10-point AI citation readiness checklist for developers
Getting cited by ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews isn't random — there's a specific set of technical signals those systems check. Here are the 10 that matter most. 1. robots.txt is present. Without it, crawlers assume everything is allowed, but you lose explicit AI-bot policy and the Sitemap: hint. 2. AI search bots are not blocked. GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, and Google-Extended feed live AI answers. A Disallow: / that catche
Getting cited by ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews isn't random — there's a specific set of technical signals those systems check. Here are the 10 that matter most.
1. robots.txt is present. Without it, crawlers assume everything is allowed, but you lose explicit AI-bot policy and the Sitemap: hint.
2. AI search bots are not blocked. GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, and Google-Extended feed live AI answers. A Disallow: / that catches any of them removes your site from AI citations.
3. Snippets are not restricted. <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">, noindex, or max-snippet:0 — in either a meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag response header — tell AI engines to skip quoting your content.
4. JSON-LD is present and valid. Invalid JSON-LD blocks are silently ignored. Test after every template change.
5. Organization or WebSite schema is present. Identity markup lets AI engines attribute your content to your brand rather than treating the page as anonymous text.
6. Main content is 600+ words. Strip scripts, nav, and footer before counting. Thin pages rarely become AI sources.
7. Paragraphs are 20–120 words each. That's the range AI engines extract quotes from. Break up walls of text; expand one-liners into full thoughts.
8. Page serves over HTTPS with HTTP 200. Insecure pages and error statuses are dropped from AI indexes.
9. Canonical URL is declared. Without it, duplicate variants of the same page split citation signals instead of pooling them.
10. llms.txt is present at /llms.txt. A plain Markdown index of your key pages — AI crawlers increasingly use it to prioritize what to read.
Score all 10 in one call
curl -X POST https://citeready-api.sprytools.com/v1/audit \
-H "content-type: application/json" \
-d '{"url":"https://yoursite.com"}'
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The response gives a 0–100 score across four categories — AI Crawler Access, Structured Data, Content Citability, Technical Foundation — with a pass/warn/fail on every check and a prioritized fix list.
Free at https://citeready.sprytools.com — 3 checks/day, no signup.
How many of these 10 does your main site currently pass? Curious where developers most often lose points.
