What is answer engine optimization?
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring a web page so AI assistants and answer engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews can parse, trust, and cite it. It builds on classic SEO with clear titles, summarizable descriptions, canonical identity, structured data, social metadata, and no crawl blockers.
What the score checks
Eight weighted checks totaling 100 points. A pass earns the full weight, a warning earns half, and a fail earns nothing.
Title tag
15 ptsPresent and between 15 and 70 characters.
Meta description
15 ptsPresent and between 50 and 170 characters.
H1 heading
10 ptsOne clear H1 on the page.
Canonical URL
10 ptsA canonical link tag naming the authoritative address.
Structured data
20 ptsAt least one JSON-LD block. The heaviest weight, because it is how engines read entities.
Social metadata
10 ptsOpen Graph title, description, and image.
Indexable
10 ptsNo noindex directive in the robots meta tag.
HTTP status
10 ptsThe page returns a 2xx response.
Grades: 85 and above is strong, 70 to 84 is good, 50 to 69 needs work, below 50 is poor. Read more in AEO explained: how to get cited by AI.
One page is a snapshot. A governed site is a discipline.
Dispatch inventories every page of your website from its sitemap, crawls and scores each one, re-scores after every deployment, and rolls the results up with the top issues to fix. It is one part of the management layer for AI-powered websites: every change previewed, approved, attributed, and reversible, whichever AI agent does the work.