What AEO reports judge

Every AEO report makes the same fixed set of judgements about the page - its checks. These are deliberately the questions only an expert reading the page can answer; the mechanical facts (crawler access, structured data presence, meta tags) are covered by Silktide's regular checks on the AEO screen itself. Because every page is judged against the same set, results can be compared and rolled up: the Reports tab shows how many analysed pages are flagged for each.

• Content is coherent
• Answer stated up front
• Claims backed by evidence
• Clear who and what this is
• Structured data matches the page
• Page agrees with itself
• Key facts readable as text
• Key points quotable standalone
• Sections match real questions
• Specific rather than promotional
• Tone cannot be misread as fact
• Credible expertise shown
• Content reads as current
• Answer isn't gated
• Content in a quotable shape
• Offers original information

Each check has a fixed priority, and the page's AEO score is computed from these judgements - every point lost corresponds to a flagged check you can see.

Several of these map onto longer how-to guides in Techniques - notably Answer-first page structure, Quotable claims and evidence blocks, Author pages and bylines, Organization identity markup, Original research and statistics, Structured data markup, Content readable without JavaScript, and Machine-readable dates. Access and discovery - AI crawler access policy, llms.txt, and Internal linking for topical authority - sit alongside. Off-page practices that change who assistants cite - Digital PR, Press kit and newsroom, Review platform presence, and recognising Parasite SEO - live in the same Techniques area.