The AEO Score is a 0-100 rating of how citable a website is to the six AI engines that now answer most informational queries: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Overviews.
The score is computed from publicly observable signals on the homepage and the most-linked interior pages. No private data, no scraping behind paywalls, no proprietary feeds.
The score is the weighted combination of five components.
Presence and correctness of structured-data types AI engines read when they pick sources to cite.
A type counts as “present” only if the JSON-LD parses, validates against schema.org, and contains required properties. Stub schema with missing required fields scores zero.
og:image, og:title, og:description on every public-facing page. Missing on any sampled page is a partial deduction. Sites without any og:image site-wide score zero on this component, regardless of other signals.
The site is queried against a category-specific prompt set on all six engines. Each cited mention counts toward the score. Sites with zero observed citations across the prompt set score zero on this component, regardless of how strong their schema is.
Word count and topical depth of homepage and primary service pages. Sites with under 300 words on the homepage score zero on this component. Sites with 1500+ words and clear topical organization score full marks.
We sample 10 pages per site by default: the homepage, the most internally linked navigation pages, and the most-linked interior pages discovered by crawl. Sites with fewer than 10 unique pages are scored on what exists.
Weekly. Every Sunday at 02:00 UTC the prompt set runs and the schema scan re-runs. Scores published Monday morning Hawaii time.
NeverRanked computes these scores using the same engine that runs at check.neverranked.com. Anyone can independently verify a score by running their domain through the public scan tool.
If a site disputes its score, we re-scan within 24 hours and publish the second scan publicly alongside the first. Scores that move more than 5 points between scans get manual review and either a corrected number or a temporary “review pending” flag.
The AEO Score does not predict revenue, conversion, brand value, customer satisfaction, or financial fitness. It is a measurement of one specific thing: whether AI engines have the structured signals they need to cite the site. Sites with low scores often have excellent businesses underneath. The score measures the machine-readable layer, not the business.