How AI-ready is the small business web?

Every brand we score gets a 1-10 AEO score derived from 40+ individual signals across nine categories: structured data, factual consistency, FAQ coverage, llms.txt presence, mobile readability, JSON-LD depth, content freshness, citation hooks, and schema completeness. This is the histogram of those final scores.

The median small business sits at 3-5/10. That means structured data gaps, missing FAQ schema, no llms.txt, brittle JSON-LD. When an LLM is asked "best [category] in [city]" it pulls from the brands at 8+. The ones at 3 are simply not in the answer set. Knowing where you sit on this distribution tells you exactly how much work stands between you and AI citation - and which signals to fix first.

Every brand gets a 1-10 score that's a weighted average of 40+ individual checks - things like whether they have FAQ schema, an llms.txt file, clean JSON-LD, structured headings, consistent business facts across pages, and the citation hooks AI engines look for. The histogram is just every brand we've scored, dropped into the bucket that matches their final score. Refreshed every 30 minutes.