SEO + AI Search Checkup
by Wunderfauks · free SEO & AI search checker

GEO checklist: 21 steps to help AI search cite your site

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Short answer: to be cited in AI answers, a page has to be reachable by AI crawlers, easy to quote and worth trusting. Your business also has to be talked about elsewhere. Most of the work is good SEO. The steps below say which of our free checks tests each one, and say so plainly when no tool can.

1. Make sure AI can reach your pages

  1. Let AI crawlers in. If robots.txt blocks OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, those assistants cannot fetch your pages to answer from them. Block the training crawlers if you like, but do it on purpose.
    How to check: website check, AI Crawler Access; website check, Robots.txt.
  2. Put your words in the page itself, not only in JavaScript. A December 2024 study by Vercel and MERJ found that none of the major AI crawlers it measured ran JavaScript. Text that appears only after scripts run may never be seen.
    How to check: website check, Server-Rendered Content.
  3. Do not hide your text by accident. The nosnippet and max-snippet:0 settings stop Google showing a page's text. Google says a page must be allowed a snippet to appear as a link in its AI Overviews and AI Mode. These settings are sometimes left on from a template.
    How to check: website check, AI/Search Snippet Controls.
  4. Let search engines index the pages that matter. Google says a page must be indexed to appear as a link in its AI Overviews and AI Mode. A page marked noindex is not. Other AI search tools also work from web indexes.
    How to check: website check, Indexability.
  5. Keep a sitemap, and fix broken links. Crawlers find pages through links and sitemaps. A page nobody links to is a page that is rarely fetched.
    How to check: website check, XML Sitemap; the full-site crawl in the website check lists broken links.

2. Make your pages easy to quote

  1. Answer the question in the first paragraph. An assistant looking for an answer takes the clearest statement it can find. Put it first, then explain.
    How to check: article checker, Answer in the first paragraph.
  2. Use real headings, and phrase some as questions. Headings tell a machine where each answer starts. A heading that matches the question people ask is the easiest one to match.
    How to check: website check, Heading Structure (H1-H6); website check, Answer-Ready Content; article checker, Headings written as questions.
  3. Use lists, steps and tables. Steps and comparisons are easier to lift cleanly from a list or a table than from a long paragraph.
    How to check: website check, Citation-Worthy Structure; article checker, Lists or steps; article checker, A table for comparisons.
  4. Define your key terms in one sentence. A clear “X is Y” sentence gives an assistant a ready-made answer when someone asks what something is.
    How to check: article checker, A one-sentence definition.
  5. Keep sentences and paragraphs short. A short paragraph can be quoted whole. A long one has to be cut, and may be skipped.
    How to check: article checker, Sentence length; article checker, Paragraphs short enough to quote.
  6. Add structured data that matches the page. It states facts outright: what the page is, who wrote it, when. Google says no special structured data is needed for its AI features, so treat it as help, not a key. And FAQ markup no longer earns anything visible: Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026.
    How to check: website check, Structured Data; article checker, Article label for Google.

3. Give AI a reason to trust you

  1. Use numbers and facts, not adjectives. “From S$80, within 48 hours, across Singapore” can be repeated. “Affordable, fast, trusted” cannot.
    How to check: article checker, Numbers and facts; article checker, Facts instead of buzzwords.
  2. Link to your sources. A claim with a source is one a reader, or an assistant, can check.
    How to check: article checker, Links to your sources.
  3. Name the author, and say why they know. Google's guidance asks whether it is obvious who wrote a page, and says trust matters most.
    How to check: website check, E-E-A-T Signals; article checker, Author named; article checker, Why the author is qualified.
  4. Show your own experience. What you have done yourself is the one thing nobody else can write. Experience is the first E in E-E-A-T.
    How to check: article checker, Your own experience.
  5. Date your pages, and keep them current. A visible “last updated” date tells readers and machines whether the facts still hold.
    How to check: website check, Content Freshness Signals; article checker, Published or updated date.
  6. Use HTTPS, and keep the site fast. Both are basic signs of a site that is looked after, and both are part of a good experience in Google Search.
    How to check: website check, HTTPS / SSL; Core Web Vitals and the Speed checks in the website check.

4. Be known beyond your own site

  1. Use one name, address and description everywhere. Matching details on your site, your social profiles and directories help search engines and AI models connect every mention to the same business.
    How to check: website check, Social Profile Links; we check that your site links to your profiles, not what the profiles say.
  2. Earn mentions on other sites. Assistants write answers from many sources. What other people say about you carries weight your own pages cannot.
    How to check: no tool can do this for you; it comes from reviews, press, partners and directories.

5. Measure it

  1. Ask the AI assistants. There is no rank to track. The test is whether assistants name you when someone asks about your field without naming you.
    How to check: the AI visibility test in the website check.
  2. Watch Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Both are free. They show which searches you appear for, and any pages they could not crawl or index.
    How to check: these are Google's and Microsoft's own tools; we do not connect to them.

What you can skip

  • Special “AI” files or markup. Google says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special structured data to appear in its AI features. Google's guidance.
  • llms.txt, unless it is quick for you. No major AI company has said it reads the file. It costs little and does no harm. See what llms.txt is.
  • FAQ markup for the sake of Google. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026. Keep real questions and answers on the page, because people and AI answers use them. The markup alone earns nothing visible.
  • Rules about what each AI “prefers”. OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Perplexity do not publish ranking rules for their answers. Treat any list of what ChatGPT or Perplexity “likes” as a guess.

Words you are not sure of?

Every term on this page is explained in our SEO, AEO and GEO glossary.

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