Search and AI readiness: the Common Ground standard for sites that search engines and AI answer engines can read

What it is

Buyers now ask AI answer engines who to hire. A site that those engines cannot read, verify and quote is left out of the answer. In early 2026 the portfolio sites lacked structured data, sitemaps, canonical tags and any file written for AI crawlers.

The standard is dated June 2, 2026 on the Common Ground wiki. A plan dated April 2, 2026 is headed "For Implementation by Jimmy Khounlavong", and his commits begin two months before the standard's date.

What Khounlavong did

• Committed the same layer on April 2, 2026 to the Common Ground site, the principal sites and a Lïef site: structured data, robots rules, a sitemap, canonical tags and an llms.txt file. Analytics, expanded schema for the organization and its people, and questions and answers schema followed in the next days.
• Ran a second pass in July 2026 that added fuller llms files, fixed redirects and put answers into the page code where crawlers can read them.
• Built the questions and answers layers for the Lïef Midtown site and for Fluidmapper.
• Owns the procedure for bringing a new client site on board, version 1.0, dated April 14, 2026.
• Built the audit method: a scanner of 16 checks, run across 9 portfolio sites, with the evidence for each check kept in one workbook.
• Added a check for Bing registration to the checklist in the middle of the August audit, after the audit showed it was missing.
• Produced the product specification for an AI search readiness offer in July 2026. The file carries no byline. A project note records a July 22, 2026 email from Jesse Fowler that calls it "Jimmy's spec".
• Wrote the roadmap for a visibility product that would join his audit method to Robby Prochnow's platform, under the working name Slipstream. Version 10 went to Jesse Fowler and Prochnow on August 5, 2026.

Results

• 9 sites were audited on April 8, 2026, at an average of 75% of phase A, the technical basics. By April 12, 2026, 7 sites were at 100% of phase A.
• The audit of July 17, 2026 covered 13 properties. Fluidmapper graded A. Lip Loi Creative, Lïef Midtown and three principal sites graded A minus. Common Ground graded B plus.
• Bing registration went from 0 of 8 domains to 8 of 8. APEXX AI went from 5 of 16 checks to 13 of 16. Search Console was consolidated to 9 properties.
• The same audits record what was not fixed. One venture site served a blank page in production. Local search work stood at 0% to 60%.
• Every audit, fix and re-grade is run by hand. The roadmap states that the merged product does not exist.
• No customers or revenue are documented.

At a glance