You've spent months building content, refining your product pages, maybe even investing in SEO. Then you ask ChatGPT about your category and... nothing. Your brand doesn't exist.
It's not that your content is bad. It's that your site might be invisible to AI search engines for reasons you've never thought to check. A blocked crawler here, a missing schema there, content formatted in ways AI can't extract. Small things that add up to zero visibility.
A GEO audit fixes that. It's a systematic check of everything that affects whether AI can find, understand, and recommend your site. Here's the complete checklist.
What does a GEO audit actually check?
A GEO audit evaluates five areas of your website: bot access, structured data, content quality, technical accessibility, and entity clarity. Most sites fail on at least two of these, even sites that rank well on Google.
The good news: most failures are straightforward to fix once you know where to look.
Checklist 1: Bot access (can AI crawlers reach your pages?)
This is the most critical check. If AI crawlers can't access your site, nothing else matters.
Check your robots.txt file. Go to yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for these user agents:
- GPTBot (OpenAI / ChatGPT)
- ClaudeBot (Anthropic / Claude)
- PerplexityBot (Perplexity)
- Google-Extended (Google AI / Gemini)
If you see Disallow: / next to any of these, you're blocking that AI from crawling your site entirely. Some CMS platforms and security plugins add these blocks by default without telling you.
Common blocking mistakes:
- WordPress security plugins that block "unknown" bots (which includes AI crawlers)
- Blanket
Disallow: /rules that block everything - CDN or WAF configurations that rate-limit or block bot traffic
.htaccessrules that reject non-Google user agents
What to do: Remove any Disallow directives for AI bot user agents. If you're using a security plugin, check its bot-blocking settings specifically. You want AI crawlers to have the same access as Googlebot.
Checklist 2: Structured data (does AI understand your pages?)
Schema markup (structured data) helps AI understand what your pages are about, what type of content they contain, and how to extract relevant information.
Organization schema. Your site should have Organization schema on your homepage with your company name, description, logo, URL, and social profiles. This helps AI connect your brand identity across the web.
Product or Service schema. If you sell products or services, each product page should have Product schema with name, description, price, and availability. AI uses this to make accurate recommendations.
FAQ schema. Any page with Q&A content should use FAQPage schema. This is one of the most extractable formats for AI. Questions and answers marked up with FAQ schema are significantly more likely to appear in AI responses.
Article schema. Blog posts and guides should have Article schema with author information (@type: Person), publication date, and last modified date. This strengthens E-E-A-T signals that AI uses to evaluate source credibility.
HowTo schema. Step-by-step guides and tutorials should use HowTo schema. AI platforms frequently cite how-to content, and the schema makes extraction more reliable.
BreadcrumbList schema. Helps AI understand your site structure and the relationship between pages. Especially useful for larger sites.
How to check: View your page source (right-click, View Source) and search for application/ld+json. Or use Google's Rich Results Test tool to validate your structured data.
Checklist 3: Content quality (is your content AI-friendly?)
AI search engines extract and cite content differently than Google indexes it. Content that ranks well on Google can still be invisible to AI if it's formatted poorly for extraction.
Answer-first format. The first sentence under each heading should directly answer the question implied by that heading. AI scans for direct answers. Content that buries the answer in paragraph three gets skipped.
Clear, descriptive headings. Your H2s and H3s should read like the questions your audience asks AI. "How much does project management software cost?" is better than "Pricing" as a heading. AI matches user queries to heading text.
FAQ sections. Add explicit FAQ sections to your key pages. Questions phrased in natural language, answers that are self-contained and factual. This format maps directly to how users query AI.
Depth and specificity. AI cites comprehensive sources over thin content. Include specific numbers, data points, examples, and comparisons. "Starting at $29/month for 15 tracked queries" is citable. "Affordable pricing" is not.
Entity coverage. Name specific brands, tools, people, and concepts rather than using vague references. "ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity" is better than "major AI platforms." AI builds knowledge graphs from named entities.
Short, autonomous paragraphs. Keep paragraphs under 120 words. Each paragraph should make sense on its own, because AI might extract it without the surrounding context. Repeat brand names instead of using pronouns.
Checklist 4: Technical accessibility (can bots actually render your pages?)
Even if you're not blocking AI crawlers, technical issues can prevent them from seeing your content.
Page speed. Slow pages get abandoned by crawlers just like they get abandoned by users. If your pages take more than 3-4 seconds to load, AI crawlers may time out before reading your content. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to check.
JavaScript rendering. Content loaded dynamically via JavaScript may not be visible to all AI crawlers. If your key content only appears after JavaScript executes, some bots won't see it. Check by disabling JavaScript in your browser and seeing what content remains visible.
Mobile-friendly design. AI crawlers increasingly use mobile user agents. If your site serves different content on mobile vs. desktop, make sure the mobile version contains all the important content.
No login walls. Content behind login screens, paywalls, or mandatory email gates is invisible to AI crawlers. If you want AI to cite your content, it needs to be publicly accessible. Gated lead magnets are fine, but your core informational content should be open.
Clean URLs. Pages with clean, descriptive URLs (/guides/geo-audit-checklist) are easier for AI to categorize than pages with parameter-heavy URLs (/page?id=3847&cat=12).
Checklist 5: Entity clarity (does AI know who you are?)
AI builds understanding of your brand from information scattered across the web. If that information is inconsistent or thin, AI can't confidently recommend you.
Consistent brand information. Your company name, description, and positioning should be identical across your website, social profiles, directory listings, and third-party mentions. Inconsistencies confuse AI's entity resolution.
Clear "About" page. Your About page should state in plain language: what your company does, who it serves, and what makes it different. This is often the first page AI references when building an entity profile.
Third-party presence. AI cross-references information across sources. Being listed on relevant directories, review sites (G2, Capterra, Product Hunt), and industry publications strengthens your entity profile.
Author attribution. Content attributed to named, real people with visible credentials carries more weight than anonymous content. Include author names, titles, and brief bios on your articles.
Social proof signals. Customer testimonials, case studies, and reviews that mention your brand name give AI additional confirmation of what you do and how well you do it.
The quick version: run an automated GEO audit
This checklist is thorough, but if you want a baseline score in 30 seconds, run a free GEO audit on your site. It automatically checks bot access, structured data, and key technical factors, then gives you a score with specific recommendations.
The automated audit catches the critical issues. This manual checklist helps you go deeper on the fixes.
What to do with your results
You've gone through the checklist. You probably found some failures. Here's how to prioritize:
Fix bot access first. If AI crawlers are blocked, nothing else matters. This is usually a 5-minute fix in your robots.txt or security plugin settings. Do it today.
Add missing schema markup second. Organization and FAQ schemas have the highest impact for the least effort. Article schema with author information is a close third. If you're on WordPress, plugins like Yoast or RankMath can handle most of this automatically.
Restructure your top pages third. Pick your 5-10 most important pages and apply the content quality checklist: answer-first format, clear headings, FAQ sections, specific data points. This takes more time but has a compounding effect.
Fix technical issues as you find them. Page speed, JavaScript rendering, and mobile issues are worth fixing regardless of AI visibility because they affect everything.
Clean up entity information over time. Update directory listings, social profiles, and your About page. This is ongoing maintenance, not a one-time project.
After making fixes, give it 2-4 weeks for AI crawlers to re-index your pages. Then check whether AI platforms are starting to mention and cite your content. Run a free AI visibility check to see if you're actually showing up in AI responses for queries that matter to your business.
Keep auditing
AI search is moving fast. Crawlers update their behavior. New AI platforms emerge. Your competitors improve their sites.
Run this full checklist quarterly. Run an automated GEO audit monthly or after any major site change. The sites that stay visible in AI search are the ones that keep checking and keep improving.
Your site might not be fully ready for AI search today. That's normal. But now you know exactly what to fix, and where to start.
