GEO and AEO are configuration, not keyword density

What people mean, and what is actually measurable

GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) got sold as a new keyword product. The measurable version is boring: can a polite crawler see an organization entity, a map of citable URLs, robots that do not ban GPTBot, and pages that look like answers instead of slogans.

If a vendor promises 'rank in ChatGPT' from a PDF of suggested prompts, they cannot see your robots.txt. SiteRune can. We fetch the origin, parse the files, and write the config. We do not sell Reddit threads or invented staff.

The four switches that move citations

In order, because each one is a hard fail if it is wrong:

• robots.txt: allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot on public URLs. A Wordfence 'block AI' preset is a product decision — own it.
• llms.txt: a URL map, not a slogan. SiteRune walks those links before nav.
• JSON-LD Organization (or a real subtype) plus FAQPage or Article on a page we can fetch.
• Question-shaped headings with a 40–80 word answer, then the rest of the essay.

What we refuse to score

We do not estimate 'share of ChatGPT answers'. Nobody honest has that panel. We do not invent a newsroom. We do not tell you to stuff FAQ schema onto a homepage that has no questions. If the HTML cannot support the claim, the finding is missing configuration — not a content calendar.

How to verify

Paste the production URL into SiteRune. The AEO chapter lists llms.txt, bot policy, entity, and citable schema as separate findings. Ship the files on the Ship tab, rescan, watch the chapter move. Then run Lighthouse if you still care about LCP on that one URL.