The August 2026 article reported a six-factor review of 15 San Diego businesses. These historical scores are not AI citation rates and may not be directly comparable with the current tool. Read the study's methodology and limitations.
These are historical checklist scores, not a ranking of San Diego businesses or a test of whether AI assistants can describe them. Read the full study →
Use these practical checks to review your site. Prioritize changes that help customers and match actual search data; ask which work is included in a quoted AEO sprint.
Why it matters: descriptive page titles help people and search systems identify a page's topic. A generic title can make that purpose unclear.
The fix — use this formula:
Keep titles under 60 characters and meta descriptions under 155, and give every page its own. DIY: ~30 minutes.
Why it matters: clear service, location and contact details make the page easier for people and search systems to understand. They do not guarantee a recommendation.
The fix — the one-paragraph test: your homepage's first text block should read like this:
Real words in real HTML — not text baked into images or a hero video. DIY: ~20 minutes.
Why it matters: published prices or an honest starting range can answer a buyer's question. The historical study found a price on 4 of 15 sampled sites; this is not a measure of citation frequency.
The fix: you don't need a full price list — a floor is enough:
Put it on the relevant service page in plain text. DIY: ~15 minutes.
Clear questions and factual answers can help readers find information on a page.
The fix: add 4–6 real questions customers actually ask, each answered in 2–4 full sentences that stand alone. Start with these:
Then mark it up with FAQPage schema (see #5). DIY: ~1 hour.
Structured data labels supported page information. It should agree with the visible content.
The fix — paste this in your site's head code and fill in the brackets:
This one needs access to your site's head code — the most common fix we handle in sprints.
Why it matters: llms.txt is an optional proposed text format for describing a site's content. It is not an access-control file, a substitute for robots.txt, or a demonstrated ranking advantage. The historical study reported one on 3 of 15 sampled sites.
The fix — create a text file at yoursite.com/llms.txt:
DIY: ~1 hour if your platform lets you host a root text file.
The audit checks selected technical and content signals visible to its scanner. These checks can identify review tasks; they do not reproduce every search engine's crawler or establish why an answer cites a business.
Whether supported structured data describes your business and services consistently with the visible page. Markup is not a guarantee of recommendations.
Whether your pages answer relevant customer questions clearly.
Crawl access and sitemap availability, subject to the scanner's capabilities.
Whether titles and descriptions identify the page topic accurately.
01 — SCAN
The audit requests your homepage and inspects the returned structure. Its response may differ from a search crawler or a browser-rendered page.
02 — SCORE
The tool combines its technical and content checks into a readiness score. The weights are an audit rubric, not a search engine's formula, and have not been validated as predictors of AI citations or leads.
03 — FIX
The results list detected gaps for human review. Prioritize changes by your customers' needs and the site's actual search and inquiry data, not the score alone.
Yes. It runs instantly in your browser, takes about 60 seconds, and there is no obligation attached to the results.
The score summarizes technical and content checks made by this tool. It does not measure how often AI engines recommend your business, and a low score does not prove that they cannot read or cite your site. Check actual answers and referral data separately.
Some fixes — clearer titles, plain-language answers on your pages — are very doable yourself. Schema markup, llms.txt, and FAQ structured data usually require access to your site's head code. Kanyon Studio offers flat-rate optimization sprints that handle all of it, typically live in 2–4 weeks.
SEO and AEO work can overlap in content, crawl access and structured data. Actual rankings, citations, visits and inquiries are measured separately.