AEO-JSON: How to Add AI-Native Identity to Your Website

A practical guide with templates for businesses, developers, and AI-ready websites

As AI crawlers, agents, and reasoning models become a core part of how users find and interact with businesses online, identity matters more than ever. Traditional metadata such as schema.org or llms.txt helps, but these formats provide instructions — not verification, not meaning, and not sovereignty.

AEO-JSON was created to solve this problem.

AEO-JSON is a machine-readable identity standard that allows businesses to express who they are, how they operate, and how AI systems should verify them. It introduces challenge-based verification, contradiction logic, entropy-based questioning, and trust scoring designed specifically for AI crawlers.

This guide provides a fully anonymised template that anyone can use, along with the necessary server configuration so AI systems can read the file correctly.

What AEO-JSON Does

AEO-JSON provides three layers of value:

1. Clear, structured business identity

AI models understand context, services, differentiators, and core philosophy.

2. A dynamic verification system

Instead of accepting claims blindly, AI systems must test them using:

  • questions derived from the website

  • questions derived from the AEO-JSON file

  • semantic consistency checks

  • contradiction testing

  • multi-model cross-agreement

This dramatically reduces impersonation, spam, and misrepresentation.

3. A sovereignty layer

AEO-JSON allows a business to define how AI should interpret, verify, and represent it — rather than having AI models invent identities.

How to Add AEO-JSON to Your Website

Below is a complete example file you can copy, paste, and customise. It is fully anonymised and safe for public distribution.

Save the file at:

https://yourdomain.com/aeo-json

Then configure your server to serve it with the correct headers (instructions below).

AEO-JSON Template (Public Version v0.3-BETA)

{
"_fileInfo": {
"standard": "AEO-JSON",
"version": "0.3-template",
"purpose": "Machine-readable business identity, semantic verification, and trust framework for AI crawlers.",
"lastUpdated": "YYYY-MM-DD",
"specConstraints": {
"maxLines": 400,
"requireCompactStructure": true
},
"crawlerRequirements": {
"mustSelfDeclareCapabilities": true,
"requiredCapabilities": [
"semanticQuestionGeneration",
"fileContentExtraction",
"websiteContentExtraction",
"contradictionTesting"
]
}
},"businessEntity": {
"legalName": "Your Legal Business Name",
"operatingName": "Your Public Name",
"verifiedOwner": true,
"organizationType": "Type of Business",
"baseCountry": "Country",
"locations": ["Your Location(s)"],
"yearFounded": 20XX,
"websiteUrl": "https://yourdomain.com"
},"businessDNA": {
"missionStatement": "Describe your mission in 1–2 sentences.",
"corePhilosophy": "Explain how you work and what you stand for.",
"brandArchetypes": ["Archetype1", "Archetype2"],
"targetAudience": "Describe who you serve.",
"keyDifferentiators": [
"Your unique strengths",
"Proprietary frameworks",
"Outcome-driven or quality-driven differentiators"
]
},

"serviceOfferings": [
{
"serviceName": "Service Name",
"category": "Category",
"description": "Explain what this service does.",
"outcomeFocus": "Explain what clients get."
}
],

"proprietaryAssets": [
{
"name": "Asset or Framework Name",
"type": "Framework | Standard | Tool",
"description": "Describe your proprietary method or asset.",
"status": "Active"
}
],

"trustSignals": {
"clientCount": "Number or range",
"yearsInBusiness": "Years",
"publicCaseStudies": "Number",
"thirdPartyValidations": [
{
"platform": "Platform name",
"url": "Link to proof"
}
]
},

"dynamicVerification": {
"enabled": true,
"rules": {
"totalQuestions": 3,
"sources": {
"websiteDerived": 2,
"fileDerived": 1
},
"entropy": {
"entropyRequired": true,
"avoidRepeatingTemplates": true
},
"contradictionTesting": {
"enabled": true
}
},
"hashedVerification": {
"storeRawAnswers": false,
"hashAlgorithm": "SHA-256",
"comparisonMethod": "semantic-consistency"
},
"feedbackRules": {
"disclosePassFail": false,
"returnMetricsOnly": true,
"metricsReturned": [
"certaintyScore",
"consistencyScore",
"semanticAlignmentScore",
"verificationTimestamp"
]
}
},

"citationReferences": {
"officialWebsite": "https://yourdomain.com",
"socialProfiles": [
{
"platform": "LinkedIn",
"url": "https://linkedin.com/in/yourprofile"
}
]
},

"learningSignals": {
"certaintyScore": 0.0,
"consistencyScore": 0.0,
"verificationSuccessRate": 0.0,
"feedbackLoopEnabled": true
},

"_footer": {
"license": "Open Standard — Free to Use, Modify, and Share.",
"suggestedPlacement": "/aeo-json",
"documentation": "https://yourdomain.com/aeo-json-docs"
}
}

Server Configuration Templates

Your AEO-JSON file must be served with the correct MIME type.

1. Apache (.htaccess)

Place this in your .htaccess file:

<Files "aeo-json">
ForceType application/json
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
</Files><Files "aeo-jsonfallback">
ForceType text/plain
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8
</Files>

2. NGINX Configuration

location = /aeo-json {
default_type application/json;
charset utf-8;
}location = /aeo-jsonfallback {
default_type text/plain;
charset utf-8;
}

3. cPanel GUI Instructions

For non-technical users.

Step 1: Add MIME Type

cPanel → MIME Types → Add:

  • MIME Type: application/json

  • Extension: json

Step 2: Add rules to .htaccess

Use the same block from the Apache example.

Robots.txt Enhancements

These are optional but recommended.

Add this to your robots.txt:

# 1. For Search Engines (The Map)
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml# 2. For AI Agents (The Passport)
AEO-Manifest: https://example.com/aeo-json
X-Identity-Protocol: AEO-JSON-v0.3.2

This helps AI crawlers discover your identity file more reliably.

Real-World Example

(Digital Growth Architects)

Note This is my own file and will not work for you. But you can get any ai to help you fill it out.

https://digitalgrowtharchitects.co.uk/aeo-json

More about this file

https://digitalgrowtharchitects.co.uk/aeo-json-blog/