Bot Appétit the free AEO + SEO readiness check
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How it works

How does Bot Appétit check whether AI can read my page?

We read your page the way a machine does, check it against 86 public standards and conventions, and tell you in plain English what a machine can and can't use. Here's every step, from the moment you press scan to the score, and what we deliberately leave out.

By Milk Moon Studio Last updated

Who asks

  • AnyonePage scans. Free, no signup.
  • Signed inSite scans and Your sites, with a free account.
  • An AI tool or programPage scans through the MCP server or API: free, no account. With your one-time approval, it can also use your account.
  • The Chrome extension or an appThe same page scan as this website, started from your browser or your tool, so a page scores the same wherever you start it.
  • Sent a linkReads the report. No account needed.

A page scan

  1. You enter an address

    Any public address. No account, no signup.

  2. Our bot fetches it

    The page, plus robots.txt, the sitemap, llms.txt and the other site-level files machines look for first.

    BotAppetitBot · named and signed (RFC 9421 Web Bot Auth)

  3. We read the raw HTML

    The way most AI crawlers do. A real browser renders the page only when the raw HTML looks thin.

    Cloudflare Browser Rendering, only when needed

  4. Every check returns a result

    • Pass
    • Worth a look
    • To fix
    • Couldn't judge

  5. The score

    0–100 and a verdict, stamped with the scoring version that produced it.

    Performance: Google PageSpeed, on its own dial

  6. Public page history

    The result belongs to the page. Every scan of the address adds to its history.

A site scan: the page scan is the atom

  1. Discover pages

    From the sitemap or, where there isn’t one, the links on the homepage.

  2. Sample by template

    Up to 50 pages, chosen to cover each kind of page the site has.

  3. A page scan on each

    Steps 02 to 05 above, in full, for every page we read. Performance is measured on the homepage.

  4. One site score

    Judged across every page we read, not an average of their scores.

Outside services we call

  • The site being scannedIts page and its site-level files, fetched by our signed bot.
  • Cloudflare Browser RenderingA real browser, only when the raw HTML looks thin.
  • Cloudflare’s public DNS resolverThe DNS records we check, so those lookups never reach your server.
  • Google PageSpeed InsightsCore Web Vitals, on their own dial. Never part of the score.
  • Google Safe BrowsingPart of the security checks.
How Bot Appétit reads one page, and how a site scan repeats that page scan for every page it samples.

What Bot Appétit is made of

Every part of Bot Appétit and how they fit together, from who comes in to what we keep. What is live today is marked live; what we are building is marked coming soon.

  • Live
  • Coming soon
  • Coming later

Where you come in

  • Anyone Live scan any page free, no sign-up
  • Free account Live scan a whole site, re-checked every month
  • Someone you share with Live opens your site report, no sign-up
  • AI answer engines and search crawlers Live read our guides and figures
  • Milk Moon Studio website Live the studio behind the scanner, and its link to it
  • Chrome extension Live check the page you are on Get it on the Chrome Web Store

What you can use

  • Home and about Live what it checks, how it works, what changed
  • Features page Live everything the scanner does, in one place
  • Guides Live every check explained, glossary, help, AI crawler list, checklist
  • Page report Live a permanent link, the page's full history, compare any two scans
  • State of the Web Live how ready the web is for AI, updated hourly
  • State of the Web Coming soon trends over time, every check, figures you can embed
  • Site reports and Your sites Live private by default, shareable by you
  • Files for machines Live llms.txt, robots.txt, sitemap, our bot's signing keys
  • Feedback Live report a bug or ask for a feature
  • Leaderboard Live the highest-scoring homepages we have scanned, by category, each linked to its full report
  • AI tools Live an MCP server, a public API and installable skills let an AI tool scan a page for you; whole-site scans need your one-time approval

How a scan works

  • The page scan Live fetches the page as a polite, signed bot and runs every check
  • The site scan Live picks a representative sample and runs the full page scan on each
  • Your sites Live your view of a site's scans over time
  • Monthly re-checks Live your site is scanned again every month and the result emailed
  • Hourly figures Live one scan per site, no site named, groups of 30 or more

What we keep

  • Scan history Live every result belongs to the URL, not to a person
  • Accounts and site scans Live your sites and their runs
  • Reports and figures Live site reports and the published State of the Web data

Services we lean on

  • Your site Live we respect robots.txt and tell you how to let us in
  • A real browser Live to see what JavaScript adds
  • Google PageSpeed Insights Live performance, on request
  • Google Safe Browsing Live is the site flagged as unsafe
  • Sign-in Live email link or password
  • Book a call Live talk to Milk Moon Studio about your results
  • Webflow AI-readiness report Coming later how ready Webflow sites are for AI, in aggregate

How the parts connect

  • Free account to Site reports and Your sites: scan a site
  • Someone you share with to Site reports and Your sites: shared link
  • Milk Moon Studio website to Home and about: links in
  • Chrome extension to Page report: full results
  • Anyone to The page scan: one page
  • Free account to The site scan: whole site
  • State of the Web to Reports and figures: published figures
  • The site scan to The page scan: the same scan on every page
  • Monthly re-checks to The site scan: every month
  • The page scan to Scan history: stores the result
  • The site scan to Accounts and site scans: stores the run
  • The site scan to Reports and figures: stores the report
  • The page scan to Your site: polite
  • The page scan to A real browser: render
  • Page report to Book a call: Book a call
  • Free account to Sign-in: sign in
  • Webflow AI-readiness report to State of the Web: feeds

What we fetch

A page scan fetches the page you entered, plus the site-level files machines look for first: robots.txt, the sitemap, llms.txt, security.txt, the favicon and the /.well-known/ agent files, with one AI-discovery DNS lookup and one missing-page probe. Every request comes from one of our two named bots, and every request the scanner makes is signed. We read the raw HTML the way most AI crawlers do, and open the page in a real browser only when that HTML looks thin.

Everything about our bot

How a check is judged

Every check that applies to your page returns one of four results. Every check says why it matters and what good looks like.

A check that doesn't apply to your page is left out entirely: no row, and it isn't counted.

How the score works

Your score comes from the 7 scored categories. Advanced and Good practice are shown but never counted, and performance sits on its own dial. The verdict is a plain-English name for where the score lands, and it can be held down when AI crawlers are shut out, however healthy the rest is. We don't publish the exact weights: that calibration took hundreds of real sites to get right. What we always publish is that something changed.

  1. Chef's kiss Nothing to send back — AI engines can read you loud and clear.
  2. Cleans the plate A strong plate. A few rough edges, nothing that stops a machine reading you.
  3. Needs seasoning The bones are good, but answer engines are leaving hungry.
  4. Undercooked There's a lot on the menu bots can't taste yet — worth a proper pass.
  5. Sent back to the kitchen AI engines can barely get a bite of this one — time for a full recipe rework.

Site scans

A site scan finds your pages from your sitemap or, where there isn't one, from the links on your homepage. It reads up to 50 of them, chosen to cover each kind of page your site has, so every template gets looked at. Each page gets the same full page scan, with performance measured on the homepage. The site score is judged across every page we read, not an average of their scores.

A site scan belongs to an account, and so does what comes after it: thirty days after a site's last finished scan we run it again, add the result to that site's history and email it to you. You can switch the re-scans, or just the emails, off on Your sites. If you stop signing in for about three months we warn you, then pause the re-scans until you sign in again.

History and scoring versions

Results belong to the page, so every address keeps a history anyone can see. Every result is stamped with the version of our scoring that produced it. When our scoring changed between two scans, the history still shows the difference, and says our scoring changed. Only two comparisons show no number: “Not compared — the pinned pages changed”, when a site scan's pinned pages differ between runs, and “Can't compare”, when the earlier version was never recorded.

What we changed

What a scanner can't tell you

We measure whether a machine can read your page. We don't measure rankings, citations or what AI assistants say about you, and some things only a person can judge: whether the writing is good, whether the offer is clear, whether the page answers the question. That's where a human helps.

To see how a check fares across the sites we have scanned, as percentages only, read the State of the Web.

Scan a page See everything we check

Want this handled? No pitch, just a plain-English chat.

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