How to Evaluate AI SEO Grading Tools (Before You Rearrange Your Website)
We’ve been getting more questions lately about AI “website graders” and whether you should be implementing what they recommend.
A colleague sends you a link. You run your site through it. You get a score, plus a list of fixes that sound technical and urgent.
Before we add a single one of those items to your work list, we start with a simpler question:
Will these changes measurably increase traffic, rankings, or inquiries?
Because if the answer is “we’re not sure,” then we’re looking at a distraction.
What The Data Is Already Showing About AI Search
If an AI tool is telling you to “optimize for AI,” we need to be clear about how AI search actually works and what outcomes it produces.
1) AI search still sits on top of traditional ranking systems.
Google’s chief AI scientist Jeff Dean has publicly confirmed that AI-powered search (including AI Overviews) still relies fundamentally on traditional ranking and retrieval systems. Large language models analyze a relatively small, pre-filtered set of already highly-ranked documents to generate responses.
That means the “eligibility set” for AI summaries is largely determined by the same things that have always determined rankings: authority, relevance, links, brand strength, and engagement.
2) AI visibility does not automatically equal clicks.
In one widely discussed case, a site owner reported 797,444 AI Overview impressions that produced only 7 clicks — a 0.0009% CTR — dramatically below their normal organic click-through rate.
If impressions go up while clicks do not, “AI visibility” can become a vanity metric.
3) When organic visibility drops, AI citations often drop too.
One analysis looking at 11 sites found that when Google visibility dropped, AI-search citations tended to drop as well (with ChatGPT citations appearing more sensitive than some other tools).
The ecosystem-level takeaway is simple: whatever reduces your organic visibility may also reduce how often AI systems surface or cite your pages.
Put together, this points in one direction: traditional SEO strength is a prerequisite for meaningful AI visibility.
The Core Issue: Where Is The Validation?
AI graders produce recommendations. What they rarely produce is proof.
If a tool gives you 20+ suggestions, the company behind it should be able to show that implementing those changes creates measurable improvement.
Here’s the standard we use:
- Ask the tool company for three local businesses.
- Ask for examples where all recommendations were implemented.
- Ask for screenshots showing an increase in organic traffic (or AI-driven traffic) after implementation.
If they can’t produce that, then we’re not looking at strategy. We’re looking at speculation.
Why Implementing These Lists Becomes A Trap
Even when the recommendations sound harmless, there’s a cost: time, focus, and development hours.
Every hour spent chasing unvalidated checklists is an hour not spent on the ranking drivers we consistently see correlate with growth across therapy and private practice websites:
- Strong positioning through clear Specialty pages.
- Clear geographic relevance thanks to an optimized Google Business Profile.
- Authority signals, through consistent and relevant blogging.
- Meaningful site structure through logical and appropriate internal linking.
The work that moves rankings tends to be consistent and measurable.
The work that comes out of graders often feels urgent, but isn’t tied to outcomes.
The “AI Built The Tool” Loop
There’s also a newer issue showing up in the market.
A lot of these graders are clearly built using AI coding platforms. So we end up in a loop:
AI builds a tool → the tool grades websites → people implement changes → AI re-grades the result.
In many cases, there is no human validation layer confirming:
- whether the recommendations are causally connected to ranking movement,
- whether the “score” reflects search performance,
- whether the advice generalizes beyond a handful of examples.
If there’s no proof, we treat it as noise.
What We Actually Optimize For
We optimize for measurable outcomes, not scores.
- Growth in organic landing sessions
- Expansion in Top 10 and Top 3 keyword share
- Improved visibility in local results
- Increased qualified inquiries
- Ranking movement that holds over time
If something meaningfully affects performance, it shows up in the data across multiple sites and over multiple months.
That’s the bar.
The Bottom Line
AI tools can be useful for brainstorming, summarizing, and speeding up small tasks.
But when a grader wants to steer your SEO roadmap, it needs to clear a higher standard: proof.
If a tool company can demonstrate measurable growth from implementing their full checklist, we’re happy to evaluate it.
Until then, we keep doing what consistently works for therapists: build real relevance, real authority, and a site that matches private practices with their potential clients.
