How Do I Do an AEO Audit?
Audit your AEO by walking the Canon as a cascade — access, alignment, extractability, authority and credibility, then freshness — and measure current citation share to find the binding constraint to fix first. The audit's job is to locate the weakest link in the chain.
Audit your AEO by walking the Canon as a cascade — check access, alignment, extractability, authority and credibility, and freshness — then measure current citation share to find the binding constraint to fix first. The audit's whole job is to locate the weakest link, because the highest broken gate is what's holding you back.
Quick answer
Walk the Canon as a cascade: access (can crawlers read you), alignment (right questions), extractability (liftable answer), authority and credibility (does the web trust you), freshness (current). Then measure citation share per engine for a baseline. Find the first broken gate — your binding constraint — and fix it first.
What does an AEO audit cover?
The eight pillars, in cascade order, plus a measurement baseline. Check access (can AI crawlers read your pages), alignment (are you answering the real questions), extractability (is the answer liftable and answer-first), authority and credibility (does the web trust you), and freshness (is it current). Then capture your current citation share per engine so you have a "before" to measure against.
How do I find what's holding me back?
Look for the first broken gate. Because the pillars depend on each other, the highest failure point is your binding constraint — if crawlers can't read you, no amount of authority matters; if the answer is buried, no freshness helps. The Canon diagnostic walks this exact cascade. Fix the top break, re-measure, and repeat, rather than spreading effort thinly across everything at once — which is the Adaptability pillar's discipline applied to prioritization.
How often should I audit?
A full audit periodically — quarterly suits most — with continuous citation tracking in between. The ongoing tracking surfaces problems as they emerge, while the periodic deep audit catches structural issues and decay the day-to-day numbers miss — the gradual erosion of traffic and rankings as content ages. Match the cadence to how fast your space and content change — faster-moving topics warrant more frequent audits.
Related questions
Why isn't my site being cited by AI?
Usually a broken gate in the cascade — diagnose access, alignment, extractability, then authority.
Read the full answer →What AEO metrics should I track?
Citation share per engine, gaps, referral traffic, and conversions — not vanity numbers.
Read the full answer →How do I track my AI citations?
Run a fixed prompt set across engines on a schedule and log whether and how you're cited.
Read the full answer →Frequently asked questions
- How do I do an AEO audit?
- Walk the Canon as a cascade. Check access (can AI crawlers read your pages), alignment (are you answering the real questions), extractability (is the answer liftable and answer-first), authority and credibility (does the web trust you), and freshness (is the content current). Then measure your current citation share per engine to locate the binding constraint, and fix the highest broken gate first.
- What should an AEO audit cover?
- The eight pillars plus your measurement baseline. Verify crawlability and rendering, question and intent coverage, passage extractability, off-site authority and on-page credibility, and freshness — and capture current per-engine citation share so you have a before to measure against. The audit's job is to find the weakest link.
- How do I find what's holding my AEO back?
- Look for the first broken gate in the cascade. Because the pillars depend on each other, the highest failure point is your binding constraint — if crawlers can't read you, nothing downstream matters. Fix that one, re-measure, and repeat, rather than spreading effort across everything at once.
- How often should I run an AEO audit?
- A full audit periodically — quarterly is reasonable for most — with continuous citation tracking in between. The tracking surfaces problems as they emerge, while the periodic deep audit catches structural issues and decay. Match the cadence to how fast your space and content change.