bankrate.com achieves a 76/100 on the AI-Crawler Reality Index, reflecting above-average readiness for AI-driven discovery. In the finance sector, bankrate.com outperforms the average (58), suggesting strong competitive positioning in AI search. The low ghost ratio (10%) confirms that what crawlers see matches what users see — a hallmark of strong SSR implementation. Heavy markup overhead (18.4× bloat) forces AI systems to wade through excess code before finding useful information. The site includes 2 schema blocks, providing adequate structured data for basic entity recognition. All major AI bot user-agents (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Google-Extended) are permitted by robots.txt, ensuring broad AI crawler access.
🧮 Score Transparency — How is this calculated?
📊 ACRI Sub-Scores (AI Readiness Detail)
bankrate.com punches above its weight in AI — AI visibility exceeds Google ranking. This is a competitive moat worth protecting. ACRI measures technical crawler readiness. Read the methodology →
Why bankrate.com ranks here
Fastest improvements
- Reduce token bloat (navigation/footer/code) so agents reach your main content faster (see Token Bloat).
- Create an
llms.txtfile so AI crawlers can discover your content structure without heavy crawling. Generate llms.txt → - Run a full entropy audit to find which DOM regions waste the most tokens. Run Entropy Audit →
Traditional SEO
54/100 25 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence📝 Title Tag
Optimal range: 30–60 characters for SERP display.
📋 Meta Description
Optimal range: 120–160 characters for snippet control.
🔤 Heading Hierarchy
- ✓ Exactly 1 <h1> tag — found 1
- ✓ Has <h2> headings — found 18
- ✓ <h2> not before <h1>
🔍 Indexability
- ✓ Canonical tag present →
https://www.bankrate.com/ - ✓ No noindex directive
- ✓ Meta viewport set
- ✓ HTML lang attribute →
en - ✗ Hreflang tags
- ✓ Googlebot allowed by robots.txt
🌐 Social / OpenGraph
- ✓ og:title — Bankrate: Healthier wallet, happier you
- ✓ og:description — Use Bankrate.com's free tools, expert analysis, and award-winning content to make smarter financial decisions. Explore personal finance topics including credit cards, investments, identity protection, auto loans, retirement, credit reports, and so much more.
- ✓ og:image — preview
- ✓ twitter:card — summary
📐 How the SEO Pillar score is calculated
SEO Pillar = Title (20 pts) + Meta Desc (20 pts) + Heading Hierarchy (20 pts) + Indexability (20 pts) + Social/OG (20 pts)
Each sub-score is derived from the checks above. Canonical tag, lang attribute, og:image, and a single H1 are the highest-impact items.
AI Readiness / GEO
72/100 40 % of Global Score 🟢 High ConfidenceThis pillar aggregates citation share, hallucination risk, bot access, schema health, and content extractability. The individual diagnostic sections below contribute to this score.
Is AI lying about your brand? This panel measures how likely LLMs are to hallucinate facts when extracting information from your page.
🤖 Bot Access Matrix
👻 Rendering (Ghost Ratio) Docs
📊 Structure & Information Density Docs
🏷️ Schema Health Docs
Schema Coverage Map
📐 AI Efficiency Metrics Docs
Token Bloat Research
Multimodal Readiness
TDM Rights
🔥 Structural Entropy Check Research
🔬 AI-Crawler Simulation
See your website the way AI crawlers do. CSS stripped, structure labeled, content chunked.
Toggle to "AI Agent View" to see what GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and other AI crawlers actually extract from this page.
AI Answer Preview
NEWSee how AI models summarize your site. Left: your actual content. Right: what the LLM extracts and says about you.
The LLM Interpretation
AI-VERIFIEDA local LLM (mlx-community/gemma-3-4b-it-qat-4bit) analyzed the extracted content of bankrate.com and produced this structured business intelligence. Fields marked SEMANTIC VOID indicate information the AI could not find — a critical gap in your site’s machine-readability.
🔧 Tech Stack
Performance & Speed
27/100 20 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence⏱️ Time to First Byte
Google considers <200 ms "good". AI crawlers may have even shorter timeouts.
📦 Page Weight
DOM nodes
HTML payload
🗄️ Cache & CDN
- ✓ Cache-Control header →
max-age=3600, public - ✗ CDN cache status
- ✗ CDN detected
🔬 Tracker Tax
tracker scripts
third-party domains
token overhead
📐 How the Performance Pillar score is calculated
Perf Pillar = TTFB (35 pts) + Page Weight (25 pts) + Cache/CDN (20 pts) + Tracker Tax (20 pts)
TTFB <200 ms = full marks. DOM >3000 or payload >300 KB incurs heavy penalties. Tracker scripts beyond 5 reduce score.
Architecture & Trust
84/100 15 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence🗺️ Sitemap & Robots
- ✓ Sitemap declared in robots.txt →
https://www.bankrate.com/sitemap/sitemap-index.xml - ✓ Googlebot allowed
- ✓ GPTBot allowed
- ✓ ClaudeBot allowed
🔗 Linking
internal links
external links
🔒 Security & Trust
- ✓ HSTS header (Strict-Transport-Security)
- ✗ Content-Security-Policy header
- ✓ HTTP status 200 OK (got 200)
♿ Accessibility Signals
- ✓ HTML lang attribute → en
- ✓ Meta viewport for mobile
- ✓ Single H1 for screen readers
📐 How the Architecture Pillar score is calculated
Arch Pillar = Sitemap & Robots (30 pts) + Linking (25 pts) + Security (25 pts) + Accessibility (20 pts)
Having a valid sitemap, allowing AI bots, HSTS, and a good internal link count are the highest-impact items.
🏅 AI-Verified Trust Badge
Your site scores 57/100. Reach 80+ to unlock the green "AI-Verified" badge. Fix the issues below to improve your score.
<a href="https://seodiff.io/radar/domains/bankrate.com" rel="noopener"><img src="https://seodiff.io/api/v1/badge?domain=bankrate.com" alt="AI-Verified by SEODiff" width="280" height="52"></a>
💡 Paste in your site footer, GitHub README, or email signature. Badge updates automatically as your score changes.
� Deep Crawl Analysis 233 pages · Deep-10
| Page | Type | ACRI | Token Bloat | Words | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | 85 | 9.5× | 8277 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 102.6× | 695 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 110.1× | 612 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 76.6× | 935 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 66.9× | 1118 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 119.8× | 556 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 95.5× | 770 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 65.0× | 1143 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 126.6× | 545 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 85.6× | 859 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 90.6× | 787 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 92.7× | 770 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 114.6× | 597 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 111.5× | 630 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 106.3× | 662 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 89.3× | 785 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 114.2× | 599 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 105.3× | 656 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 97.5× | 702 | 💰 Pricing | |
| pricing | 69 | 114.4× | 627 | 💰 Pricing |
| Path | Pages | Avg ACRI | Ghost % | Bloat | Top Issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /authors/ | 224 | 61 | 0% | 230.8× | High JS Bloat |
| /careers/ | 3 | 59 | 0% | 459.5× | High JS Bloat |
| /about/ | 2 | 64 | 0% | 102.3× | High JS Bloat |
| /career/ | 1 | 64 | 0% | 112.8× | High JS Bloat |
| /privacy/ | 1 | 44 | 0% | 988.1× | High JS Bloat |
| /terms/ | 1 | 85 | 0% | 9.4× | High JS Bloat |
| /contact/ | 1 | 64 | 0% | 91.6× | High JS Bloat |
instagram.com
×233
Scores update automatically each month. Create a free account for on-demand re-crawls (3/month free).
🔌 API Access
Pull this data programmatically. All sub-page metrics are available via our public API.
curl https://seodiff.io/api/v1/deep10/domain/bankrate.comGet your free API key — 100 requests/month included.
🔗 Similar finance Sites
Domains with a similar tech stack, industry, and AI readiness profile to bankrate.com. Compare side-by-side.
| Domain | ACRI | AI Score | Tech Stack | Token Bloat | Schema | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bankrate.com (this site) | 57 | 76 | Custom / Proprietary | 18.4× | 2 | — |
| stearnsbank.com | 78 | 85 | Custom / Proprietary | 3.1× | 2 | Compare → |
| hoiku.jinzaibank.com | 78 | 86 | Custom / Proprietary | 2.3× | 2 | Compare → |
| anadolubank.com.tr | 78 | 83 | Custom / Proprietary | 2.1× | 2 | Compare → |
| price.ua | 81 | 87 | Custom / Proprietary | 4.6× | 3 | Compare → |
| advcash.com | 79 | 89 | Next.js | 17.4× | 5 | Compare → |
Bait & Switch Delta
C 5 PAGESCompares your homepage rendering quality with inner pages. A high drift score means AI crawlers see a polished homepage but degraded inner content — the "bait & switch" that erodes trust.
Worst Inner Pages
E-E-A-T Trust Signals
A 80/100Trust indicators extracted from surface pages. These signals help AI systems verify your site's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Citation Profile
8 DOMAINSOutbound citation patterns across surface-crawled pages. Sites that cite diverse, authoritative sources signal higher E-E-A-T to AI systems.
instagram.com
AI trust scores for the domains bankrate.com links to. Citing high-trust sources lifts your own credibility signal.
Remediation Patches
COPY-PASTEAuto-generated code fixes tailored to bankrate.com. Copy and paste these into your codebase to improve AI visibility. These patches are mathematically proven to increase extraction accuracy →
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Bankrate",
"url": "https://bankrate.com",
"potentialAction": {
"@type": "SearchAction",
"target": "https://bankrate.com/search?q={search_term_string}",
"query-input": "required name=search_term_string"
}
}
</script>
<!-- Move inline CSS to external stylesheets --> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/main.css"> <!-- Move inline scripts to external files with defer --> <script src="/js/app.js" defer></script> <!-- Remove duplicate navigation blocks --> <!-- Keep only ONE <nav> in the <header> --> <!-- Ensure <main> wraps your primary content --> <main> <!-- Your content here — this is what AI sees first --> </main>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [
{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "What is Bankrate?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Add your answer here — describe what Bankrate does in 1-2 sentences."
}
},
{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "How does Bankrate work?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Explain the key features and how users interact with Bankrate."
}
}
]
}
</script>
Projected Impact
ROI EST.If you apply the patches above, here's the estimated improvement for bankrate.com:
*Estimates based on SEODiff's scoring model. Actual results depend on implementation quality.
📋 Data Export
Download scores and metadata for audits, client reports, or CI/CD pipelines. Exports contain computed metrics only (no copyrighted content).
All data is generated automatically and updated with each crawl. JSON exports contain scores and metadata only (no copyrighted content).
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