How to run a 30-minute AI searchability audit of your own website

Most AI visibility problems are not mysterious. In the audits we run there are seven places a site can fail, and a business owner can check all seven in half an hour with free tools. This is that checklist, in the order we run it. Score each check pass, partial or fail, then fix the fails first; they are usually the cheapest.

Set a timer. Have your homepage, About page, main service or product page, pricing page and contact page open in tabs.

Step 1: Run the free audit (5 minutes)

Enter your domain in the AI Search & SEO Audit on this site. It checks crawlability, sitemap, structured data, on-page basics and how clearly an assistant can describe your business, and gives you a score and a prioritised list. Save the report; it is your baseline and it will tell you where to look hardest in the checks below.

Step 2: Access check (4 minutes)

Open /robots.txt. Look for OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, GPTBot and any User-agent: * block with Disallow: /. Then open your CDN or security plugin settings and look for "block AI bots" or bot-fight toggles. Pass: search and retrieval crawlers are allowed in both places. Fail: any of them blocked, or you cannot tell what the CDN is doing (find out this week).

Step 3: Rendering check (5 minutes)

On the pricing page and the main service page: right-click, View Page Source, and search for a price, a service name and your phone number. Pass: all present in the source. Fail: any missing, which means it is loaded by JavaScript and most AI crawlers cannot see it. If you have a terminal, curl -s https://yourdomain.com/pricing | grep -c "£" does the same job.

Step 4: Entity check (4 minutes)

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini: "What is [company name] and what does it do, and where is it based?" Pass: all three describe you accurately and consistently. Partial: broadly right but vague or missing location or founders. Fail: wrong, confused with another business, or "I could not find information". Then check your About page states legal name, founders, founding year, address and a one-paragraph description near the top.

Step 5: Answer check (5 minutes)

Write down three questions a customer would ask before buying from you, including your town or sector: "how much does X cost in Y", "best X in Y", "who does X for Z businesses". Ask each in ChatGPT (search on), Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Record whether you are named, whether your page is cited, and which page is cited instead. Pass: named in most, your page cited. Partial: named but a directory is cited. Fail: absent.

Step 6: Structured data check (3 minutes)

Paste your homepage and one service page into validator.schema.org. Pass: an Organization or LocalBusiness block with your correct name, address, phone and sameAs links, plus a relevant page type, no errors. Partial: present but incomplete or with plugin placeholders. Fail: none, or conflicting blocks with different company names.

Step 7: Freshness check (2 minutes)

On the five open pages, find the visible updated date (or check the page source for dateModified). Pass: money pages updated within the last three months and dates shown. Fail: no dates, or dates over a year old on pricing or services.

Step 8: Footprint check (2 minutes)

Search your company name on LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube and Google (excluding your own site with -site:yourdomain.com). Pass: a complete LinkedIn page with recent posts, reviews on at least two platforms, and a handful of independent mentions (press, directories, trade bodies). Fail: little or nothing beyond your own site and one directory.

Scoring and what to do next

Fix in this order: access and rendering (a week, mostly technical), entity and structured data (a week of consistency work), then answers and service pages (ongoing), then footprint (months). Re-run the free audit and this checklist in three months and compare.

Common mistakes

• Running the checks while logged in to Google or ChatGPT, where personalisation skews results.
• Checking the homepage only. Pricing and service pages are where the failures live.
• Fixing content before fixing access. Nothing you write matters if the crawler gets a 403.
• Doing it once. Two of the seven checks break silently when someone updates a plugin.