AI search audit checklist: 20 checks for your website

AI tools recommend businesses they can read, understand and trust. This checklist covers each of those in order. Work from the top: a problem early in the list can make everything below it irrelevant.

Can AI tools reach your site?

1. robots.txt allows the AI search crawlers. OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot. See which AI crawlers to allow.
2. Your server answers them with the real page. Not a 403, not a challenge page. Firewalls and bot protection are the usual cause.
3. robots.txt exists and answers quickly. A missing file is fine; one that times out or errors can make crawlers treat the whole site as off limits.
4. No noai or nosnippet on pages you want quoted. These tell AI and search features not to use or quote the page.
5. Important pages aren’t noindex. Especially the homepage.

Can they read what’s there?

6. Your main content is in the HTML. Most AI crawlers don’t run JavaScript. See JavaScript and AI crawlers.
7. Navigation links are real links. If your menu only works with JavaScript, crawlers can’t find your other pages.
8. A sitemap lists your pages, with no redirects, errors or blocked pages in it.
9. Each page has one clear canonical address.
10. Pages load fast on phones. Slow pages get crawled less.

Can they tell who you are?

11. Your homepage says what you do, for whom, and where, in one plain sentence.
12. Organization or LocalBusiness markup names your business, with your logo and links to your official profiles.
13. Local businesses include address, hours and location in that markup.
14. Your name, address and phone match on every page.
15. Your pages have markup that fits them: Product, Service, Article or FAQ, matching what the page shows.

Can they quote you?

16. Key pages answer questions directly, under headings that ask them.
17. Pricing is on the site. “How much does it cost” is one of the most common questions people ask AI.
18. Content shows when it was updated.
19. Articles name their author.
20. About, contact and policy pages exist. They are small, cheap trust signals.

Run all of it at once

The free scan runs 157 checks, including every one above, on up to 50 pages in about 30 seconds, and ranks what it finds by what matters most. Each problem comes with the fix for your platform.