AEO Scoring Methodology
How Engagemii scores brands on Answer Engine Optimization. Every brand in our directory is evaluated across six dimensions. Each dimension is graded 0 - 10, then weighted into an overall AI visibility score from 0 - 10.
Cite this methodology: Engagemii (2026). "AEO Scoring Methodology." Retrieved from https://engagemii.com/aeo/methodology. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Structured Data
Weight: 20%Measures the presence and quality of Schema.org JSON-LD markup (Organization, Product, FAQ, BreadcrumbList, LocalBusiness). AI assistants rely heavily on structured data to extract facts about a brand. Scores increase with valid markup, depth of properties, and coverage across page types.
Content Structure
Weight: 15%Evaluates heading hierarchy (H1 - H4), passage organization, FAQ blocks, and content chunking. AI models prefer content that is broken into clear, answerable sections. Linear walls of text score lower than well-structured passages with explicit question/answer patterns.
Entity Clarity
Weight: 20%Tests whether the brand is clearly identified as a single entity across the site: consistent name, About page presence, clear value proposition, named people, address, contact info. Brand entities that AI can resolve to a single identity score higher.
E-E-A-T Signals
Weight: 15%Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. Looks for author bylines, credentials, dates, testimonials, case studies, citations from external sources, press mentions, and third-party reviews. Brands with strong external validation score higher.
Technical AEO
Weight: 15%Crawlability, robots.txt, llms.txt, sitemap.xml, page speed, mobile responsiveness, HTTPS, semantic HTML. AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, etc.) must be able to reach and parse the content. Sites that block AI crawlers or load slowly score lower.
AI Discoverability
Weight: 15%Direct testing: does ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity actually name this brand when asked relevant questions? This is the empirical layer - we run prompts and measure whether the brand surfaces. The most direct signal of AI visibility.
Data Sources
Engagemii ingests brand websites via direct fetch, public web crawls (Common Crawl, our own crawler), structured data extraction, and direct AI assistant queries. Scoring runs on each brand on a rolling schedule. Re-scoring occurs when a brand is claimed, when its content changes materially, or on a fixed quarterly cadence.
License and Attribution
All Engagemii AEO scores, the methodology, and the brand directory are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may reuse, republish, or build on this data freely, provided you give visible credit to Engagemii with a link to engagemii.com.
See the full license terms at engagemii.com/license.