Generative Engine Optimization is the widest of the AI-readiness checks: it looks at the whole path from a crawler being allowed in to a passage being safe to repeat. Scores land in the middle of the dataset rather than at the bottom, which is a slightly encouraging result — most sites already satisfy the technical half of the requirement without knowing it. What they miss is the editorial half.
Here is where that sits. The median is 60/100, which ranks it 15 of the 25 measures in this dataset. The middle half of results falls between 30 and 78 — a band 48 points wide. That is wide: sites genuinely diverge here, which is to say getting ahead is still possible.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 1,391 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. The spread is wide and fairly even, which is what a measure looks like while it is still being adopted unevenly.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | GEO |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 20% · 281 |
| 20–39 | 8% · 116 |
| 40–59 | 20% · 284 |
| 60–79 | 29% · 410 |
| 80–100 | 22% · 300 |
| Total runs | 1,391 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where your score stands
A mid-range score here usually means the plumbing is fine and the provenance is not. That is a useful thing to learn, because the two halves have very different costs: the technical checks are configuration you do once, and the editorial ones are a standing commitment to say who wrote a thing and when. The upper quartile is where both halves are being done.
| Tool | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GEO | 12 | 30 | 60 | 78 | 90 | 55.1 | 0 | 100 |
How to read it: 30 is bottom-quartile, 60 is a typical page, 78 starts the upper quartile and 90 or above is the top 10%. These thresholds apply to this tool only.
The checks that fail most
Read the failing checks as two columns even though they are shown as one list. Crawl access, server-side rendering and JSON-LD are the machine half — they decide whether the page can be processed at all. Author signals, dates, sources and summary blocks are the human half — they decide whether processing it produces something an engine is willing to repeat.
| Check | Did not pass | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Summary / TL;DR block | 88% | Partial |
| Article / BlogPosting schema | 84% | Partial |
| llms.txt file | 71% | Partial |
| Freshness dates | 66% | Partial |
| Author signals | 61% | Partial |
| Question-style headings | 57% | Partial |
| Organization / WebSite schema | 52% | Partial |
| JSON-LD present | 48% | Hard fail |
| Comprehensive coverage | 38% | Partial |
| Server-rendered content | 33% | Hard fail |
| Lists / tables | 29% | Partial |
| Concise, citable passages | 27% | Hard fail |
“Hard fail” means the check’s full weighting is lost; “partial” means only part of the score is. Rates are the share of scans in which the check ran and did not pass.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Structured data” was the weakest area in 57% of scans.
What to fix first
Confirm the page renders its content server-side before anything else, because a page whose text only exists after JavaScript runs fails every subsequent check for a reason that has nothing to do with the writing. Once the text is genuinely in the HTML, the dates and author line are the fastest remaining wins.
A typical scan passes 7.8 of 15 checks and leaves 7.2 open items behind. What drags a score down is usually not one catastrophe but accumulated small omissions.
Run the GEO Checker (Generative Engine Optimization) on your own page
Month by month
The figures on this page are replaced at every refresh. At the end of each month a permanent edition is published for that month and never edited again — which is the only reason this series can be compared at all. One edition has been published so far; when the second lands this section will set the two months side by side.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 60 | baseline | 22% | 7.2 | 1,391 |
Frequently asked questions
What is GEO and how is it different from AEO?
GEO covers the whole readiness path for generative engines — access, rendering, structure, freshness and provenance. AEO is a subset of it concerned specifically with formatting an answer so it can be extracted. A page can be perfectly formatted for extraction and still invisible to a generative engine because a robots rule blocks the crawler.
Does client-side rendering really stop AI engines?
It varies by engine and it is unwise to rely on any of them. Some fetchers execute JavaScript, several do not, and the ones that do often have shorter budgets than a search crawler. Content that only exists after hydration is at best inconsistently visible; content in the initial HTML is visible to everything.
How current does a page have to be?
It depends entirely on the subject. For a definition or a how-to, a date from several years ago is not a problem and may be a sign of stability. For anything about tooling, pricing, algorithms or the law, an old date is a reason to prefer somebody else's page. What consistently hurts is having no date at all, because then the engine has to assume the worst.
What is a good score on the GEO Checker (Generative Engine Optimization)?
In this dataset the median is 60/100, so scoring 60 puts you exactly in the middle. 78 is the start of the upper quartile and 90 or above is the top 10%; below 30 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 measures in this dataset have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing.
Which check fails most often on the GEO Checker (Generative Engine Optimization)?
“Summary / TL;DR block”, which did not pass in 88% of scans. The costliest failures, though, are the ones scored as hard fails — this tool has 3, the most common being “JSON-LD present” at 48%.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — GEO Checker (Generative Engine Optimization) benchmarks, 2 September 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/geo-checker. If you need to cite by date, use the August 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.