westcoasteagles.com.au — AI Site Grade

Analysis

The single most non-obvious finding

The site's SportsTeam JSON-LD schema lists the club's address as "Domain Stadium, 250 Roberts Road, Subiaco" — a venue that was demolished in 2019 and replaced by a housing estate. The club has played at Optus Stadium since 2018 and trains at Mineral Resources Park. This stale address is the kind of factual error that erodes AI confidence in structured data.

Crawler Access

All 11 AI bot user-agents tested (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Bytespider, Applebot-Extended, anthropic-ai, Perplexity-User) receive 200 OK with identical byte payloads (~580KB) as a browser baseline. No UA-based blocking exists. The site runs on nginx behind Akamai CDN with AWS CloudFront headers present. The robots.txt is a bare catch-all (User-agent: * Disallow:) with no AI-bot-specific rules — permissive but also a missed opportunity to guide crawler prioritization. The referenced sitemap at test.afl.pulselive.com/sitemap returns 401 Unauthorized, and the site's own /sitemap.xml returns 404. No sitemap is discoverable by any crawler.

Cold-Knowledge Gap

The LLM knows the club's four premiership years (1992, 1994, 2006, 2018), its home ground (Optus Stadium), the Fremantle rivalry, and recent on-field decline. The site itself never states any of these facts in plain text. The homepage contains zero historical or contextual content — no founding year, no premiership count, no mention of Optus Stadium, no club description. The /club/history page is a thin navigation hub linking to sub-sections that are themselves JS-rendered shells. The /club/about page returns 404. An AI model retrieving this site cold would find no canonical source for the club's own identity.

Schema Posture

Only the homepage carries structured data: a SportsTeam schema and a WebPage. The SportsTeam schema contains the stale "Domain Stadium" address (Subiaco, postcode 6904, state listed as "VIC" instead of WA). The sameAs links are correct (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram). Every other page tested — news, fixture, teams, community — either lacks JSON-LD entirely or carries only a generic NewsArticle schema with empty description fields. No FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Event, or SportsEvent schema exists anywhere on the site despite fixture and match-day content being core to the domain.

JS-Rendering Risk

Several key pages return near-zero visible text from a plain GET. The /club page returned 0 words of body text. The /matches/fixture page returned 30 words. The /club/history page returned 246 words but only as navigation labels. These pages rely on client-side React rendering (react.bundle.min.js served from /resources/v5.48.20/). While AI crawlers currently get the full HTML payload (580KB), the actual content is embedded in JavaScript state — a fragile arrangement if crawler JS-execution policies change.

External Signals

No external search results surfaced for Reddit threads, press mentions, or reviews about the club's website. The club's digital presence is almost entirely self-contained within the AFL/Telstra ecosystem. The domain resolves to AWS IPs (15.197.234.9, 3.33.226.204) with Akamai edge caching. Email runs through Microsoft 365 (Outlook protection). The TXT records confirm Google Search Console verification and Facebook domain verification — so the site is registered with those platforms, yet no structured data optimization is evident.

Findings

1. SportsTeam schema lists demolished Domain Stadium and wrong state High

   The homepage's SportsTeam JSON-LD lists the club's address as 'Domain Stadium, 250 Roberts Road, Subiaco' with state 'VIC' instead of WA. Domain Stadium was demolished in 2019; the club has played at Optus Stadium since 2018. This factual error erodes AI confidence in structured data.

   What to change: Update the SportsTeam schema address to reflect the current home ground (Optus Stadium, 333 Victoria Park Drive, Burswood WA 6100) and correct the state to 'WA'.

2. No sitemap.xml or llms.txt discoverable High

   The site's /sitemap.xml returns 404, and the referenced sitemap at test.afl.pulselive.com/sitemap returns 401. No llms.txt file exists. Crawlers have no structured way to discover all pages.

   What to change: Generate and serve a valid sitemap.xml listing all key pages, and consider adding an llms.txt file for AI crawlers.

3. Key pages are JavaScript shells with minimal plain text Medium

   Pages like /club, /matches/fixture, and /club/history return near-zero visible text from a plain GET, relying on client-side React rendering. While current crawlers receive the full HTML payload, content is embedded in JavaScript state, making it fragile if crawler JS-execution policies change.

   What to change: Implement server-side rendering or static generation for key pages to ensure content is available in the initial HTML response.

4. Homepage lacks plain-text club identity and history High

   The homepage contains zero historical or contextual content: no founding year, premiership count, home ground mention, or club description. The /club/about page returns 404. An AI model retrieving the site would find no canonical source for the club's own identity.

   What to change: Add a prominent 'About' section on the homepage with founding year, premierships, home ground, and key facts in plain text. Restore the /club/about page with substantive content.

5. No structured data on news, fixture, teams, or community pages Medium

   Only the homepage carries structured data. Pages like /news, /matches/fixture, /teams/afl, and /community lack JSON-LD entirely or carry only generic NewsArticle with empty descriptions. No FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Event, or SportsEvent schema exists despite fixture and match-day content being core.

   What to change: Add appropriate JSON-LD schemas (e.g., SportsEvent for fixtures, FAQPage for common questions, BreadcrumbList for navigation) to all relevant pages.

6. SportsTeam schema lists state as VIC instead of WA High

   The SportsTeam schema's addressRegion is set to 'VIC' (Victoria) instead of 'WA' (Western Australia). This is a basic factual error that undermines trust in the structured data.

   What to change: Correct the addressRegion to 'WA' in the SportsTeam schema.

7. No external search results for club website mentions Low

   Web searches for Reddit threads, press mentions, or reviews about the club's website returned zero results. The club's digital presence is almost entirely self-contained within the AFL/Telstra ecosystem, limiting external signals that could boost AI visibility.

What's working

• Robots.txt allows all bots with no AI-specific blocks — The robots.txt is a bare catch-all with no disallowed paths, and all 11 AI bot user-agents tested receive 200 OK with identical content. This ensures full crawler access.
• SportsTeam schema includes correct social media sameAs links — The homepage's SportsTeam schema lists correct sameAs URLs for Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, providing verified social media profiles.
• Google Search Console and Facebook domain verification confirmed — TXT records show Google Search Console verification and Facebook domain verification, indicating the site is registered with these platforms.
• Site uses Akamai CDN and Microsoft 365 email protection — The site is served via Akamai CDN with AWS CloudFront headers, and email runs through Microsoft 365 with Outlook protection, ensuring performance and security.