theonion.com 43 D
🛡️ SEO 54 🤖 GEO 65 ⚡ Perf 52 🏗️ Arch 77

theonion.com — Global SEODiff Score 43/100

theonion.com
📊

The AI-Readiness score for theonion.com stands at a concerning 15/100, placing it among the least AI-accessible sites in the index. Compared to other infrastructure sites (avg score: 58), theonion.com is trailing the benchmark, indicating room for competitive improvement. The low ghost ratio (0%) confirms that what crawlers see matches what users see — a hallmark of strong SSR implementation. The bloated 37.2× token ratio highlights an urgent need to clean up non-content markup, scripts, and navigation clutter. The site includes 2 schema blocks, providing adequate structured data for basic entity recognition. A total AI bot blockade means no AI-powered search or answer engine can crawl and index this domain's content.

43
D — Global SEODiff Score
Comprehensive search visibility assessment
Below average — Performance (52) needs urgent attention.
🎯 Top Fix: Allow GPTBot + ClaudeBot in robots.txt → lift the score cap
🔬 Automated SEODiff Assessment · Snapshot: Feb 28, 2026 · 📋 API
📈 ACRI Trend 4 snapshots
Feb 23 Feb 28
🔔 Recent AI Indexing Activity
No recent changes detected by adaptive crawler.
Does your site score higher than theonion.com?
Run the same 40-signal audit on your own domain — free, instant results.
Scan Your Site Free →
🧮 Score Transparency — How is this calculated?
🛡️ Traditional SEO (25% weight)54 × 0.25 = 13.5
🤖 AI Readiness / GEO (40% weight)65 × 0.40 = 26.0
⚡ Performance (20% weight)52 × 0.20 = 10.4
🏗️ Architecture & Trust (15% weight)77 × 0.15 = 11.5
Weighted sum = 13.5 + 26.0 + 10.4 + 11.5
⚠️ Fatal multiplier: All major AI bots blocked → ×0.5
Global SEODiff Score = 43 (D)
🚫
Gatekeeper Rule: Score cannot exceed 15. Both GPTBot and ClaudeBot are blocked in robots.txt. No major AI assistant can cite this site. Allow at least one major AI crawler to lift the cap. See Bot Access →
📊 ACRI Sub-Scores (AI Readiness Detail)
20
Bot Access
avg 92
100
Rendering
avg 93
68
Structure
avg 36
44
Schema
avg 9
85
Tech Stack
avg 63
🔀
Visibility Delta: Google vs AI
Google (Tranco)
Top 0.7%
Rank #7421
+67 pts
Gap
AI (ACRI)
Top 67%
Score 15/100

theonion.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 theonion.com ranks here

Tech stackWordPress
RenderingSSR
Schema coverage2 blocks
Token bloat37.2×

Fastest improvements

  • Allow GPTBot in robots.txt so AI crawlers can access your pages (see Crawl Access).
  • Allow ClaudeBot (many assistants rely on it) — blocking it often correlates with “AI invisibility.”
  • Reduce token bloat (navigation/footer/code) so agents reach your main content faster (see Token Bloat).
  • Create an llms.txt file 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 →
🧪

JavaScript Rendering Check

We check what AI crawlers miss when they skip JavaScript execution.

Running headless browser to simulate AI extraction…
🛡️

Traditional SEO

54/100 25 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence

📝 Title Tag

16 chars
Too short

Optimal range: 30–60 characters for SERP display.

📋 Meta Description

112 chars
Too short

Optimal range: 120–160 characters for snippet control.

🔤 Heading Hierarchy

  • ✗ Exactly 1 <h1> tag — found 0
  • ✓ Has <h2> headings — found 18
  • ✗ <h2> not before <h1>

🔍 Indexability

  • ✓ Canonical tag present → https://theonion.com/
  • ✓ No noindex directive
  • ✓ Meta viewport set
  • ✓ HTML lang attribute → en-US
  • ✗ Hreflang tags
  • ✓ Googlebot allowed by robots.txt

🌐 Social / OpenGraph

  • ✓ og:title — Home
  • ✓ og:description — America's Finest News Source
  • ✓ og:image — preview
  • ✓ twitter:card — summary_large_image
📐 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

65/100 40 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence

This pillar aggregates citation share, hallucination risk, bot access, schema health, and content extractability. The individual diagnostic sections below contribute to this score.

🔗

Citation Alternatives

Research
💡
Insight: In the infrastructure sector, safely.co.jp (ACRI: 90) currently has stronger AI extractability. AI models tend to prefer sources with higher semantic structure and schema coverage. Domains with ACRI < 40 see 3.5× more hallucinations. Read the research →
theonion.com
56
Your ACRI Score
90
Industry Peer ACRI
AI models prioritize pages with strong semantic structure and schema coverage. safely.co.jp has schema coverage of 3 blocks and uses WordPress. Improve your score by implementing the remediation patches below.
📊 Side-by-Side Comparison →
🚨

Hallucination Risk

Research

Is AI lying about your brand? This panel measures how likely LLMs are to hallucinate facts when extracting information from your page.

Analyzing hallucination risk…

🤖 Bot Access Matrix

GPTBot (OpenAI)
Blocked
ClaudeBot (Anthropic)
Blocked
CCBot (Common Crawl)
Blocked
Google-Extended
Blocked
Googlebot
Allowed
💡GPTBot is blocked. To appear in ChatGPT citations, add Allow: / under User-agent: GPTBot in your robots.txt.
💡ClaudeBot is blocked. To be cited by Claude, allow ClaudeBot in robots.txt.

👻 Rendering (Ghost Ratio) Docs

Ghost Ratio 0%
0% — Safe 50% 100% — Risk
Status Server-Side Rendered (Safe)
Rendering Type SSR

📊 Structure & Information Density Docs

Structure Grade 68/100 — Good
Structured Elements 165 elements (165 lists, 0 rows, 0 headers)
Total Words1186
Raw Density13.9%

🏷️ Schema Health Docs

Organization Schema ✅ Present
Product / Service Schema ⚠️ Not Found
Total Schema Blocks2 block(s) — Basic (low value for AI)

Schema Coverage Map

3/7 schema types detected
✅ Organization
❌ Product/Service
✅ Breadcrumb
❌ FAQ
❌ Article
✅ WebSite
💡Product / Service schema missing. AI models don't know this is a SaaS product. Add Product or SoftwareApplication schema so AI understands what you offer and can surface pricing/features.
💡FAQ schema missing. Adding FAQPage schema lets AI models directly extract Q&A pairs for Featured Snippets and chatbot answers.

📐 AI Efficiency Metrics Docs

59
AI Extractability
Medium
Crawl Cost
Critical
Blocklist Risk
Extractability59/100 — AI models can partially extract answers from this page
Crawl CostMedium (65/100) — moderate for AI crawlers to process
Blocklist RiskCritical — 4 of 5 AI crawlers blocked

Token Bloat Research

2%
🗑️ 98%
Useful Content (11.7 KB)Bloat (425.2 KB)
Token Bloat Ratio37.2× — Bloated

Multimodal Readiness

Visual Context63% Optimized for Vision
Image Alt Coverage44 / 70 images have alt text

TDM Rights

TDM-Reservation HeaderNot set
X-Robots-Tag: noaiNot set
💡Your HTML is 436.9 KB, but only 11.7 KB is text. 2% useful / 98% bloat. AI crawlers have limited context windows (e.g. 128k tokens). This level of bloat (37.2×) risks context-window truncation by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Reduce inline scripts, CSS, hydration payloads, and tracking code.

🔥 Structural Entropy Check Research

0 Entropy
Poor Token Bloat: High
Noise Ratio: 97.3% · SNR: 0.03 · Signal: 3005 / Noise: 108844 tokens

🔬 AI-Crawler Simulation

See your website the way AI crawlers do. CSS stripped, structure labeled, content chunked.

🌐
This is what humans see — styled, branded, visual.
Toggle to "AI Agent View" to see what GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and other AI crawlers actually extract from this page.
🤖

AI Answer Preview

NEW

See how AI models summarize your site. Left: your actual content. Right: what the LLM extracts and says about you.

Simulating AI extraction…

🔧 Tech Stack

FrameworkWordPress
AI-Readiness Score85/100
Servernginx
CDN
HTTP Status200
Load Time574 ms
Raw HTML Size436.9 KB
Visible Text Size11.7 KB

Performance & Speed

52/100 20 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence

⏱️ Time to First Byte

574 ms
Acceptable — room for improvement

Google considers <200 ms "good". AI crawlers may have even shorter timeouts.

📦 Page Weight

1705
DOM nodes
437 KB
HTML payload
Heavy page — consider reducing DOM complexity

🗄️ Cache & CDN

  • ✓ Cache-Control header → max-age=300, must-revalidate
  • ✗ CDN cache status
  • ✗ CDN detected

🔬 Tracker Tax

0
tracker scripts
0
third-party domains
0.0%
token overhead
Minimal tracker load — clean signal for bots
📐 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

77/100 15 % of Global Score 🟢 High Confidence

🗺️ Sitemap & Robots

  • ✓ Sitemap declared in robots.txt → https://theonion.com/sitemap_index.xml
  • ✓ Googlebot allowed
  • ✗ GPTBot allowed
  • ✗ ClaudeBot allowed

🔗 Linking

233
internal links
23
external links
Good internal linking — helps crawlers discover content

🔒 Security & Trust

  • ✗ HSTS header (Strict-Transport-Security)
  • ✗ Content-Security-Policy header
  • ✓ HTTP status 200 OK (got 200)

♿ Accessibility Signals

  • ✓ HTML lang attribute → en-US
  • ✓ 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 56/100. Reach 80+ to unlock the green "AI-Verified" badge. Fix the issues below to improve your score.

AI-Verified badge for theonion.com
Pending Audit — score below 80 threshold
<a href="https://seodiff.io/radar/domains/theonion.com" rel="noopener"><img src="https://seodiff.io/api/v1/badge?domain=theonion.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 1004 pages · Deep-10

Homepage ACRI
56
Single-page score
+6
Consistent readability
Δ delta
Site-Wide ACRI
63
Avg across 1004 pages · Range 54–64
Topical Cohesion
11%
Topical Drift
TF-IDF cosine similarity
Total Words
817573
Avg Bloat
89.3×
Page Type ACRI Token Bloat Words Status
https://theonion.com/features
Features Of Android Oreo - The Onion
pricing 64 96.6× 677 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/blog
Blog Post Read By Mother To Shape Child’s Next 18 Years - The Onion
pricing 64 91.5× 719 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/contact
Contact Paper Beautifies Drawer Interior - The Onion
pricing 64 106.0× 613 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/horoscope-for-the-week-of-october-21-1997-1819593043/
Horoscope for the week of October 21, 1997 - The Onion
pricing 64 79.7× 826 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/nike-to-cease-manufacturing-products-1819564472/
Nike To Cease Manufacturing Products: - The Onion
pricing 64 61.4× 1075 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/massive-oil-spill-results-in-improved-wildlife-viscosit-1819564476/
Massive Oil Spill Results In Improved Wildlife Viscosity - The Onion
pricing 64 60.0× 1104 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/the-holistic-medicine-boom-1819558837/
The Holistic Medicine Boom - The Onion
pricing 64 94.5× 710 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/orange-julius-officials-ordered-to-appear-before-u-s-f-1819564471/
Orange Julius Officials Ordered To Appear Before U.S. Food Court - The Onion
pricing 64 69.6× 951 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/gene-wilder-to-make-horrible-horrible-movie-1819564470/
Gene Wilder To Make Horrible, Horrible Movie - The Onion
pricing 64 103.1× 632 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/deputy-attorney-generals-wife-cracks-down-on-pornograph-1819564469/
Deputy Attorney General's Wife Cracks Down On Pornography - The Onion
pricing 64 102.5× 638 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/vocalist-leaves-journey-tribute-band-over-creative-diff-1819564464/
Vocalist Leaves Journey Tribute Band Over Creative Differences - The Onion
pricing 64 96.5× 678 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/christ-demands-more-money-1819564468/
Christ Demands More Money - The Onion
pricing 64 56.8× 1163 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/clinton-unveils-new-prize-hopping-toad-1819564466/
Clinton Unveils New Prize Hopping-Toad - The Onion
pricing 64 57.0× 1160 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/congress-approves-40-million-to-fight-teens-1819564477/
Congress Approves $40 Million To Fight Teens - The Onion
pricing 64 99.1× 657 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/wacky-morning-dj-vows-to-hunt-down-scum-that-killed-his-1819564474/
Wacky Morning DJ Vows To Hunt Down Scum That Killed His Partner - The Onion
pricing 64 56.0× 1187 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/new-crispy-snack-cracker-to-ease-crushing-pain-of-moder-1819564372/
New Crispy Snack Cracker To Ease Crushing Pain Of Modern Life - The Onion
pricing 64 55.7× 1193 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/los-angeles-to-siphon-water-from-minorities-bodies-1819564463/
Los Angeles To Siphon Water From Minorities' Bodies - The Onion
pricing 64 49.1× 1356 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/shannon-tweed-named-head-of-u-s-task-force-on-nudity-1819564458/
Shannon Tweed Named Head Of U.S. Task Force On Nudity & Aging - The Onion
pricing 64 93.6× 700 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/area-man-thanked-for-playing-1819564457/
Area Man Thanked For Playing - The Onion
pricing 64 104.6× 621 💰 Pricing
https://theonion.com/transplanted-new-yorker-disappointed-with-local-bagel-s-1819564462/
Transplanted New Yorker Disappointed With Local Bagel Scene - The Onion
pricing 64 104.7× 622 💰 Pricing
Showing 20 of 100 pages. Unlock full subpage table →
📂
Health by Sub-Directory
Average ACRI and top issues aggregated by URL path prefix
Path Pages Avg ACRI Ghost % Bloat Top Issue
/nuclear-threat-still-very-real-says-muhammad-ali-1819563924/ 1 64 0% 99.5× High JS Bloat
/mcdonalds-restaurant-to-open-in-washroom-of-existing-mc-1819564000/ 1 64 0% 69.7× High JS Bloat
/new-rap-song-samples-billie-jean-in-its-entirety-adds-1819564437/ 1 64 0% 99.1× High JS Bloat
/satan-to-revise-bar-code-system-1819564181/ 1 64 0% 94.2× High JS Bloat
/summer-blockbusters-1819586262/ 1 64 0% 115.9× High JS Bloat
/ask-deep-blue-1819583356/ 1 64 0% 79.0× High JS Bloat
/the-graying-of-americas-prisons-1819558823/ 1 64 0% 92.1× High JS Bloat
/should-car-phones-be-banned-1819558824/ 1 64 0% 99.7× High JS Bloat
/tom-bosley-named-secretary-of-naps-1819564242/ 1 64 0% 104.4× High JS Bloat
/yacht-club-regatta-marred-by-tragic-undergrilling-of-ma-1819563973/ 1 64 0% 68.5× High JS Bloat
/clinton-gets-box-to-put-governments-stuff-in-1819563978/ 1 64 0% 102.5× High JS Bloat
/the-first-wifes-club-had-divorced-women-in-it-1819583252/ 1 64 0% 45.0× High JS Bloat
/area-man-thanked-for-playing-1819564457/ 1 64 0% 104.6× High JS Bloat
/jewish-texans-commemorate-holocaust-texas-style-1819564202/ 1 64 0% 88.1× High JS Bloat
/the-great-star-wars-nearly-made-me-deaf-because-it-was-1819583305/ 1 64 0% 35.2× High JS Bloat
🔗
Outbound External Citations
0 unique external domains cited across 1004 pages
tiktok.com ×1004
youtube.com ×1004
store.theonion.com ×1004
bsky.app ×1004
twitter.com ×1004
theonion.tumblr.com ×1004
jobs.gusto.com ×1004
membership.theonion.com ×1004
🔄 Re-Crawl & Update 📡 Track this Domain

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/theonion.com

Get your free API key — 100 requests/month included.

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Domains with a similar tech stack, industry, and AI readiness profile to theonion.com. Compare side-by-side.

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🎭

Bait & Switch Delta

A 15 PAGES

Compares 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.

54
Homepage ACRI
56
Inner Avg ACRI
-2
ACRI Delta
40%
Homepage Ghost
40%
Inner Avg Ghost
0
Drift Score [?]
Worst Inner Pages
64 40% pricing https://theonion.com/features
64 40% pricing https://theonion.com/blog
64 40% pricing https://theonion.com/contact
🛡️

E-E-A-T Trust Signals

C 40/100

Trust indicators extracted from surface pages. These signals help AI systems verify your site's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Physical Address
Phone Number
Email Contact
About Page
Contact Page
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service
Named Leadership
Named leadership: The Onion Staff, The Onion Staff, The Onion Staff
🔗

Citation Profile

12 DOMAINS

Outbound citation patterns across surface-crawled pages. Sites that cite diverse, authoritative sources signal higher E-E-A-T to AI systems.

180
Total Links
12
Unique Domains
12.0
Avg/Page
7%
Diversity
theonion.tumblr.com x.com linkedin.com store.theonion.com instagram.com facebook.com tiktok.com bsky.app membership.theonion.com twitter.com
🏘️ Outbound Neighborhood Trust Avg Trust: 60.5

AI trust scores for the domains theonion.com links to. Citing high-trust sources lifts your own credibility signal.

🩹

Remediation Patches

COPY-PASTE

Auto-generated code fixes tailored to theonion.com. Copy and paste these into your codebase to improve AI visibility. These patches are mathematically proven to increase extraction accuracy →

Allow GPTBot in robots.txt
High Impact ⏱ 2 min
GPTBot is blocked — your content cannot appear in ChatGPT citations. Add this to your robots.txt:
text
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /
Allow ClaudeBot in robots.txt
Medium Impact ⏱ 2 min
ClaudeBot is blocked — Claude cannot cite your content. Many AI assistants rely on it.
text
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: anthropic-ai
Allow: /
Reduce Token Bloat
Medium Impact ⏱ 1–2 hrs
Only 2% of your HTML is useful content. AI crawlers waste context window tokens on bloat.
html
<!-- 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>
Add FAQ Schema
Medium Impact ⏱ 10 min
FAQ schema lets AI models directly extract Q&A pairs. This is the easiest way to get featured in AI responses.
html
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "What is Theonion?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Add your answer here — describe what Theonion does in 1-2 sentences."
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "How does Theonion work?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Explain the key features and how users interact with Theonion."
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>
📈

Projected Impact

ROI EST.

If you apply the patches above, here's the estimated improvement for theonion.com:

Current Score
15
Projected Score
36
Improvement
+21 pts
Allow GPTBot +8 pts
Allow ClaudeBot +5 pts
Reduce token bloat +5 pts
Add FAQ schema +3 pts

*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).

Is this your company?

Monitor your AI visibility score weekly and get alerted when changes happen.

Start Free →

🧭 Self-Diffing (Private Layer)

For owned domains, combine this world snapshot with private drift + regression history.
Template Drift
Track in My Site
Drift → Traffic Impact
In development coming soon
Regression Incidents
Track in My Site
Internal Linking
Deep Audit graph
Semantic Structure
GEO view in Deep Audit
Content Quality
Thin/duplicate tracking

🕒 History

Score over timeAvailable in My Site history
Drift eventsTemplate timeline + incidents
Drift → Revenue AttributionComing soon
Schema/rendering/extractability changesTracked per scan in project history