ai-visibility-readiness

The AI Visibility Readiness (AVR) Framework v1.1.0 — a transparent, tiered audit methodology for measuring whether a website is ready for traditional search AND for AI-powered search (Google AI Mode, AI Overviews, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot).

Authored by Chudi Nnorukam. Implemented by citability.dev. Demonstrated on chudi.dev as the canonical case study.

The check list lives in CHECKS.md, generated directly from the audit code. It is the only place the list is written down. Every other page, including https://chudi.dev/framework, links to it rather than restating it. Narrative methodology lives in FRAMEWORK.md.

What AVR measures

See CHECKS.md for every check, its slug, and its evidence label. That file is generated by scripts/generate_checks_md.py from two code sources, so it cannot disagree with what actually runs.

Every check is labelled [CHECKED] (a deterministic HTTP/HTML probe with primary-source evidence) or [ESTIMATED] (a polled AI engine response subject to sampling variance). The framework never fakes a combined "AI Visibility Score" by averaging signals that measure different things.

Sections are identified by string id (section_fact_block_density), not by number. The old numeric scheme was dropped in favour of string ids after two different sections were both documented as "Section 5"; numbers that live only in prose collide silently, ids declared in code cannot.

Fact-Block Density, Agent Readiness, and Citation Decay Rate are the additions that no other AI visibility tool (Semrush, BrightEdge, Conductor, Otterly, Profound, Peec AI, LLMrefs, Knowatoa) tracked as of 2026-05-22.

Why v1.1.0 exists

Five things changed in May 2026 that broke v1.0:

1. Google I/O 2026 disclosed that AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users with queries thrice as long as traditional ones and follow-up queries increasing 40% monthly in the U.S. [Source: SearchEngineJournal SEO Pulse, May 2026]
2. Ahrefs measured a 58% CTR reduction on queries with AI Overviews across 300,000 keywords (December 2025 data). Position-one CTR for AIO-triggering keywords fell from 0.073% to 0.016%. [Source: Ahrefs blog]
3. Over 16% of searches are multimodal (voice, images, video input). [Source: SearchEngineJournal]
4. Google's AI guide reversed the llms.txt recommendation: "Google's AI guide states llms.txt isn't needed for AI Search." John Mueller: "markdown pages are useful for documentation but not for most websites." Lighthouse 13.3 now flags llms.txt as an ERROR by default. [Source: SearchEngineJournal]
5. March 2026 Core Update raised E-E-A-T cross-platform corroboration as the load-bearing trust signal: "the more places a person's name appears in connection with a subject area, the stronger the E-E-A-T signal for content they author on your domain." [Source: Evertune, April 8 2026]

AVR v1.0 treated Google AI surfaces as secondary, recommended llms.txt as a §2 requirement, and audited E-E-A-T at surface level. All three positions are now wrong. v1.1.0 fixes them.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/ChudiNnorukam/ai-visibility-readiness.git
cd ai-visibility-readiness
pip install -r scripts/requirements.txt

# Free 5-section audit (1+2+6+7+8). No API spend.
python3 scripts/run_audit.py YOUR_URL --skip-lighthouse --full-v11

# Full 8-section audit with live AI polling.
python3 scripts/run_audit.py YOUR_URL --skip-lighthouse --live-test --full-v11 \
  --brand "Your Brand" \
  --owner "Owner Name" \
  --topics "topic1" "topic2" \
  --concepts "your unique concepts" \
  --products "your products"

Outputs land in sample-audits/audit_<domain>_<timestamp>.md plus per-section .json files.

section_webmcp_agent_readiness — Agent Readiness (WebMCP + A2A AgentCard)

Checks three things:

1. /.well-known/webmcp manifest exists, validates as JSON, declares ≥1 tool with required fields (name, description). Spec: WebMCP W3C draft, shipping in Chrome 146 Canary behind chrome://flags "WebMCP for testing".
2. /.well-known/agent.json AgentCard (A2A protocol) exists, validates, declares skills. Optional for non-agent sites; absence is not penalized.
3. Wire-protocol probe — each endpoint declared in the manifest resolves to a non-404 response on OPTIONS or HEAD. Tool invocation is not tested (would risk side effects).

Verdict: AGENT-READY requires W1 PASS + (W2 PASS OR optional). AGENT-PARTIAL is W1 OR W2 alone. AGENT-NOT-READY is neither.

section_fact_block_density — Fact-Block Density + Content Extractability

Reports a section result as points out of 100 across five weighted checks (a per-page section result, not an AVR axis):

Check	Weight	What it measures
F1: First-sentence-of-H2 standalone-answer compliance	30	Does each H2 open with a sentence that stands alone? (Patel's rule)
F2: First-200-tokens direct-answer	20	Does the page opening directly answer the core query?
F3: 40-60 word direct-answer band per H2	20	Are H2 opening paragraphs in the AI-extractable length band?
F4: H2/H3 question-format rate	20	Are headings phrased as questions users type?
F5: FAQ section present	10	Is there an FAQ near the article tail?

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗