Methodology · rubric v1
How the AI Score works
The AI Score measures how ready a business is for AI: how well its website, marketing and sales hold up in a world where customers ask AI assistants what to buy and competitors run AI agents. It is 13 checks worth 100 points, split across three departments. Every check is reproducible, every point has evidence, and every report states the rubric version and scan date.
Scores compare within a sector. A dental clinic is scored against what matters for clinics, an online store against what matters for stores. Sector packs re-weight the core checks and can add a few of their own; when they do, the report says so.
Engineering
35 pointsMobile speed
8 pts
PageSpeed Insights mobile performance. Passing is a score of 60 or better; the report shows the measured value.
Structured data
6 pts
JSON-LD that describes the business or its offer (Product, LocalBusiness, Service, Organization with offers). Presence and validity, read from the page source.
Conversion tracking
7 pts
An analytics or pixel stack that can attribute a sale or lead (GA4, Meta Pixel, or the Denovo tag). Detected from page markup.
Readable by AI
6 pts
robots.txt does not block the major AI crawlers, and the offer is machine-readable (server-rendered text or structured data, not image-only).
Buy, book or call in 2 clicks
8 pts
From the front page, a customer can reach checkout, a booking, or a call in at most two interactions. Checked against the page's own links.
Marketing
35 pointsPaid channels vs competitors
10 pts
Which ad channels the business runs against what its named competitors run, from ad-library research. Scored relative to the sector. On a claimed workspace it also passes while the Denovo marketing agent has a campaign live on the business's ad accounts.
Named by AI assistants
10 pts
We ask an AI assistant with web search 3 questions a real customer would ask, built from the business's own offer. Passing means the business is named in the answers. Each question, the model and the date are shown in the report; the check averages the 3 runs because AI answers vary.
Fresh content
5 pts
Something on the site (or its social profiles found in the site's own markup) is newer than 60 days.
Visible reviews
5 pts
Ratings or reviews a customer can see: on the site, in structured data, or on the business's Google listing for local businesses.
Email capture
5 pts
A way to leave an email (newsletter, offer, waitlist) detected on the front page.
Sales
30 pointsInstant response
12 pts
A customer who reaches out gets an answer in minutes: live chat, an AI concierge, an auto-reply with substance, or instant booking. A bare contact form fails. On a claimed workspace it also passes while the Denovo sales agent reads the business's email daily and drafts a reply to each one (Gmail connected, read in the last 3 days).
Lead capture on every page
10 pts
The primary call to action (buy, book, call, quote) is reachable from every scanned page, not only the contact page.
A follow-up system
8 pts
Evidence of follow-up tooling: email marketing or CRM markers (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, HubSpot and similar). On a claimed workspace it also passes while the Denovo sales agent follows up with leads from the business's own mailbox (a lead contacted in the last 30 days).
Money on the table
Each failing check that Denovo can fix carries an uplift range taken from published, cited benchmarks for the sector. Ranges are combined without double counting (1 − Π(1 − uplift)), then capped at a plausible maximum for the sector. The result is always shown as a range, never a single number.
The baseline is, in order of preference: the business’s real revenue once a payment source is connected; a monthly revenue the owner types in; or the sector’s typical value, labelled as a default. “How we calculated this” on every report opens the per-fix arithmetic and each benchmark’s source.
Projected score is mechanical: the current score plus the points of the checks that Denovo’s recommended actions make pass. No action is ever recommended unless Denovo can carry it out today.
Corrections
Automated checks are sometimes wrong. Every finding on a report carries the evidence the scan saw and an “Is this wrong?” link; corrections feed straight back into the checks.
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