GEO audit: how to audit your site for AI search, step by step

What a GEO audit covers

GEO is generative engine optimization; AEO is answer engine optimization. An audit under either name asks the same questions: can AI find and read your site, what does it say about you, who does it name instead, and what should change first.

It is different from a technical SEO audit, which is about Google's crawler and rankings, although it starts from the same basics. See GEO vs SEO.

For example, a dentist in Leeds might ask: when someone asks ChatGPT for a dentist in Leeds, does my practice appear, and if not, whose does? A GEO audit answers that.

Step one: access for AI crawlers

Each assistant that searches the web has its own crawler, such as OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search and PerplexityBot for Perplexity. If these crawlers are blocked, your site cannot appear in answers at all.

Check robots.txt and the server response for each one. A block or a firewall rule keeps you out of answers entirely.

Vasukai's robots.txt checker tests 18 AI crawlers in one go. Link to robots.txt checker.

Also check that a firewall or CDN rule is not returning an error to these crawlers even when robots.txt allows them; the tool checks the live server response, not only the file.

For example, a bakery in Dublin might find that its CDN blocks PerplexityBot, so its site never appears in Perplexity answers. Fixing that one rule can open the door.

Step two: can the page be read and understood

AI models favour pages that state plainly what the business does, where, for whom and at what price, near the top, in text rather than in images or scripts.

Check titles, headings, a clear first paragraph, structured data, contact details and that the page loads without needing JavaScript to show its text.

Vasukai's AI visibility audit scores a page out of 100 on these points and lists the fixes in order. Link to AI visibility audit.

Do this for the pages that answer customers' questions: the home page, the services or product pages and the contact page, not only the home page.

For example, a plumber in Manchester might have a services page that lists everything in an image. AI cannot read it, so the plumber is invisible for those services.

Step three: what the assistants say about you

Ask the assistants the questions your customers ask and read the answers in full: are you named, in what position, with what description, and is it accurate.

Check the facts: the AI brand fact checker compares what ChatGPT says against your own site. Link to AI brand fact checker.

Vasukai's free AI check does this across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode for a business like yours. Link to free AI visibility checker.

For example, a yoga studio in Toronto might find that ChatGPT says it offers hot yoga when it does not. That wrong fact can send the wrong customers away.

Step four: who is named instead, and why

For each question where a competitor is named and you are not, look at the pages the assistant cited.

The AI citation gap tool lists the cited pages that mention a competitor but not you. Link to AI citation gap tool.

Those pages, usually directories, reviews, roundups and forums, are the outreach list that comes out of the audit.

For example, a wedding photographer in Sydney might find that a local wedding blog lists three competitors but not them. Getting added to that blog could change the answer.

Step five: the report and what to fix first

Order the findings by impact: crawler blocks first, then pages that fail to answer the customer's questions, then missing mentions on cited sites, then wrong facts.

Write each fix as a task with an owner and a date, and set a date to re-check.

Vasukai's plans turn the audit into a schedule: the same questions asked weekly or daily, up to nine assistants, with a ranked list of fixes and the text written for you, from $19 a month.

For example, a marketing agency might use Vasukai to run weekly checks for a client and show the client the exact answers and the fixes made.