quarterly. Crawler blocks and JavaScript-only rendering drift silently — a firewall rule or a framework upgrade can cut AI engines off without any symptom in Search Console.
It is the technical half of one. An AEO audit asks two things: can AI engines read your site, and do they name you in their answers. This checker answers the first: crawler access, llms.txt, sitemap, readability without JavaScript and structured data. The AI visibility checker covers the second.
Yes. It reads your robots.txt and checks 15 AI crawlers one by one, including GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and Amazonbot, showing which are allowed, which are blocked and the exact line that decides it. It separates crawlers that fetch pages for answers from those that only collect training data.
Many AEO graders return a single score, sometimes estimated by a language model, so the same site can score differently from one run to the next. This checker reports what it actually found, such as the robots.txt line, the HTTP status and the word count, so every point in the score can be verified and fixed.
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Free →Run the AEO Checker now — free, on this page
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