How Levels Advance and Are Protected
Every level requires two things to line up at the same time: your category health (the technical/structural state of your site) and your AI signal (what AI actually says about you).
The Criteria, Roughly
- Level 2 needs basic crawl access plus at least one accurate AI mention
- Level 3 needs healthy crawl access, decent structured data, and AI describing you correctly at least twice
- Level 4 needs your crawl, schema, accuracy, and competitive position all solid, plus a 25%+ recommendation rate
- Level 5 needs 5+ categories healthy with zero critical, plus a 50%+ recommendation rate
Click "See What Gets Me to Level N+1" on your dashboard any time to see exactly which of these you've already met.
Why Levels Are Protected
AI platforms change constantly — a model update, a new competitor entering the market, a temporary indexing issue. None of that reflects a real regression in your own AI readiness, so none of it can drop your level on its own.
A level only drops if:
- You actively block AI crawlers, or
- You remove critical structured data, or
- AI accuracy declines for 3+ consecutive months and category health declines at the same time
Even in that case, you get a 30-day warning email first — plenty of time to fix whatever changed before anything drops.
Related Guides
Understanding Your Agent Readiness Level (1-5)
What each of the 5 levels means, and why your level only ever moves up.
How the Monthly Re-Audit Works
What happens automatically once you're on a paid plan, and what the monthly email covers.
What is Agent Readiness? A Plain English Guide
Why what AI says about your business now matters as much as where you rank on Google.