King of AEO Contest
Reading a rule is different from judging whether your own evidence actually satisfies it. This page walks through the kind of submission that tends to satisfy each gate and the kind that tends not to, using the pattern of evidence already reviewed in the contest's own public eligibility records, without naming a verdict on any individual.
A strong submission for the educator gate links to an event page naming you as a speaker, with a session title and description that unambiguously covers AEO, GEO or LLM optimisation, dated within the last 24 months, ideally backed by a recording or an organiser's written confirmation that the session happened as described. A weaker submission links to a conference speaker list where your session topic is listed as 'to be announced' or is plainly about a different subject such as general lead generation; that kind of link is the sort of evidence that gets marked borderline rather than a clear pass.
A strong identity submission is simply your own website plus one established external profile, both using your real name and agreeing with each other on your role and location. There is nothing to construct here beyond making sure the two links do not contradict each other. A weak submission relies on a single social account with no linked personal site and no way to confirm the name behind it belongs to a real, named person.
A strong submission here is a published write-up of a test you ran: the prompts used, the engines queried, the markets or dates covered, and the actual results, hosted somewhere a reviewer can read the method and not just the conclusion. A weak submission is a single screenshot of one favourable AI answer with no stated method, no sample size and no way to tell whether the result was cherry-picked. A press release describing a claim, however widely it was picked up, does not substitute for a published method.
The most common mistake is submitting a link to a page that has since changed or been taken down, or a link behind a login wall that a reviewer cannot open. Since every gate decision is checked against a public, openly readable URL, a submission that requires special access or has gone offline functions the same as no submission at all, regardless of what it originally showed.
A borderline submission tends to have one real element and one missing detail rather than being entirely absent. A speaker page confirming attendance at a named event with no stated topic, a repository with commits but no written documentation of how it is used, or a written test with results but no stated sample or date, are each the kind of partial evidence that lands as borderline instead of a clean pass or a clear fail. The fix in each case is the same: go back and add the one missing detail rather than finding a different piece of evidence entirely.
Yes, where you genuinely have more than one piece of qualifying evidence, submitting two or three strengthens a gate rather than diluting it, particularly for original evidence where a second independent test supports the first. There is no stated penalty for submitting multiple links, provided each one is real and relevant; padding a submission with a weak link alongside a strong one does not help, since a reviewer still has to find the strong one among them.
Entries close on 12 October 2026 at 23:59 AWST. The entry form and the full rules are on the official competition site.
