AEO Backlink

Open-source TypeScript packages for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and AI citation visibility. Contributions welcome, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Open core. This repo is the open-source half of the AEO Toolkit: the audit engine, crawler, parser, schema validator and the Chrome extension, all Apache-2.0 and published to npm. The hosted platform behind advancelabs.dev/tools and the three MCP servers (the console, OAuth, billing, the Google and Bing integrations) moved to a private repository on 2026-10-20. Code published here before that date stays Apache-2.0.

Try it without installing anything: the six browser tools run free in the browser at advancelabs.dev/tools, with no sign-up and no account. Point the auditor at a URL and it returns a weighted, per-rule report in about a minute. Want it done for you? Advance Labs runs a monthly AEO retainer.

The hosted side is six browser tools (technical audit, E-E-A-T scan, llms.txt generator, GA4 + GSC chat, backlink graph, authority) and three MCP servers (ai-visibility, backlink, search) exposing 32 tools to Claude or any MCP client. They are proprietary and run on advancelabs.dev. This repo is the open core: the audit engine packages, the Chrome extension and the skills. See docs/reference/tools.md for the full map.

What it looks like

The hosted site is drawn in dithered pixel art: a figure pushing a faceted sphere up a slope under a dusk sky.

What is AEO?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring your content so that AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini) cite your site when answering questions in your domain. Traditional SEO gets you ranked on the blue-link results page. AEO gets you quoted in the AI answer.

As AI-powered search becomes the default discovery layer, AEO is the new SEO.

The audit

The hosted technical audit runs 44 checks (31 technical SEO + 13 AEO) across crawlability, AI-bot access, structured data, metadata and answer readiness, scored out of 100, with a prioritised fix list and templates for any crawl-hint file you're missing. The E-E-A-T scan is a separate tool that scores 14 signals. The engine defines 58 in total (44 + 14), but the audit itself runs 44. Free, no account, and your data stays yours.

The Chrome extension

AEO/GEO Auditor puts the same engine on your toolbar. Open any page, click the icon, and get a 0 to 100 AI-readiness score with a letter grade and a list of what to fix. Export it as a PDF.

It runs auditRules from packages/scoring/src/audit.ts: 44 checks across 9 categories (31 technical-SEO + 13 AEO) from extension 0.3.0, built on scoring 0.3.x. The Chrome Web Store build before that (0.2.0) ran 40, so the listing changes when 0.3.0 is published. The 14 E-E-A-T signals are a separate scorer the extension does not run, 58 is the engine total (44 + 14), not what any one audit runs.

Everything happens in your browser. No account, no server, no analytics, no telemetry. The only network requests are to the audited site's own robots.txt, sitemap.xml, and llms.txt, which is what the host permission is for. Nothing is stored, because nothing is sent.

• Install: Chrome Web Store
• About: advancelabs.dev/tools/aeo-auditor
• Source: apps/chrome-extension · publishing runbook

Build it yourself:

pnpm --filter @advance-labs/chrome-extension package# → apps/chrome-extension/aeo-extension.zip, loadable via chrome://extensions (Developer mode → Load unpacked, on dist/)

Packages

Plus @advance-labs/net-guard and @advance-labs/types. The one application here is apps/chrome-extension; the hosted console is not open source.

Quick Start

Six packages are published to npm and usable on their own:

npm i @advance-labs/scoring      # the 44-check audit enginenpm i @advance-labs/net-guard    # SSRF-safe fetch: re-checks every redirect hopnpm i @advance-labs/crawler      # polite crawler with robots.txt + rate limitingnpm i @advance-labs/html-parsernpm i @advance-labs/schema-validatornpm i @advance-labs/types        # shared types, a dependency of the above

The hosted tools at advancelabs.dev/tools need no install at all.

git clone https://github.com/Advance-Labs/aeo-toolkit.gitcd aeo-toolkitpnpm installpnpm build          # turbo builds every packagepnpm test           # the full suite, no network

Read the full documentation at docs.advancelabs.dev/aeo-toolkit.

Once built, the packages compose like this:

import { crawl } from '@advance-labs/crawler'import { parseHtml } from '@advance-labs/html-parser'import { analyzeStructuredData } from '@advance-labs/schema-validator'import { buildAuditReport } from '@advance-labs/scoring'
const result = await crawl('https://example.com/', { maxPages: 2 })const html = result.pages.filter((p) => p.ok && p.body && p.contentType?.includes('html'))
const report = await buildAuditReport(  {    crawl: result,    pages: html.map((p) => parseHtml(p.body, p.finalUrl)),    structuredData: html.map((p) => analyzeStructuredData(p.body, p.finalUrl)),    mode: 'full-site',  },  { durationMs: 0, version: '1.0.0' },)
console.log(report.url, report.score.overall, report.score.grade)console.log(report.topFixes.slice(0, 3).map((f) => f.title))

Connect the MCP servers

[mcptry]

Listed in the official MCP Registry as dev.advancelabs/aeo-search, dev.advancelabs/aeo-visibility and dev.advancelabs/aeo-backlink.

The three MCP servers are hosted, not installed. They are Streamable-HTTP endpoints, so there is nothing to npm install and no local process to run. Point any MCP client at the URL.

Claude Code: one command per server:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user aeo-visibility https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/ai-visibility/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http --scope user aeo-backlink   https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/backlink/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http --scope user aeo-search     https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/search/mcp

Drop --scope user to register them in the current project only. Check the result with claude mcp list.

Claude.ai / Claude Desktop: Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, then paste the URL.

Cursor (~/.cursor/mcp.json), Windsurf, or any client that takes a JSON block:

{  "mcpServers": {    "aeo-visibility": { "url": "https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/ai-visibility/mcp" },    "aeo-backlink":   { "url": "https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/backlink/mcp" },    "aeo-search":     { "url": "https://aeo.advancelabs.dev/api/mcp/search/mcp" }  }}

Three things that trip people up:

• The trailing /mcp is required. The bare /api/mcp/<slug> returns the adapter's own "Not found", which looks like a routing bug and is not.
• Only aeo-search has a login, and its discovery is path-scoped. It answers an anonymous request with a 401 pointing at /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource/api/mcp/search/mcp; its authorization server is /api/mcp/oauth. The ROOT /.well-known/oauth-* documents deliberately return 404, because aeo-visibility and aeo-backlink need no login.
• Every tool is read-only. None calls a write method on any upstream API.

/api/mcp/ga-gsc/mcp still works as a compatibility alias for aeo-search; new configs should use /api/mcp/search/mcp.

Why AEO?

When a user asks ChatGPT "what is the best tool for X?", the answer comes from indexed content that AI models trust, not from ad-auction bidding. The trust signals for AI citation are:

• Structured data (JSON-LD Organization, FAQPage, HowTo)
• llms.txt: the AI equivalent of robots.txt
• Canonical, server-rendered HTML: AI crawlers prefer static content
• Topical authority: consistent, in-depth coverage of a topic

AEO Toolkit automates auditing all of these.

Monorepo Structure

aeo-toolkit/├── packages/          # the six published libraries, plus shared config├── apps/chrome-extension/├── apps/docs/         # Astro + Starlight docs site (renders ../../docs)├── docs/              # the documentation itself└── brand/             # the mark, lockups, palette and type (brand/README.md)

Built with Turborepo · TypeScript 5 · Vitest · React 19

Design

The site is pixel art: a figure pushing a faceted sphere under a dithered dusk sky. Art is drawn at a coarse cell, snapped to a small palette (ink, paper, two dusk oranges) with a 4x4 Bayer ordered dither and scaled up with hard edges. Labels use Geist Pixel Square, headings and body Geist Sans, code Geist Mono. Corners are square and shadows are hard-offset. The palette, type, tokens and rules are in brand/README.md, with the assets beside it. Anything a user sees should follow it, and docs/CONVENTIONS.md says how in code.

Made by Advance Labs

Built and maintained by Advance Labs · All Advance Labs products

AEO Toolkit is built and maintained by Advance Labs Inc., a software studio building Creatin, Cartrix, and this toolkit.

This project dogfoods its own tooling: advancelabs.dev ships with llms.txt, JSON-LD Organization schema, SSG-rendered pages, and canonical URLs, all patterns the scoring engine teaches.

Code of Conduct

We follow the Contributor Covenant: be respectful and constructive in all project spaces, and report unacceptable behavior to [email protected].

_{© 2026 Advance Labs Inc. · advancelabs.dev}