AI-readiness checklist: 11 checks that decide whether ChatGPT can read and cite your website
Before an AI assistant can name your business, its crawler has to reach your pages, read the text and understand what the page is about. These are the 11 checks AEO Pro scores, with the weight each one carries out of 100 and how to pass it.
How the score works
Each check has a fixed weight, and the weights add up to 100. A check can pass, partly pass or fail. The score says whether AI tools can read your site. It does not say whether they recommend you: that is measured separately, by asking the same questions again every two weeks.
Training bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) are reported separately and not scored. Whether you allow AI model training is your choice, and blocking it does not hide you from AI search.
1. AI search and assistant crawler access (15 points)
Your robots.txt and your firewall must let the crawlers that fetch pages for AI answers in: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for Claude, and Googlebot and Bingbot for the indexes many assistants rely on. See OpenAI’s crawler list and Anthropic’s.
A common failure is a security plugin or CDN rule that blocks unknown bots with a 403. The page looks fine in your browser and is invisible to the assistant.
2. Same page for people and AI (15 points)
A crawler should get the same HTML a visitor gets. Serving bots a different page (cloaking) can get a site dropped. AEO Pro compares a fingerprint of the page fetched as a browser and as an AI crawler.
3. Main content visible without JavaScript (10 points)
Many AI crawlers read the HTML and do not run scripts. If your services, prices or bios only appear after JavaScript runs, the crawler sees an empty page. Check by viewing the page source: your main text should be in it.
4. Structured data that matches the page (15 points)
Schema.org JSON-LD tells machines what the page is: a dentist, a law firm, a service, opening hours, an address. It must only state facts that are visible on the page. Markup that disagrees with the page does more harm than none.
5. FAQPage (10 points)
Questions and answers written on the page, and marked up as FAQPage, map directly to how people ask AI tools. Answer the real questions customers ask, in plain sentences, with facts from your business.
6. Meta descriptions (10 points)
Each important page needs a meta description that says what the page offers, for whom and where. Search engines and AI tools use it as a summary. AEO Pro writes them from sentences already on the page.
7. Sitemap (10 points)
A sitemap.xml listed in robots.txt helps crawlers find every page, including new ones, without depending on links.
8. Page language (5 points)
The html lang attribute (for example lang="en-US") tells tools which language the page is in. If you have Spanish pages, link them with hreflang so a question asked in Spanish can find them.
9. Canonical (5 points)
A canonical link names the one address for each page, so copies with tracking parameters or www/non-www versions do not split attention.
10. Open Graph (3 points)
Open Graph tags give the title, description and image used when a link to your site is shared, including in chat apps and some AI tools.
11. llms.txt (2 points)
llms.txt is a short plain-text summary of your site for language models (llmstxt.org). It is new and not yet used by every assistant, so it carries the smallest weight. It costs little to add.
What the checklist does not cover
Passing every check makes your site readable. AI answers also draw on reviews, directories, your Google Business Profile and other sites that mention you. That is why AEO Pro also measures the answers themselves, and on Complete flags when your Google Business Profile disagrees with your website.
To see your own score and which businesses AI names instead of you: Get a free AI check.
Questions
Does a high AI-readiness score mean ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No. The score says whether AI tools can read and understand your site. Whether they name you also depends on other sources, such as reviews and directories. AEO Pro measures that separately by asking the same questions every two weeks.
Should I block GPTBot?
That is your choice. GPTBot collects data for model training. ChatGPT search uses OAI-SearchBot, a different crawler, so blocking GPTBot does not remove you from ChatGPT search answers. AEO Pro reports training bots separately and does not score them.
Do I need llms.txt?
It helps a little and costs little. It carries 2 of 100 points because not every assistant reads it yet.