AI Readiness Checklist: 12 Fixes That Get You Cited

Retrievability: let AI in

An engine that cannot fetch your page cannot cite it. Start at the gate.

1. Allow AI search crawlers in robots.txt — OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot. Blocking them removes you from live answers.
2. Decide deliberately about training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended). Blocking is a legitimate IP stance, but it slows how fast models learn your brand.
3. Publish an llms.txt at your domain root listing your most citable pages with one-line descriptions.
4. Remove accidental noindex directives — a noindex page is invisible to both Google and AI retrieval.

Extractability: give AI something to lift

Once the engine is in, structure decides whether anything is quotable.

1. Add Organization schema site-wide with name, url, logo, contactPoint and sameAs.
2. Add Article schema on content pages with headline, author, datePublished and dateModified.
3. Add FAQPage schema wherever you genuinely answer questions.
4. Open every H2 section with a one-to-two sentence direct answer, under 30 words.
5. Convert steps into numbered lists and comparisons into real tables.

Trust: give AI a reason to pick you

Between two extractable pages, engines cite the one with stronger provenance.

1. Show a visible author byline and mirror it in schema.
2. Display published and updated dates in <time> elements.
3. Cite authoritative sources — standards bodies, government data, major references — with descriptive anchor text.

Frequently asked questions