Is Your Website Invisible to AI? Stop Optimizing for Google, Start Optimizing for ChatGPT

TeHsuWang — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 08:27:58 +0000

67% of users now get their first answer from an AI assistant rather than clicking a search result. Your site might rank #1 on Google and still be invisible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview.

The problem: SEO optimizes for ranking algorithms. AI engines don't rank -- they cite. If your content can't be extracted and quoted, it doesn't exist.

This is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), and we built an open-source tool for it.

One Command

npx aeoptimize scan your-site.com

AEO Readability Report
Score: 66/100  AI Readability: Good

  Structure        ██████████████░░░░░░ 18/25
  Citability       █████████████░░░░░░░ 16/25
  Schema           ███████░░░░░░░░░░░░░  7/20
  AI Metadata      █████████████████░░░ 13/15
  Content Density  ████████████████░░░░ 12/15

Warnings:
  ! Found 2 H1 headings. Use exactly one H1 per page.
  ! JSON-LD missing fields: @type, name, description

Top Suggestions:
  -> Add FAQ section with question-format headings
  -> Add AI-relevant schema types (FAQPage, Article, HowTo)

No API keys. No signup. Runs offline.

What aeoptimize Measures

17 rules across 5 dimensions, scored 0-100:

Dimension	Max	What AI engines care about
Structure	25	Clear headings, short paragraphs (<150 words), FAQ sections
Citability	25	Self-contained statements an AI can quote without context
Schema	20	JSON-LD that LLMs use as source of truth (FAQPage, Article)
AI Metadata	15	llms.txt file, robots.txt AI crawler rules
Content Density	15	Signal-to-noise ratio, vocabulary diversity

The scoring is deterministic -- same input, same score. No LLM involved in the base scan, so you can run it in CI/CD without worrying about cost or rate limits.

Benchmarking Real Websites

Website	Score	Why
nextjs.org/docs	75	Good structure, has llms.txt, missing some schema
shiheintelligent.com	66	Has schema but incomplete, 2 H1s, no FAQ
stripe.com/docs	59	Great content but zero JSON-LD (-20 points)
anthropic.com	52	Landing page with little extractable content

Even well-built sites lose 20+ points from missing JSON-LD alone. That's the difference between being cited and being ignored.

Case Study: Fixing a 66-Score Site

shiheintelligent.com scored 66/100. The three biggest issues:

Two H1 headings -- AI engines treat H1 as the page topic. Two H1s create ambiguity.
Incomplete JSON-LD -- Schema existed but missing @type, name, description. AI crawlers can't categorize the content.
No FAQ section -- The site answers common questions in paragraph form, but without FAQ schema, AI engines can't extract them as Q&A pairs.

Fixing these three issues alone could push the score above 80.

More Than a CLI

aeoptimize works in multiple modes:

Framework plugins -- auto-generate llms.txt and JSON-LD on build:

// vite.config.ts
import { aeoPlugin } from 'aeoptimize/vite';
export default defineConfig({ plugins: [aeoPlugin()] });

// next.config.mjs
import { withAeo } from 'aeoptimize/next';
export default withAeo({});

Pre-commit hook -- block commits that drop AEO score:

npx aeoptimize hook install              # min score: 60
npx aeoptimize hook install --min-score 80

GitHub Action -- check every PR:

- uses: dexuwang627-cloud/aeoptimize/action@main
  with:
    path: dist
    min-score: 60

Claude Code skills -- interactive, AI-powered optimization:

claude plugin marketplace add dexuwang627-cloud/aeoptimize
# Then: /aeo-scan, /aeo-generate, /aeo-transform

The /aeo-transform skill uses your Claude subscription to restructure content: split paragraphs, extract FAQ schemas, remove keyword stuffing, fix dangling references. Zero extra cost.

Multi-AI Scoring

For higher confidence, aeoptimize can dispatch scoring to multiple AI engines simultaneously:

npx aeoptimize scan your-site.com --multi-ai

It detects gemini and copilot CLIs on your system, sends each the page content for independent evaluation, then merges with the rule engine using weighted consensus. The result shows per-AI insights:

Score: 72/100 (Rule Engine: 61 | AI Consensus: 83)

AI Insights:
  Claude:  "FAQ section lacks schema markup"
  Gemini:  "Missing llms.txt reduces discoverability"

Built by Three AIs

The project itself was built as a multi-AI collaboration:

Claude -- architecture, core engine (17 rules, scanner, generator), security audit
Gemini -- Vite plugin
Copilot -- Next.js plugin

50 tests, 4 rounds of automated code review (code quality, security, architecture, final). The biggest competitor in this space has 4,800+ stars but zero tests.

The SEO vs AEO Shift

	SEO	AEO
Goal	Rank higher	Get cited
Audience	Search crawler	Language model
Key metric	Click position	Citation accuracy
Content style	Keyword-rich	Self-contained, structured
Structured data	Nice to have	Essential

This shift is already happening. Google AI Overview appears in 43% of queries. Perplexity processes 200M+ queries/month. Content that AI can't parse is content that doesn't exist.

Try It

npx aeoptimize scan your-site.com

GitHub: https://github.com/dexuwang627-cloud/aeoptimize
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/aeoptimize

Star the repo if it helped. Open issues if it didn't.

DEV Community: TeHsuWang