# AEO - Answer Engine Optimization for Umbraco
> Make your Umbraco site readable and citable by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity: llms.txt, Markdown for every page, JSON-LD structured data, AI-crawler analytics and AI referrals. Free, no AI dependency.
AEO - Answer Engine Optimization for Umbraco
## llms.txt, every page as Markdown, structured data and AI-crawler analytics from one install.
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Solutions / AEO
## Readable by AI,
cited by AI
Answer engines summarise you and either cite you or don't. AEO serves your published content in the formats they read - an llms.txt index, the whole site as Markdown, any page as Markdown - and adds verified structured data, generated live from the content cache. No editor work, no content changes.
Free on the Umbraco Marketplace. No Umbraco AI, no LLM provider, no API key.
See what the bots do
## AI-crawler analytics
in the backoffice
Visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and 150+ other AI crawlers are recognised, classified by intent and counted - which bot, which pages, HTML or Markdown. Each visit is verified against the vendor's published IP ranges or reverse DNS, and scanners spoofing an AI user agent are blocked.
Humans clicking through from chatgpt.com, claude.ai or perplexity.ai are recorded and matched to crawler fetches as questions answered.
Exposure, the crawlers that fetched it, visits from assistants and the questions they answered - for content editors, no Settings access needed.
No IP addresses stored unless you opt in. Raw user agents are kept only as forensics on spoofed requests.
What one install gives you
## Six things,
zero configuration
file-text
A curated index of your site following the llms.txt standard, with a link to each page's Markdown version.
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The entire site rendered to Markdown in one document, ready for a model's context window or a RAG pipeline.
file-md
Append .md to any URL and get a clean Markdown rendering - advertised with alternate links and content negotiation.
code
WebSite, WebPage or Article, breadcrumb and FAQ markup on every page, and organisation identity you fill in once.
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Which bots fetched what, verified and counted, on the AI Traffic dashboard.
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Which of your pages AI answers actually sent real visitors to.
For developers
Up and running in four steps
The short version. The full guide with screenshots, configuration reference and troubleshooting is in the developer docs.
dotnet add package Flowcourier.Umbraco.AEO. It self-registers through a pipeline filter and creates the crawler-analytics table on first startup.
Terminal
Open /llms.txt, /llms-full.txt and any page URL with .md appended. Output comes from the published-content cache and refreshes on publish.
Browser
Settings → Flowcourier → AEO Dashboard → Structured Data: organisation name, logo, profile links and contact details. The one thing the package never guesses.
Backoffice
Allow AI crawlers at the edge (newer Cloudflare zones block them by default) and set ClientIpHeader, for example CF-Connecting-IP, so crawler verification can run.
Cloudflare
## Common questions
What is answer engine optimisation?
Making sure that when ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity answer a question your business could answer, your content is what they draw on and your name is what they cite. The article explains what to change in an Umbraco site.
Does it need Umbraco AI or an API key?
No. AEO has no AI dependency at all. It reads the published content cache and serves it in other formats.
Does it work headless?
No. It is built for sites where Umbraco renders the front end. Discovery headers, JSON-LD injection and crawler analytics all happen on the rendered pages.
We are behind Cloudflare. Anything to do?
Two minutes: allow AI crawlers at the edge, since newer zones block them by default, and set the client IP header so verification can run.
Which Umbraco versions?
Umbraco 17 on .NET 10.
Run our free analyzer for technical, SEO, content and AI-readiness scores with prioritised fixes - in about a minute.
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