Crawler readiness

AI crawler readiness checklist

A pre-launch checklist for public metadata, robots, sitemap, structured data, and llms.txt signals before you treat a site as crawler-ready.

Crawler readiness

Check public signals first

  • Confirm the public homepage returns a successful fetch for the URL you intend to analyze.
  • Review title, description, and OpenGraph-style metadata for the primary landing page.
  • Check robots.txt for intentional allow/deny policy and a declared sitemap.
  • Confirm /sitemap.xml or the declared sitemap exposes crawlable paths.
  • Look for JSON-LD or other structured data types that match the page entity.
  • Note whether llms.txt is present and whether its posture matches your machine-readable goals.

Crawler readiness

Do not overclaim

  • Treat the readiness score as a diagnostic, not a ranking or traffic forecast.
  • Only scan public sites you own, control, or have permission to inspect.
  • Read topGaps evidence before chasing the overall score.
  • Treat llms.txt as an emerging signal, not a universal crawler standard.

Crawler readiness

Named outputs to inspect

  • score and maxScore give the overall diagnostic; categoryScores show where points were lost.
  • topGaps[] names code, severity, evidence, and recommendation for each priority fix.
  • remediation.share and remediation_checklist turn a snapshot into a shareable next-step list.
  • before_after score_delta and gap code lists help compare a re-run after one visible patch.
  • Use RapidAPI for marketplace auth, plans, and playground testing after the checklist.

Next step