GEO Audit

A GEO Audit (Generative Engine Optimization Audit) is a structured assessment of how well a website is positioned to perform in AI search — analogous to a traditional technical SEO audit, but with evaluation criteria specific to AI retrieval and citation systems. A comprehensive GEO audit covers both the technical foundations (crawlability, schema, llms.txt) and the content dimensions (entity coverage, direct answer formatting, topical authority) that determine AI search performance.

The technical component of a GEO audit examines: whether AI crawlers (PerplexityBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) are allowed in robots.txt, whether an llms.txt file exists and is properly formatted, whether the sitemap is current and comprehensive, whether key pages are served as crawlable HTML rather than JavaScript-rendered content, and whether structured data is implemented correctly on content types that benefit from it.

The content component examines: citation rate across a representative query set, topical authority depth and gap analysis, entity coverage on key topic pages, direct answer formatting on content types likely to be retrieved, content freshness and update frequency, and E-E-A-T signal strength including author credentials and citation sourcing. Each dimension is scored, and the output is a prioritized remediation roadmap.

GEO audits should be performed as an initial baseline before launching an AI SEO program, and then on a recurring 6-12 month cycle to measure progress and identify new opportunities. They are particularly valuable when AI search visibility has declined unexpectedly, when a new AI search platform has gained significant market share, or when a major content or technical change has been made to the site.

A B2B company commissions a GEO audit before launching a content campaign, discovers three technical blockers (AI crawler blocking, missing llms.txt, no schema on case study pages) and twelve content gaps — fixing the technical issues first, then addressing content gaps in order of citation opportunity size.