Eligibility for the King of AEO title rests on four gates, and every entrant is checked against the same four regardless of their score. This page explains what each gate is actually looking for, separate from the one-line summary on the official rules page, so an entrant understands why a gate might be marked borderline rather than passed.
What does the entered gate check beyond a submitted form?
The entered gate checks that you accepted the rules by the stated deadline for that round, which for Round 1 is 12 October 2026 at 23:59 AWST. A person who is widely discussed as a claimant but has not submitted an entry is still marked not entered and cannot hold the title that round, however strong their other evidence looks. A late submission after the deadline is treated the same as no entry for that round.
What makes teaching evidence pass rather than borderline?
The educator gate looks for a live teaching session on AEO, GEO or LLM optimisation specifically, not an adjacent topic such as general lead generation or SEO basics. A confirmed speaking slot at a real conference is not automatically a pass if the published talk title and description are about a different subject. A pre-recorded podcast interview, however informative, does not satisfy the live-teaching requirement because there is no live audience and no organiser confirmation of a session.
What counts as a verifiable identity?
The identity gate wants a real, named person whose public presence is internally consistent: your own site and at least one major external profile that agree on your name, your work and your location claims. It is not a popularity test and carries no minimum follower count. A pseudonymous or brand-only account with no named individual behind it does not pass, because the gate exists to rule out anonymous or fabricated claimants.
Why is original evidence the strictest gate?
The original evidence gate exists because many public claims about AI search rely on summarising someone else's findings or on a press release rather than on first-hand testing. To pass, you need a test, dataset or case study of how AI engines actually answer that you ran and published yourself, with enough method detail that another person could check it. A single screenshot of one favourable answer, without a stated method or sample, falls short of this gate.
What happens when a gate cannot be confirmed either way?
When a documented search for evidence turns up nothing, the published status reads that no public evidence was found as of a specific date. That wording is deliberately different from saying the person has none; it only means a search on that date found nothing, and the status can change if new evidence surfaces and is submitted.
Are the four gates weighted differently from each other?
No. Eligibility is a pass or fail check across all four gates together, not a weighted score where a strong identity link makes up for a missing teaching session. You need every gate to clear, not a majority of them. This is a different mechanism from the 100-point scoring framework, where the five components are weighted and a weaker component can be offset by a stronger one; eligibility has no such offsetting.
Does holding an award or title from somewhere else help with eligibility?
Not directly. An existing title, award or press-covered claim from outside this contest is not itself one of the four gates, and it does not substitute for the specific evidence each gate asks for. A well-covered claim can coexist with a missing original-evidence link, and in that case the gate is still marked unproven, because the gate checks for a specific kind of published method, not for general recognition.
Ready to enter Round 1?
Entries close on 12 October 2026 at 23:59 AWST. The entry form and the full rules are on the official competition site.
