BotView Methodology: 40+ Checks Explained

Every page starts at 100 and loses points only for issues that directly impact whether crawlers can see your content. Here are the 40+ checks we run, organized into 5 visibility groups — in plain English.

What We Measure

BotView measures crawler visibility — can Googlebot and AI crawlers actually see and understand your content? This is different from traditional SEO audits that check meta tag length or keyword density.

We render each page using Playwright with a Googlebot user agent, then compare the initial HTML (what crawlers see first) against the fully rendered DOM (what JavaScript adds later). The gap between these two tells us how much content depends on JavaScript to appear.

Traditional SEO factors like meta description length or keyword usage are reported in the scan but do not affect the score. Only issues that directly prevent crawlers from seeing content count against you.

What is a GEO score?

A GEO score rates how ready a page is to be quoted by an AI answer engine. BotView's GEO Optimisation Score grades seven on-page dimensions — extractability, Q&A structure, headings, structured data, entity density, citations and freshness — weights them, and returns one 0–100 number per page.

It is a separate axis from the visibility score described above. Visibility asks whether crawlers can reach and render your pages; the GEO score asks whether what they find is shaped so an answer engine can quote it. GEO findings are reported under their own GEO_OPT_ codes and never move the visibility score.

Dimension	What it measures	Why answer engines care	Weight
Answer extractability	Short, self-contained paragraphs (40–500 characters), bullet lists and tables — versus walls of text over 1,200 characters.	An answer engine has to lift a passage more or less verbatim. Dense prose gives it nothing clean to quote.	25
Q&A / FAQ structure	Question-form H2/H3 headings, FAQPage or QAPage JSON-LD, definition lists. FAQ schema scores full marks; three or more question headings score 85.	Mirrors how people phrase prompts, so the engine can match a question to an answer that already exists on the page.	15
Heading structure	One descriptive H1 plus H2 sections. Points come off for a missing H1, multiple H1s, a thin H1, or no H2s at all.	The outline is how both Googlebot and LLMs split a page into citable chunks.	15
Structured data	Presence and type of JSON-LD. Answer-friendly types (Article, FAQPage, HowTo, Recipe) score highest; supporting types (Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList) add a little.	Lets an engine read your meaning explicitly instead of inferring it from prose.	15
Entity & factual density	Heuristic ratio of named entities and figures to word count, with a bonus for five or more figures. Pages under 150 words score low.	AI answers prefer sources with specific, checkable substance over vague copy.	10
Citations & sources	Distinct external domains you link out to, ignoring your own domain and social/share hosts. Three or more scores 90.	Well-referenced pages read as more trustworthy to AI citation systems.	10
Freshness & machine-readability	Whether we can find a machine-readable date (fresh / stale / unknown) and whether the domain serves an /llms.txt.	Freshness-sensitive engines — Perplexity most of all — favour content they can date.	10

Each dimension is scored 0–100, multiplied by its weight, and summed to the page score. Anything below 70 becomes a fix in the report's Issues and Fixes tabs. Multi-page scans average each dimension across the pages crawled.

What is a GEO score?

A GEO score measures how well a web page is structured to be quoted by AI answer engines. BotView's GEO Optimisation Score rates seven on-page dimensions — answer extractability, Q&A structure, heading structure, structured data, entity density, citations and freshness — and combines them into one 0–100 score per page.

How is a GEO score different from an AI visibility score?

An AI visibility score measures access: can GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and the rest actually reach and render your pages? A GEO score measures answer-readiness: once they are in, is the content shaped so it can be quoted? They are separate axes in BotView — GEO issues use GEO_OPT_ codes and never change the visibility score.

How the Score is Calculated

Each page starts at 100. Issues deduct points based on severity.

-15

Critical

Content is invisible or inaccessible to crawlers. Bot walls, heavy JS dependency, error status codes.

-5

Warning

Content is partially visible but degraded. Moderate JS dependency, slow rendering, blocked resources.

-1

Info

Minor visibility concerns. Small rendering differences, missing alt text on decorative images.

Multi-Page Scoring

When scanning multiple pages, the overall site score uses a weighted average: 70% straight average across all pages, 30% weighted toward the lowest-scoring pages. This means your worst pages pull the score down more than your best pages pull it up — because a single broken page can hurt your site's crawl visibility disproportionately.

The Five Visibility Groups

Every visibility issue falls into one of five groups. Each group gets its own sub-score in the report.

1. Rendering

Can crawlers see your content without executing JavaScript?

JS content dependencySPA shell detectionClient-side renderingLoading states in HTMLJS-rendered headings & links

2. Crawler Access

Are crawlers allowed to reach your pages and their resources?

AI crawler blocking (robots.txt)Blocked JavaScript/CSS/fontsBot walls & WAFsHTTPS availability

3. Indexability

Will search engines actually add your page to their index?

noindex directivesSoft 404 detectionError status codesRedirect chainsHreflang errors

4. Performance

Can crawlers finish rendering your page within their time budget?

Page load timeDOM ready timingRender budget exceededFirst & Largest Contentful Paint

5. Content Visibility

Is your important content actually visible in the DOM?

Hidden content (display:none)Modal/dialog contentInfinite scrollMissing internal linksEmpty anchor text

Score Grades

90–100

Excellent

Crawlers can see virtually all content

70–89

Good

Most content is visible, minor issues

50–69

Needs Work

Significant visibility gaps

0–49

Poor

Crawlers can't see most content

What Doesn't Affect the Score

BotView reports on many traditional SEO factors, but these are informational only. They appear in your report but don't change your visibility score:

Meta description length or content
Title tag length
Open Graph / social tags
Image file formats
Keyword density or usage
Number of headings
Structured data completeness
Mobile viewport tag

These factors matter for SEO, but they don't determine whether crawlers can see your content — which is what BotView measures.

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