GEO / AEO audit checklist

Generative engine optimization (GEO) audit checklist

A generative engine optimization audit checks whether AI answer engines can fetch your page, lift a self-contained answer from it, identify your brand, and trust you enough to cite you. Use our free SEO & GEO audit tool or follow this complete checklist: 42 items across 6 groups, starting with crawler access because no AI engine can quote pages it cannot fetch.

Work through it rather than read it: every check is tickable and your progress is saved in this browser, so you can stop and come back. Each one carries how badly it hurts to skip it (9 are critical), roughly how long the fix takes, and whether it is a developer job or a content job, so you can filter down to what you can ship today and hand the rest over as tickets.

Written by Vasa, GEO & AEO specialist · Last updated

Need a GEO audit checklist PDF? This page is print-formatted.

Start here: the checks that keep you out of AI answers entirely

0 of 9 cleared

Most GEO work shifts how often you get cited. These change whether you can be cited at all — an answer engine that cannot fetch or attribute the page will never quote it, however well written it is.

  • — one wildcard disallow removes you from every answer engine at once details
  • — block either agent and ChatGPT can never quote the page, however good it is details
  • — Perplexity crawls on its own, so a block there costs you its citations alone details
  • — Claude fetches under user agents most robots.txt files never mention details
  • — disallowing it opts you out of AI Overviews and Gemini while you still rank details
  • — content that only appears after JavaScript runs is invisible to most AI fetchers details
  • — an answer spread over six paragraphs never gets lifted as a passage details
  • — with no entity in structured data, the answer gets attributed to someone else details
  • — an unsourced number is the first claim an answer engine drops details

Generative engine optimization audit vs traditional SEO

Classic SEO competes for a ranked link, so it optimises the page as a whole. Generative engines retrieve and quote fragments, so they reward pages made of self-contained, attributable passages. A page can rank on page one and still never be cited, usually because its answer is spread across six paragraphs, its crawler access is blocked for AI user agents, or its content only exists after JavaScript runs.

How to do a GEO audit: step-by-step workflow

  1. 1. Inspect AI crawler access in robots.txt: Verify that robots.txt allows AI crawlers including GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended to fetch your pages.
  2. 2. Format answers for first-passage quotability: Deliver your direct answer in the opening 40 to 60 words using clean, server-rendered HTML rather than client-side JavaScript.
  3. 3. Structure content into semantic chunks: Break complex sections into question-shaped headings, comparison tables, and self-contained paragraphs that models can cite independently.
  4. 4. Ground your brand and authors with entity schema: Implement Organization and Person JSON-LD schema with verified sameAs profiles on Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and official directories.
  5. 5. Add verifiable citations and publish llms.txt: Include primary data citations and create an /llms.txt file to guide AI crawlers and developer agents to your highest-value content.

GEO readiness audit: what makes a site AI-search ready

A complete GEO site audit evaluates technical accessibility alongside semantic authority. If an AI agent cannot fetch your raw markdown or HTML without client-side hydration, or cannot attribute a statement to an authoritative entity, your page is skipped in favor of sites that provide structured, verifiable answers.

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0 of 42 complete

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Filters apply to the printed PDF as well, so you can print just the critical list.

AI crawler access

0 / 8 done

An answer engine can only cite what it can fetch. This is the single most common reason a good page never appears in AI answers.

  • Critical≤ 5 minDev

    Whether robots.txt allows OpenAI's crawler and search fetcher on this path.

  • Critical≤ 5 minDev

    Perplexity crawls and cites separately from Google.

  • Critical≤ 5 minDev

    Anthropic's crawlers evaluated against your rules.

  • Critical≤ 5 minDev

    Controls Gemini and AI Overviews grounding independently of Googlebot.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev

    Two more retrieval paths most sites never check.

  • Critical≤ 5 minDev

    A wildcard disallow that silently removes you from every answer engine.

  • CriticalHalf a day+Dev

    Client-rendered content is frequently invisible to AI fetchers.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev

    Served as parseable HTML with a declared charset.

Answer readiness

0 / 8 done

AI engines lift self-contained passages. This group scores whether such passages exist on your page at all.

  • Important~30 minContent

    The tool extracts the passages most likely to be quoted and shows them to you.

  • Critical~30 minContent

    The core question is answered within the first 40 to 60 words.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Headings phrased the way people actually ask.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Passages that still make sense with all surrounding context removed.

  • Important≤ 5 minContent

    'X is …' constructions models reuse verbatim.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Structured formats are extracted far more reliably than prose.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Depth of the first substantive answer in the document.

  • Polish~30 minContent

    Passages leaning on 'it' and 'this' cannot be quoted standalone.

Chunkability and structure

0 / 6 done

Retrieval works on chunks. Badly structured pages chunk badly and lose to worse content.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Sections short enough to survive chunking, long enough to be complete.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Enough headings that each chunk carries its own topical label.

  • Polish~30 minDev

    article, section and main instead of nested divs.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev or content

    Skipped levels break the chunk-to-topic mapping.

  • PolishHalf a day+Dev

    How much of the page is nav and footer rather than content.

  • Polish~30 minDev or content

    An in-page TOC helps both users and retrieval systems.

Entity clarity

0 / 6 done

Models must know who you are before they will attribute an answer to you.

  • Important≤ 5 minContent

    One canonical name, not five variations across the page.

  • Critical~30 minDev

    The entity exists in structured data, not just prose.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev

    Profiles that let a model disambiguate you from similarly named entities.

  • Important≤ 5 minContent

    Attribution depends on the brand appearing near the answer.

  • Important~30 minContent

    What you offer, stated in plain language a model can repeat.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev or content

    Drift between markup and text weakens the entity.

Evidence and trust

0 / 8 done

Answer engines prefer sources that look verifiable. These are the signals they can see.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Concrete numbers are the most-quoted content type in AI answers.

  • Critical~30 minContent

    An unsourced number is a liability, not an asset.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Links to the origin of each claim.

  • Important~30 minContent

    Authoritative sources versus self-referential loops.

  • Important≤ 5 minContent

    First-hand experience stated explicitly.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev or content

    Freshness is a hard filter for many AI retrieval systems.

  • Polish≤ 5 minDev

    Visible dates matching schema dates.

  • ImportantHalf a day+Content

    Content that cannot be paraphrased from elsewhere.

AI-native files and interfaces

0 / 6 done

The emerging layer. Very few sites have any of it, which makes it cheap differentiation.

  • Important≤ 5 minDev or content

    Structure validated against the llmstxt.org proposal.

    Generate an llms.txt
  • Polish~30 minContent

    Real page inventory rather than a marketing paragraph.

  • Polish~30 minDev

    Full-content variant for documentation-heavy sites.

  • PolishHalf a day+Dev

    Whether assistants can call your site as a tool, not just read it.

  • Polish~30 minDev

    RSS, JSON feeds or an API a model can follow.

  • Important~30 minDev

    FAQPage, HowTo, Article and Organization where they genuinely apply.

Run the GEO checklist on your page

The audit reports AI crawler access per user agent, extracts the passages most likely to be quoted, and scores entity and evidence signals.

Frequently asked questions

What is a generative engine optimization audit?
A generative engine optimization audit (GEO audit) measures whether an AI answer engine can fetch your page, extract a self-contained answer from it, identify who you are, and trust the claim enough to cite you. It is a retrieval and attribution audit, not a ranking audit.
How to do a GEO audit?
To do a GEO audit: (1) verify robots.txt allows AI crawlers like GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot, (2) check that answers are rendered in server HTML rather than hidden behind client-side JavaScript, (3) format core answers into self-contained 40-60 word definition passages, (4) declare clear entity schema (Organization, Person) with sameAs profile links, and (5) publish a valid llms.txt file. You can run all these checks automatically with IMVASA free audit tool.
What is a GEO readiness audit?
A GEO readiness audit evaluates whether your content, schema, and server infrastructure are prepared to be retrieved, synthesized, and cited by generative engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
What is included in a GEO site audit?
A GEO site audit includes 42 checks across 6 groups: AI crawler access in robots.txt, answer readiness and definition density, semantic chunkability, entity clarity and sameAs links, verifiable evidence and citations, and AI-native discovery files like llms.txt.
What is the difference between an SEO audit and a GEO audit?
An SEO audit optimises for ranked links in Google. A GEO audit optimises for being retrieved and cited by AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. They overlap on crawlability and structure but diverge sharply on answer readiness, entity clarity, and evidence.
Which checks matter most for AI search visibility?
In order: AI crawler access in robots.txt, server-rendered content, a direct answer in the opening passage, entity clarity through Organization or Person schema with sameAs links, and sourced statistics. Most sites fail on the first two without knowing it.
Is there a free tool to audit generative engine optimization?
Yes. IMVASA Audit Tool runs this GEO checklist alongside a full technical SEO audit on any public URL, free and without signup, and shows the exact passages an AI engine is most likely to quote.
Does llms.txt actually help AI search visibility?
It does not affect Google ranking. It gives AI crawlers and agents a curated map of your site, which mainly helps large or documentation-heavy sites. It is cheap to add and it is the file most often missing when a GEO audit runs.

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