Understanding Your GEO Score
Your GEO Score is a weighted composite of 5 categories, informed by Princeton University's GEO research (KDD 2024) and our internal testing across 500+ websites. It helps teams identify weaknesses and prioritize fixes across their site.
Important
GEO Score is an internal prioritization model developed by VELRA, not a Google metric or ranking signal. It is designed to help teams identify weaknesses and prioritize fixes, not to predict rankings or AI citations. For full details, see our Methodology page.
Overall Score: 0-100
Grade scale:
- A (86-100) — Excellent AI visibility
- B (71-85) — Good, minor improvements needed
- C (51-70) — Average, significant gaps
- D (31-50) — Below average, many issues
- F (0-30) — Poor, urgent action needed
Category 1: Technical SEO (40% weight)
Layer: Search Fundamentals
Why 40%: If AI bots can't crawl your site, nothing else matters. Access issues block everything downstream.
What's measured:
- robots.txt AI bot access (14 bots checked)
- SSL/HTTPS
- XML sitemap presence
- Redirect chains (3+ hops = penalty)
- Page speed (via PageSpeed Insights API)
- No noindex on important pages
- Clean canonical tags
Category 2: Content Quality (25% weight)
Layer: Search Fundamentals + Reasoned Best Practices
Why 25%: AI engines cite content that is comprehensive, well-structured, and data-rich.
- Average word count (target: 1,000+)
- Header hierarchy quality (proper H1 → H2 → H3)
- FAQ presence
- Internal link density (target: 3+ per page)
- Image alt text coverage
Category 3: AI Readiness (20% weight)
Layer: Reasoned Best Practices + Proprietary VELRA Scoring
Why 20%: Signals that help AI engines understand and extract your content more effectively.
- llms.txt presence and validity
- Schema.org JSON-LD coverage
- Entity density per paragraph
- Answer-block format content
- Structured data variety
Category 4: Trust & Authority (10% weight)
Layer: Reasoned Best Practices
Why 10%: AI engines prefer citing sources they consider authoritative.
- Author attribution on content
- E-E-A-T signals
- External citation quality
- Brand consistency across site
- Third-party mentions
Category 5: User Experience (5% weight)
Layer: Search Fundamentals
Why 5%: Baseline quality signals.
- Mobile responsiveness
- Core Web Vitals
- Navigation clarity
How to Improve Your Score
- Start with Technical (40%) — biggest impact, usually quickest fixes
- Then Content (25%) — add data, structure, FAQs
- Then AI Readiness (20%) — deploy llms.txt, schema, answer blocks
- Trust and UX improve over time with consistent fixes
Industry Benchmarks
Average GEO Score by industry (approximate, updates as our dataset grows):
- E-commerce: 35-45
- SaaS: 40-55
- Agency/Services: 30-40
- Media/Publishing: 50-65
Important notes
Interpretation guidelines
- GEO Score weights reflect our internal testing across 500+ websites. They are not Google signals.
- Score is for prioritization (what to fix first), not prediction (what will rank).
- Industry benchmarks are approximate and update as our dataset grows.
- A higher score does not guarantee AI citations or search rankings. It indicates stronger technical health, content clarity, and implementation quality.
For a complete explanation of our evaluation methodology, evidence layers, and what we do and don't claim, see the Methodology page.