Elmo

Methodology

What Elmo checks, and how it scores

We only check things with a documented mechanism or a measurement behind them: can search engines and AI search crawlers reach and index your site, can they read your key facts, are you present where local customers look, and what do real AI answers say. Each part is scored, then combined into a weighted overall score.

Findability

35% of the overall score

Can search engines and AI search crawlers reach, index and read your site? The average of the technical SEO score and the AI search readiness checklist. If our crawler is blocked from your pages (robots.txt, a 403 or a bot challenge), technical SEO is marked not measured and left out, rather than scored from the block page.

  1. 1

    Homepage can be indexed

    No noindex rule in the page's meta robots or googlebot tags, or in the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. A noindexed homepage caps the overall score at 20.

  2. 2

    Search crawlers allowed by robots.txt

    Your robots.txt read per crawler, the way Google reads it, for Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) and PerplexityBot. A block caps the overall score.

  3. 3

    Firewall and bot-protection blocks

    We request your homepage as a normal browser and as each crawler. If only the crawler is refused, it is flagged as likely blocked (a site can verify real crawlers by IP, so we don't treat this as certain).

  4. 4

    Key facts without JavaScript

    Your name, what you do, where you are (for local businesses) and how to contact you, found in the HTML crawlers download. We say which facts only appear after scripts run.

  5. 5

    Pages for your services and locations

    At least one page dedicated to a single service, product or location.

  6. 6

    About and contact information

    An about or team page and a way to reach you.

  7. 7

    Canonical tags

    Each checked page's canonical points to itself or a sensible page on your site, not another domain, a conflicting pair, or a broken URL.

  8. 8

    Noindex on inner pages

    Crawled pages with a noindex rule, flagged for you to confirm they are meant to be hidden.

  9. 9

    Linked pages blocked by robots.txt

    Only Disallow rules that block pages your own site links to (normal blocks like /admin or /cart are ignored).

  10. 10

    Site reachability

    Whether your homepage loads at all, as a browser and as each crawler. An unreachable site caps the overall score at 10.

  11. 11

    HTTPS and mixed content

    The site uses HTTPS and doesn't load insecure files on secure pages.

  12. 12

    Page titles

    Missing titles matter; very short or very long titles are a low-priority note, since Google has no length limit.

  13. 13

    Sitemap

    sitemap.xml exists, is valid and lists pages, and robots.txt points to it.

  14. 14

    Meta descriptions, main headings, image alt text

    Reported as low priority: they help people and image search, not rankings.

  15. 15

    Business structured data

    Organization or LocalBusiness markup, checked against what the page shows (informational). Optional: Google says AI search needs no special markup.

  16. 16

    Redirects and page weight

    Homepage redirect chains and very large HTML pages, both low priority.

Local presence

35% for local businesses

For businesses that serve customers at a place or in an area. Online-only businesses skip this section, and its weight goes to the others.

  1. 1

    Google Business Profile

    Whether a profile is found for your business and how complete it is.

  2. 2

    Reviews

    How many reviews you have, your rating and how recent they are. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.

  3. 3

    Listings

    Whether your name, address and phone match between your site and your listings.

AI visibility

20% when measured

What AI search tools actually answer. We ask the questions your customers ask, not your brand name, and read real, search-grounded answers.

  1. 1

    Real answers, with sources

    Answers from ChatGPT with web search and Perplexity, including the sites each answer cited.

  2. 2

    Named or cited

    How often your business was named, or your site cited, across the answers we checked.

  3. 3

    A sample, not a rank

    AI answers change from one ask to the next, so results are reported as a share of answers with the number checked. We never report an "AI ranking position".

Site experience

10% of the overall score

Speed and stability for real visitors. Core Web Vitals are a light ranking signal; slow pages mostly cost you visitors.

  1. 1

    Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)

    How long the main content takes to appear, from real Chrome visitors when Google has enough data.

  2. 2

    Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

    How quickly the page responds to taps and clicks (real visitors only; it can't be measured in a lab test).

  3. 3

    Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

    How much the page jumps around while loading.

  4. 4

    Lab test when there's no field data

    If Google has too little real-visitor data, we use one Lighthouse lab run and label it as such. Lab-only results are never high priority.

  5. 5

    Mobile usability

    Viewport, text size and tap targets on phones.

Content review

0% shown, not scored

An AI model reads your key pages and suggests improvements. It is useful feedback but an opinion that can vary between runs, so it is not part of the overall score and its advice is never above medium priority.

  1. 1

    Experience and expertise shown

    Whether pages show who is behind the business and why they are qualified.

  2. 2

    Trust signals

    Reviews, contact details and policies visitors look for.

  3. 3

    Gaps

    Questions customers ask that your pages don't answer. No word-count targets.

How the overall score works

The overall score (0–100) is a weighted average of the parts above that were measured for your audit. A part we couldn't measure, or that doesn't apply (like local presence for an online business), is left out and its weight is shared among the others; it is never scored as zero. Your report shows the exact weights used.

Some problems stop everything else from mattering, so they cap the score however good the rest is:

Score capped atWhen
10Your homepage doesn't load, as a browser or as any crawler
20Your homepage has a noindex rule, or robots.txt blocks Googlebot
50robots.txt blocks Bingbot (Bing and Copilot)
60robots.txt blocks OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search) or PerplexityBot
GradeScoreWhat it means
A90-100

Search engines and AI search tools can find and read you; little left to fix.

B80-89

Good. A few improvements worth making.

C70-79

Findable, with clear gaps to work through.

D60-69

Several problems that make you harder to find.

F0-59

Something important is broken or missing. Start at the top of your fix-first list.

The score describes whether you can be found and read. It does not predict rankings or AI citations: those also depend on your competitors and on mentions of you elsewhere on the web.

Recommendations are ordered by expected impact relative to effort, with blockers first, so the first items on your list are the ones worth doing first. Each one says why it matters and links to its source.

What we deliberately don't score

Popular “AI SEO” advice that has no evidence behind it. We would rather not waste your time.

  1. 1

    FAQ schema

    Google stopped showing FAQ rich results, and says AI features need no special markup.

  2. 2

    llms.txt

    No AI search provider has said it uses the file; Google compares it to the keywords meta tag.

  3. 3

    Word counts and keyword density

    Google says there is no ideal word count.

  4. 4

    "AI meta tags" and Speakable markup

    Not read by any AI search provider for this purpose.

  5. 5

    Lighthouse score as a ranking factor

    Google ranks with real-visitor data, not a lab test.