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AEO Toolkit

The next big thing will be a lot of small things.

Open-source AI search optimization: 44 small checks that decide whether ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity cite you.

<a href="https://advancelabs.dev/tools"><img src="docs/assets/banner.webp" alt="The AEO Toolkit homepage in pixel art: 'The next big thing will be a lot of small things' above a dithered figure pushing a faceted sphere up a slope" width="100%"></a>

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Open-source TypeScript packages for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and AI citation visibility. Contributions welcome, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Open core. This repo is the open-source half of the AEO Toolkit: the audit engine, crawler, parser, schema validator and the Chrome extension, all Apache-2.0 and published to npm. The hosted platform behind advancelabs.dev/tools and the three MCP servers (the console, OAuth, billing, the Google and Bing integrations) moved to a private repository on 2026-10-20. Code published here before that date stays Apache-2.0.

Try it without installing anything: the six browser tools run free in the browser at advancelabs.dev/tools, with no sign-up and no account. Point the auditor at a URL and it returns a weighted, per-rule report in about a minute. Want it done for you? Advance Labs runs a monthly AEO retainer.

The hosted side is six browser tools (technical audit, E-E-A-T scan, llms.txt generator, GA4 + GSC chat, backlink graph, authority) and three MCP servers (ai-visibility, backlink, search) exposing 32 tools to Claude or any MCP client. They are proprietary and run on advancelabs.dev. This repo is the open core: the audit engine packages, the Chrome extension and the skills. See docs/reference/tools.md for the full map.

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What it looks like

The hosted site is drawn in dithered pixel art: a figure pushing a faceted sphere up a slope under a dusk sky.

| | | |---|---| | <img src="docs/assets/step-audit.webp" alt="Step one, crawl and score: a pixel-art faceted sphere beside a dark audit panel"> | <img src="docs/assets/44-checks.webp" alt="The 44 small things: a category list beside a carousel of check cards, each with its fix"> | | Crawl and score. Up to 50 pages against every rule. | 44 small things. Pick a category and flip through the checks. The scoring engine is Apache-2.0. | | <img src="docs/assets/audit-tool.webp" alt="The LLM and Technical SEO Audit tool: a URL field and Run audit button on a dark panel"> | <img src="docs/assets/track.webp" alt="The Track page: the pixel figure pushing a dusk-coloured sphere beside the heading about who AI recommends"> | | The audit tool. Free, no sign-up. | Track. See who AI recommends. |

<img src="docs/assets/mcp.webp" alt="The MCP page: Connect the AEO Toolkit to your AI client" width="100%">

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What is AEO?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring your content so that AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) cite your site when answering questions in your domain. Traditional SEO gets you ranked on the blue-link results page. AEO gets you quoted in the AI answer.

As AI-powered search becomes the default discovery layer, AEO is the new SEO.

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The audit

The hosted technical audit runs 44 checks (31 technical SEO + 13 AEO) across crawlability, AI-bot access, structured data, metadata and answer readiness, scored out of 100, with a prioritised fix list and templates for any crawl-hint file you're missing. The E-E-A-T scan is a separate tool that scores 14 signals. The engine defines 58 in total (44 + 14), but the audit itself runs 44. Free, no account, and your data stays yours.

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The Chrome extension

AEO/GEO Auditor puts the same engine on your toolbar. Open any page, click the icon, and get a 0 to 100 AI-readiness score with a letter grade and a list of what to fix. Export it as a PDF.

It runs auditRules from packages/scoring/src/audit.ts: 44 checks across 9 categories (31 technical-SEO + 13 AEO) from extension 0.3.0, built on scoring 0.3.x. The Chrome Web Store build before that (0.2.0) ran 40, so the listing changes when 0.3.0 is published. The 14 E-E-A-T signals are a separate scorer the extension does not run, 58 is the engine total (44 + 14), not what any one audit runs.

Everything happens in your browser. No account, no server, no analytics, no telemetry. The only network requests are to the audited site's own robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and llms.txt, which is what the host permission is for. Nothing is stored, because nothing is sent.

• Install: Chrome Web Store
• About: advancelabs.dev/tools/aeo-auditor
• Source: apps/chrome-extension · publishing runbook

Build it yourself:

pnpm --filter @advance-labs/chrome-extension package
# → apps/chrome-extension/aeo-extension.zip, loadable via chrome://extensions (Developer mode → Load unpacked, on dist/)

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Packages

| Package | Description | |---------|-------------| | @advance-labs/crawler | Multi-threaded web crawler with robots.txt compliance, sitemap parsing, and per-host rate limiting | | @advance-labs/html-parser | Extracts meta tags, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, headings, images, links, and JSON-LD from HTML | | @advance-labs/schema-validator | Validates Schema.org JSON-LD structured data against known types | | @advance-labs/scoring | Scores pages on 44 technical SEO and AEO checks, plus a separate 14-signal E-E-A-T scorer, with per-rule explanations |

Plus @advance-labs/net-guard and @advance-labs/types. The one application here is apps/chrome-extension; the hosted console is not open source.

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Quick Start

Six packages are published to npm and usable on their own:

npm i @advance-labs/scoring      # the 44-check audit engine
npm i @advance-labs/net-guard    # SSRF-safe fetch: re-checks every redirect hop
npm i @advance-labs/crawler      # polite crawler with robots.txt + rate limiting
npm i @advance-labs/html-parser
npm i @advance-labs/schema-validator
npm i @advance-labs/types        # shared types, a dependency of the above

The hosted tools at advancelabs.dev/tools need no install at all.

git clone https://github.com/Advance-Labs/aeo-toolkit.git
cd aeo-toolkit
pnpm install
pnpm build          # turbo builds every package
pnpm test           # the full suite, no network

Read the full documentation at docs.advancelabs.dev/aeo-toolkit.

Once built, the packages compose like this:

import { crawl } from '@advance-labs/crawler'
import { parseHtml } from '@advance-labs/html-parser'
import { analyzeStructuredData } from '@advance-labs/schema-validator'
import { buildAuditReport } from '@advance-labs/scoring'

const result = await crawl('https://example.com/', { maxPages: 2 })
const html = result.pages.filter((p) => p.ok && p.body && p.contentType?.includes('html'))

const report = await buildAuditReport(
  {
    crawl: result,
    pages: html.map((p) => parseHtml(p.body, p.finalUrl)),
    structuredData: html.map((p) => analyzeStructuredData(p.body, p.finalUrl)),
    mode: 'full-site',
  },
  { durationMs: 0, version: '1.0.0' },
)

console.log(report.url, report.score.overall, report.score.grade)
console.log(report.topFixes.slice(0, 3).map((f) => f.title))

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Connect the MCP servers

Listed in the official MCP Registry as dev.advancelabs/aeo-search, dev.advancelabs/aeo-visibility and dev.advancelabs/aeo-backlink.

The three MCP servers are hosted, not installed. They are Streamable-HTTP endpoints, so there is nothing to npm install and no local process to run. Point any MCP client at the URL.

Claude Code: one command per server:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user aeo-visibility https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/ai-visibility/mcp
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user aeo-backlink   https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/backlink/mcp
claude mcp add --transport http --scope user aeo-search     https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/search/mcp

Drop --scope user to register them in the current project only. Check the result with claude mcp list.

Claude.ai / Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste the URL.

Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json), Windsurf, or any client that takes a JSON block:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "aeo-visibility": { "url": "https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/ai-visibility/mcp" },
    "aeo-backlink":   { "url": "https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/backlink/mcp" },
    "aeo-search":     { "url": "https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/search/mcp" }
  }
}

| Server | Tools | Credentials | |---|---|---| | aeo-visibility | 5 | None to connect. Citation checks take a Perplexity key per request. | | aeo-backlink | 7 | None. | | aeo-search | 20 | Sign in with Google: the client opens a browser on first use (in Claude Code, /mcp → Authenticate). Or BYOK: a Google access token as Authorization: Bearer, plus an optional x-bing-api-key. |

Three things that trip people up:

• The trailing /mcp is required. The bare /api/mcp/<slug> returns the adapter's own "Not found", which looks like a routing bug and is not.
• Only aeo-search has a login, and its discovery is path-scoped. It answers an anonymous request with a 401 pointing at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/api/mcp/search/mcp; its authorization server is /api/mcp/oauth. The ROOT /.well-known/oauth-* documents deliberately return 404, because aeo-visibility and aeo-backlink need no login.
• Every tool is read-only. None calls a write method on any upstream API.

/api/mcp/ga-gsc/mcp still works as a compatibility alias for aeo-search; new configs should use /api/mcp/search/mcp.

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Why AEO?

When a user asks ChatGPT "what is the best tool for X?", the answer comes from indexed content that AI models trust, not from ad-auction bidding. The trust signals for AI citation are:

• Structured data (JSON-LD Organization, FAQPage, HowTo)
• **`llms.txt