Citation Clock Scorecard / Red Pin Geek

Live score 0.0/10 Pending

Score one page on the structural foundation AI engines need before they can cite it.

Five minutes. One number. One recommended next fix specific enough to action this afternoon.

You are about to score one page on your store against the five structural-foundation signals AI engines read before they can cite the page at all: sitemap inclusion, crawler permissions, schema validity, internal links, and content originality.

This tool checks the foundation, which is upstream of content optimization. If your product pages also need content-layer work (richer descriptions, comparison tables, FAQ schema, entity richness), run the Product Page Audit Scorecard on that page after the foundation passes.

A note before you start: this is a self-administered scorecard. It cannot crawl your site, so every answer is your honest read of what is on the page. If you are unsure, click the inline help on the question, then answer.

Step 1 of 8

Step 0 / Precondition

Before we score, one quick check.

Two of the four big AI engines (Gemini and Perplexity) rely on Google's search index to find pages. If Google has not indexed this page, those two engines cannot cite it regardless of how strong the structural work below is. So before we score, confirm Google has actually indexed the page.

Q0.Is this page listed as "Indexed" in your Google Search Console?

Yes, indexed No, sitting in "Crawled, currently not indexed" I do not know, show me how to check

How to check in Google Search Console:

Open Google Search Console and select your property.
Paste the page URL into the top search bar (the URL Inspection tool).
Look at the result. If you see "URL is on Google", the page is indexed. If you see "URL is not on Google" or "Crawled, currently not indexed", it is not.
Once you know the answer, come back and choose Yes or No above.

Stop scoring. The indexing has to be fixed first.

Open Google Search Console, go to Indexing > Pages > Why pages aren't indexed > Crawled, currently not indexed. Investigate why Google declined the page (usually thin content, duplicate signals, or weak internal linking from other indexed pages). Strengthen the page, then use the URL Inspection tool to request re-indexing. Re-run this scorecard after the page is confirmed indexed.

Step 1 of 7 / Dimension 1: Sitemap

Is the page in your sitemap, and does Google see it?

Q1.Is this page included in your published sitemap.xml?

Not in the sitemap (or sitemap not declared in robots.txt) In the sitemap, but lastmod is older than the last significant content update on the page In the sitemap, lastmod is current, sitemap is declared in robots.txt and loads without errors

Q2.When you last triggered a Google Search Console "Validate fix" or sitemap re-submit, did this page appear in the next coverage report?

Page not appearing in coverage report at all Page appearing but flagged with a warning or "Discovered, not indexed" Page appearing as "Indexed" in coverage

Step 2 of 7 / Dimension 2: Crawler permissions

Are the four AI crawlers explicitly allowed?

Q3.Does your robots.txt file explicitly allow all four AI crawlers: GPTBot (ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Claude), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), and Google-Extended (Gemini)?

None or only one explicitly allowed Two or three explicitly allowed (some missing or unclear) All four explicitly allowed with Allow: directives, no conflicting Disallow: blocks affecting this page

A correctly-configured robots.txt block for the four AI crawlers looks like this:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

Step 3 of 7 / Dimension 3: Schema

Does the page have valid, page-type-appropriate schema?

Q4.Does this page have a JSON-LD schema block in the page source (Article for blog posts, Product for product pages, BreadcrumbList for navigation, FAQPage for FAQ sections, or similar)?

No schema present Schema present but uses generic types only (no page-type-specific fields) Schema present AND the type matches the actual page AND includes the entity-specific fields appropriate to that type

Q5.Does the schema pass Google's Rich Results Test at 0 errors and 0 warnings?

Schema fails the test with errors Schema passes with warnings (not errors) Schema passes with 0 errors and 0 warnings

Open search.google.com/test/rich-results, paste the page URL, and read the result. Note: this dimension checks whether schema is present, correct-type, and valid. It does not check whether the content the schema describes is rich enough. For product-page content-layer work, run the Product Page Audit Scorecard after this tool's foundation pass.

Step 4 of 7 / Dimension 4: Internal links

Is the page well-connected from other indexed pages on your site?

Q6.How many internal links from other pages on your site point TO this page?

0 or 1 (effectively orphaned) 2 or 3 (lightly connected) 4 or more (well-connected from related collections, blog posts, or buying guides)

Q7.Of the pages that link TO this page, are at least two of them themselves indexed in Google?

Linking pages are themselves orphaned or not indexed Some linking pages indexed, some not All confirmed indexed and live

Search site:yourdomain.com/the-linking-url in Google. If the page appears in the results, it is indexed. If it does not appear, it is not indexed yet.

Step 5 of 7 / Dimension 5: First-person content

Is the body copy unmistakably yours?

Q8.If you copied the body copy of this page and pasted it on a competitor's site, would it still make sense in their context?

Yes, completely interchangeable (generic listing copy) Mostly interchangeable, with a few specific terms that would feel slightly off No, the copy is unmistakably yours, with specifics (named entities, original observations, your voice, studio-specific anecdotes) that could not be pasted elsewhere

Q9.Does the page include first-person practitioner detail: your specific process, your sourcing rationale, named work or collections, or decision moments you have actually had with customers?

No first-person voice at all Some first-person, mostly in headers or about sections, body is generic First-person voice throughout the body, including specific reader-decision context

Step 6 of 7 / Sanity checks

Two final signals AI engines weight heavily.

Q10 is a hidden-but-critical signal AI engines read; Q11 is the freshness anchor for the diagnostic clock.

Q10.Is the page's main content visible to a crawler WITHOUT JavaScript rendering required?

Body copy only loads via JavaScript Some content in raw HTML, some JavaScript-rendered All body copy in raw HTML, no JavaScript required for crawler access

Right-click the page in your browser, then choose View Page Source. Search the raw HTML for a sentence from your body copy. If the sentence appears in the source, the content is in raw HTML. If it does not appear, it is only in the rendered DOM (JavaScript-injected) and AI crawlers may not see it.

Q11.Is the last-updated date stamped visibly on the page (in body copy or header, not just in metadata)?

No last-updated date visible to readers Date in metadata only (not visible to readers in page body) Date visible in body or header, current within the last 90 days

Citation Clock Scorecard / Result

0.0/10

Your structural-foundation score

Answer all questions to see your tier and recommended next fix.

Recommended next fix

Complete the scorecard to receive your prioritized next fix.

Dimension breakdown

Schema0/2

Sitemap0/2

Crawler permissions0/2

Internal links0/2

First-person content0/2

JS rendering (Q10)0/2

Visible freshness date (Q11)0/2

What to do next

Run the recommended next fix above this week, then re-score the page next Monday. Most pages move from a clear top-leak tier to Healthy in two to three weeks once the top-leak is addressed.

Want this done for you? See how I work with stores on the AI Visibility + Agentic Commerce Audit → Have not run a store-level baseline yet? Take the free AI Visibility Score (2 minutes) →