An AEO score of 72 means different things depending on your industry. A SaaS company with strong technical foundations but thin marketing copy faces a different problem than a media company with excellent content but blocked AI crawlers. This guide breaks down typical score patterns by vertical, with industry-specific priority fixes.
What Is a Good AEO Score?
A good AEO score is 80+ (B range), indicating your site is technically accessible to AI agents with addressable content gaps. Scores of 90+ (A range) indicate strong AI readiness. Most un-optimized sites score in the 55–72 range on first audit.
How to Read an AEO Score in Context
Only 41% of web pages currently implement JSON-LD, and AI Overviews now appear in roughly 16% of all Google queries. Across industries, the most common AEO gaps are structural and technical — not about content quality alone. Understanding where your vertical typically struggles helps you prioritize the right fixes first.
The AEO score is a composite of technical readiness (16 checks) and content quality as evaluated by an LLM (6 dimensions). A high technical score with a low content score suggests a well-structured site whose content isn't citation-worthy. The inverse — strong content, weak technical signals — often appears on media sites that have neglected metadata and schema. See how AEO scoring works for the full methodology.
SaaS and B2B Technology
Typical strengths
SaaS sites typically have strong technical foundations — developers maintain them, metadata is usually set, sitemaps exist. Product documentation often has clean heading structure and is factual enough for AI citation.
Typical weaknesses
Marketing pages are often thin on substance — hero sections with generic copy, benefit bullets that don't answer the questions AI users ask. JSON-LD is frequently absent on product and feature pages. AI crawler blocks are sometimes set inadvertently through CMS defaults.
Priority fixes for SaaS
- Add Product or SoftwareApplication schema to all product and feature pages.
- Rewrite hero copy to open with a specific, answer-ready statement of what the product does.
- Publish technical guides and comparison content — the format AI agents cite most in the SaaS space.
- Ensure documentation (help center, API docs) is AI-crawlable and has proper Article schema.
E-commerce and Retail
Typical strengths
Large e-commerce sites often implement Product schema at scale and have sitemap infrastructure in place. Review-rich pages have high evidence density that AI agents find citation-worthy.
Typical weaknesses
Category and filter pages are often thin or duplicative. Product descriptions are frequently short manufacturer copy rather than comprehensive content. E-commerce sites under-invest in the buying guide content that answers the informational queries AI search handles most.
Priority fixes for e-commerce
- Add at least 400 words of buying guide content to category pages — above the product grid.
- Enrich product descriptions with specific, comparable attributes rather than generic prose.
- Implement FAQPage schema using the most common buyer questions for each category.
- Add HowTo schema to any instructional content related to product use.
Financial Services
Typical pattern
Finance sites often publish substantive explanatory content — how mortgage rates work, what investment vehicles mean — that AI agents find naturally citation-worthy due to high evidence density. But regulatory compliance concerns sometimes result in broad AI crawler restrictions, and legal disclaimers on paywalled calculators reduce extractable content. Author credentials are often present but not marked up in Person schema.
Priority fixes for finance
- Implement Person schema for all content authors with credentials and professional role.
- Audit robots.txt carefully — regulatory caution sometimes over-applies AI restrictions to public educational content.
- Add dateModified to all content pages — freshness matters in finance where rates and regulations change.
- Separate informational/educational content from account-gated pages in your sitemap.
Media and Publishing
Typical pattern
Publishers typically have strong content depth, explicit authorship, and regular freshness signals — all high-citation-influence dimensions. But Article schema is often missing or minimal despite the obvious fit. 62% of top news sites block at least one AI training bot — a deliberate decision with real AI visibility costs. Ad-heavy page layouts can also obscure content from AI extractors.
Healthcare and Professional Services
Typical pattern
Healthcare sites face a higher bar for AI citation because AI engines apply heightened scrutiny to health-related content. E-E-A-T signals — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — matter more here than in other verticals. Schema markup for MedicalOrganization, Physician, and MedicalCondition can significantly improve classification accuracy.
Score Targets by Stage
| Score Range | Interpretation | What to Prioritize |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100 (A) | Technically ready for AI citation | Content depth, topical authority, freshness |
| 75–89 (B range) | Solid foundation with addressable gaps | Fix failing technical checks; deepen key pages |
| 60–74 (C range) | Multiple issues limiting AI readability | Audit metadata, structured data, crawler access first |
| Below 60 (D/F) | Significant barriers to AI visibility | Start with crawler access and metadata — highest-impact, lowest-effort |
See how your site scores. Run a free AEO audit at aeo-check.vercel.app.
What AEO score should I aim for?
Target 80+ as a baseline — this indicates your site is technically readable by AI agents with addressable content gaps. For competitive categories where AI citation is a significant acquisition channel, aim for 90+. The most impactful starting move for most sites is fixing failing technical checks to bring the foundational score above 75.
Why do different industries have different typical scores?
Industry differences reflect structural factors: publishing sites tend to have strong content but block AI crawlers; SaaS sites have strong technical signals but thin marketing copy; e-commerce sites have product schema but thin informational content. The AEO score reveals these patterns clearly because it evaluates both technical and content-quality signals independently.
Does my industry affect which AEO signals matter most?
Yes. For healthcare and finance, author authority signals (Person schema, credentials) matter more. For e-commerce, product schema and content depth on category pages matter most. For media, freshness and Article schema matter most. The 6-dimension LLM evaluation surfaces which content dimensions are weakest for your specific site.
How do I compare my AEO score to competitors?
Run an AEO audit on 2–3 competitor sites using the same tool and compare foundational scores, agent evaluation scores, and specific dimension breakdowns. Competitors with higher scores in specific dimensions reveal which gaps are most worth closing. The public AEO Leaderboard at aeo-check.vercel.app also shows how audited sites rank.