How to Improve Your AI Readiness and Footprint

Your report from Are you found by AI? separates two things: whether the engines name you, and how well your website is set up to be understood. AI Readiness (out of 100) is the second one. It is measured from your site alone and is composed of five site signals: Your off-site presence is scored separately, as Footprint (out of 100): Wikidata and Knowledge Graph entity, Google Business Profile, brand mentions, search demand and referring domains. Footprint sits beside Readiness, not inside it. The free scan does not measure Footprint, so it is shown as not measured rather than zero.

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Where to start

Start with the fix plan in your report. It is ordered by expected impact, highest first, and it is written for your site, so it is a better guide to what to do next than any fixed order on this page. Use the sections below to understand each item and what good looks like.

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Quotable content (Citability)

Quotable content is about how directly an engine can lift a clear answer from your pages. Thin pages, vague value propositions and wall-of-text layouts make that hard. What to fix:

• Use your customers’ questions as headings and answer each one in its first sentence, with real numbers and specifics. Your report lists the buyer questions it asked.
• Use descriptive headers that contain the question or topic, not generic labels like “Our Approach.”
• Lead with the answer, then explain.
• Use numbered lists and short paragraphs wherever the content is instructional.

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Trust and credibility (E-E-A-T)

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) covers the on-page signals that show who is behind the business and why they can be trusted. What to fix:

• Add an About page with your people and their credentials, clear contact details and a privacy policy.
• Add author bylines with genuine credentials to content pages.
• Cite primary sources: original research, official statistics and authoritative external sources rather than secondary summaries.
• Publish case studies with real, specific outcomes. “We reduced churn by 23% for a SaaS company with 400 seats” is quotable. “We help businesses grow” is not.
• Keep your business name, address and phone number (NAP) consistent everywhere they appear: on your website, in directories and in schema markup.

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Site health (Technical)

Site health covers whether AI can reach and read your site quickly. What to fix:

• Serve every page over HTTPS, publish a sitemap and use canonical URLs.
• Put your main text in the page itself. Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so content loaded by client-side script can be invisible to them. If your site renders its content with JavaScript, server-side rendering (SSR) is one of the most useful fixes you can make.
• Keep pages fast, and fix Core Web Vitals issues that cause slow or broken page loads.

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Machine-readable info (Schema)

Schema markup tells machines what kind of entity your business is, what you offer and how to describe you. For most businesses the most important type is Organization, or LocalBusiness if you serve a local area. What to fix:

• Add Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD with your name, URL, logo, description and sameAs links to the profiles that genuinely belong to you. The full report generates this markup from your real business details; see Schema (JSON-LD).
• Deliver JSON-LD in server-rendered HTML. Client-side JavaScript injection means many AI crawlers never see it.

• Validate your schema with Google’s Rich Results Test or the Schema.org Validator, and confirm it appears in the served HTML, not just in your browser’s developer tools.
• Add FAQPage schema only to pages that genuinely answer questions. Do not add fake FAQ blocks just to trigger the schema type.

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AI-ready setup (Platform)

AI-ready setup covers whether AI search tools may read your pages, whether you have a short guide for AI, and whether your pages answer buyers’ questions. What to fix:

• Check that your robots.txt allows the AI crawlers you want, such as OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot for search. Use the free AI crawler checker to see the published rules for 15 crawler controls on any page. See Crawler Checker.
• Publish an llms.txt file at your domain root. A starter llms.txt comes with every free scan, written from your site, and the full report generates the complete file. See llms.txt for the format and the open-source route.
• Make each key page answer a buyer’s question plainly.

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Footprint: work beyond your website

Footprint is your off-site presence, so you cannot improve it by editing your own website alone. What to fix:

• Inspect the sources in your market’s answers. Your report shows which sources the engines returned, and that evidence tells you which profiles, listings or other references need attention.
• Get listed on the directories and review sites in your market, and complete your Google Business Profile.
• Earn genuine third-party mentions: an editorial mention in an industry newsletter, a review by a creator in your space, or a forum thread where someone recommends you.
• Consider a Wikidata item only once you have genuine independent coverage; see the Wikidata section below.

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The comparison page opportunity

Comparison searches (“you vs competitor” and “alternatives to you”) are among the highest-intent queries your buyers make. Our analysis of 1,001 high-buy-intent searches across 119 B2B software brands found that 67% of “vs” searches and 84% of “alternatives” searches are answered by a page the brand did not write. When someone asks an assistant “should I use X or Y?”, its search layer can run exactly these queries. Build comparison pages that win:

• Put the intent keyword in the title: “YourBrand vs Rival: [Honest Frame].”
• Include an honest both-ways feature table early on the page. List what each product genuinely does better.
• Add a section called “Who should pick them” and write it honestly, with real reasons. It is what separates a comparison from an advertisement.
• Place your call to action above the fold: a trial or demo link, not a popup.
• Include a visible “last updated” date and honour it by actually updating the page when things change.
• Use Article or WebPage schema. Skip FAQPage unless you have a genuinely useful FAQ block. Never use fabricated review stars on pages you wrote about yourself.

For “alternatives to you” pages, write a numbered, dated roundup: “7 YourBrand Alternatives (and Who They’re Right For).” Name real competitors and be honest about where they are a better fit. You control the frame, and the comparison is learned from a page that includes you fairly.

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Wikidata entity anchoring

Being a recognised entity in Wikidata and Google’s Knowledge Graph is part of your Footprint. Both registries are widely misunderstood, and a failed self-submission can set you back. Our Wikidata and Knowledge Graph guide is written from our own deletion log. The right path:

1. Build independent coverage first: real press, industry newsletters that chose to feature you, research citations. One genuine article outweighs ten self-made listings.
2. Make a handful of genuinely useful edits to unrelated Wikidata items before touching your own brand. Single-purpose accounts are pattern-matched by admins.
3. Create one minimal item for the organisation: label, description, instance of: business, country, official website, founder, and a registry identifier (in Australia, your ABN). Reference every claim with a retrieved date and an independent source.
4. Wait 30+ days before adding a product item. If the organisation item survives, proceed with the same discipline.

Google’s Knowledge Graph has no submission form. It forms from corroboration: Wikidata, your Organization schema, government registries, consistent NAP and independent mentions across the web. It lags your citation-building by weeks to months. Ship the on-page work first; the Knowledge Graph follows.