How to audit your website for AI visibility: a 20-point checklist

Block 1. What AI answers today

1. Question list. Do you have 10–20 questions customers ask before buying, in every language your customers use?
2. Five AI assistants. What do ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot answer? Are you mentioned, in what position, and which competitors are named?
3. Sources. Which sites do the answers link to? Is your site among them, your Google profile, the directories you are listed in?
4. Accuracy. If AI knows you, does it get your services, prices, address and opening hours right? An error in an answer usually repeats an error in some source.

AI answers change from run to run: in research by SparkToro and Gumshoe, the same brand recommendation question asked of ChatGPT or Google’s AI in Search dozens of times returned the same list less than once in 100 runs. So ask each question several times and count how often you are named.

Block 2. Crawler access

1. robots.txt. Are OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot allowed? See which AI crawlers to allow.
2. CDN and hosting. Google reminds site owners that crawling must be allowed not only in robots.txt but also by any CDN or hosting infrastructure. Check bot protection settings, for example in Cloudflare.
3. Snippets. Do important pages carry nosnippet or a very small max-snippet? Google says a page must be eligible for a snippet to appear in AI Overviews.

Block 3. Indexing

1. Google. Are your main service pages indexed in Google Search Console?
2. Bing. Are they indexed in Bing Webmaster Tools? OpenAI says ChatGPT search uses third-party search providers, including Bing; Copilot also works through Bing.
3. Sitemap. Is sitemap.xml submitted to both and up to date?

Block 4. Company facts

1. Identical details. Do name, address, phone, opening hours and prices match on your site, Google profile, Bing Places, directories and social profiles?
2. Google Business Profile. Is it verified and complete? Google advises keeping Business Profile information up to date as part of its guidance for AI features.
3. Schema.org markup. Is there Organization or LocalBusiness markup, and does it match the visible text on the page, as Google requires? See schema markup for AI search.
4. About page. Is there one place on the site that clearly says who you are, since when, where you are and who is behind the business?

Block 5. Content and mentions

1. Direct answers. Are there pages that answer the questions from block 1 in their first lines?
2. Verifiable facts. Are prices, lead times and service areas given, with sources for figures? See how to optimize content for AI search.
3. Text, not images. Are prices, menus or terms hidden in images or scanned PDFs? Google asks for important content to be available as text.
4. Mentions on other sites. Are you listed in industry directories, local media and partner sites? Do you have recent reviews?

Block 6. Measurement

1. AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools. Microsoft says it shows how often your site was cited in Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations, plus a sample of the queries AI used to find your pages.
2. Analytics. Can you see visits from AI? ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its links. Google includes AI Overviews traffic in the overall “Web” traffic in Search Console without reporting it separately.

What to do with the results

Start with the points that block everything else: crawler access and indexing (blocks 2–3). Then align your facts (block 4), and only after that write new content and work on mentions. Repeat block 1 every month on the same question list to see what changed. The step-by-step plan is in how to get your business to show up in AI search.