/suede-ai-seo

name: suede-ai-seo
description: "Suede AI answer-engine and generative-engine optimization (AEO/GEO) program for getting a brand cited and recommended in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and Claude. Sets AI crawler policy (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended), entity and knowledge-graph consistency (Organization and Person schema, sameAs), citation-worthy page patterns, off-site consensus, llms.txt and agent-readable files, and AI visibility measurement: prompt panels, share of citations, AI-assistant referrals in GA4, and the Search Console and Bing AI performance reports. Use for AI SEO, AEO, GEO, LLMO, AI citations, AI visibility, optimize for ChatGPT or Perplexity, llms.txt, or OKF. NOT FOR: a scored nine-lane technical and on-page audit (use suede-seo-audit); a fast A-F promotion-readiness grade (use suede-visibility-grader); conversion-path rework (use suede-site-alchemy)."
metadata:
  version: 3.0.0

Suede AI SEO

The job: make a brand easy for answer engines to retrieve, attribute, and recommend, then prove it with measurement. Google's AI features run on core Search ranking, so classic SEO is the floor. On top of that floor sit the pieces answer engines reward across platforms: an unambiguous entity, pages that answer first and back claims with checkable facts, corroboration on sites the brand does not own, and a measurement loop that shows movement.

Gate policy: advisory, not blocking

Every check, gate, and verdict here (`ship`, `ship-with-caveats`, `hold`, grades, OPEN items) is a recommendation to the user, not a control on the agent. A failed gate changes what you report, never what you do. Single exception: an extremely risky finding (data loss, credential exposure, legal or rights violations, payment mistakes, irreversible public damage) pauses for the user's choice.

How this skill divides work with its siblings

| Need | Owner | |---|---| | Crawl, index, canonical, metadata, schema validity, Core Web Vitals, E-E-A-T, scored lanes | `suede-seo-audit` | | One-page A-F promotion readiness, including design and CTA | `suede-visibility-grader` | | Conversion path, friction, experiments | `suede-site-alchemy` | | Templated pages at scale and their quality gates | `suede-programmatic-seo` | | AI crawler policy, entity graph, citation patterns, off-site consensus, AI visibility measurement | **this skill** |

This skill owns the **extractability standard**: what makes a passage quotable and attributable. `suede-seo-audit` Lane 6 and the grader's AI readability lane apply it; change thresholds here first.

Before starting

Read `.agents/product-marketing.md` (or `.claude/product-marketing.md`, or the legacy `product-marketing-context.md`) if present. Then collect only what is missing:

1. The 20 to 50 buyer questions that matter commercially, in the buyer's words. 2. Named competitors the buyer compares against. 3. Canonical entity facts: legal name, brand name, founder or author names, official URLs and verified profiles. 4. Access to Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and GA4 (or exports). Absent access means those KPIs are reported `not measured`, never estimated.

What the platforms actually say (verified 2026-10-23)

Read `references/platform-notes.md` before making any platform-specific claim. The load-bearing facts:

• **Google AI Overviews and AI Mode** have no extra technical requirements. A

page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Both may use query fan-out across subtopics. Google says no special schema, AI text files, or Markdown versions are needed, there is no need to chunk content for AI, and mass-producing pages to sway AI answers violates its scaled content abuse policy. Traffic counts in the Search Console Performance report under the Web search type; a Search Generative AI performance report (impressions by page, country, device, date; no clicks or queries) began rolling out in June 2026 and appears only above an impressions threshold.

• **Snippet controls** (`nosnippet`, `data-nosnippet`, `max-snippet`,

`noindex`) govern what Google AI features can show. `Google-Extended` governs Gemini training and grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI; Google states it does not affect Search inclusion or ranking.

• **ChatGPT search** depends on `OAI-SearchBot`. Opting it out removes a site

from ChatGPT search answers. `GPTBot` is training only. `ChatGPT-User` is user-initiated and may not follow robots.txt.

• **Claude**: `ClaudeBot` is training, `Claude-SearchBot` indexes for search

quality, `Claude-User` fetches for a user's question. Blocking the last two reduces visibility in Claude answers.

• **Perplexity**: `PerplexityBot` surfaces and links sites and is not used for

foundation-model training. `Perplexity-User` is user-initiated and generally ignores robots.txt.

• **Copilot** grounds on the Bing index. Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI

Performance report (public preview since February 2026) with citations, cited pages, and grounding queries. IndexNow speeds Bing discovery.

Treat anything not in that file as unverified, and re-check before a ship decision: these surfaces change monthly.

The Suede AEO stack

Work bottom-up. A higher layer cannot compensate for a broken lower one.

1. Access: can the engines reach and quote you?

• Fetch `/robots.txt` with an approved read-only tool from a verified public

HTTPS host (refuse loopback, link-local, private networks; send no cookies or credentials). Record final URL, status, and body.

• Parse it as groups: a `Disallow` belongs to the `User-agent` lines above it,

and a named group replaces `*` for that bot. Report each bot in `references/ai-crawlers.md` as allowed, blocked, or unverified. A non-200, off-host redirect, or failed fetch is **unverified**, never open.

• Check the layers robots.txt does not cover: CDN or WAF bot rules, sni