Is Your Brand Invisible to AI? Take This 10-Point GEO Self-Audit

Before investing in any optimization strategy, you need to know where you stand today. This 10-point self-audit will help you identify the biggest gaps in your current AI visibility — and understand what a professional GEO audit can reveal that this self-assessment can't.

Work through each point honestly. Score yourself 0 (not done), 1 (partially done), or 2 (fully done). Then see the scoring guide at the end.

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Point 1: AI Crawler Access (0 or 2)

Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Are GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot listed with Allow: /?

Score 0: Any of these bots are blocked or your robots.txt doesn't explicitly allow them. You may be invisible to one or more major AI platforms.

Score 2: All three are explicitly allowed.

If you're on Cloudflare, also verify that Bot Fight Mode or AI bot blocking is not enabled at the CDN level.

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Point 2: llms.txt Presence (0 or 2)

Go to yourdomain.com/llms.txt. Does the file exist and contain a structured description of your company?

Score 0: File doesn't exist.

Score 2: File exists with accurate company description, key pages, and official profile links.

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Point 3: Organization Schema (0, 1, or 2)

Use Google's Rich Results Test or a schema validator to check whether your homepage has Organization Schema markup.

Score 0: No schema.

Score 1: Schema exists but is missing the sameAs property linking to your social/directory profiles.

Score 2: Schema exists and includes name, URL, logo, description, and multiple sameAs links.

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Point 4: FAQ Schema on Key Pages (0, 1, or 2)

Do your key content pages (especially blog posts and product pages) include FAQ sections with FAQ schema markup?

Score 0: No FAQ sections.

Score 1: FAQ sections exist but no schema markup.

Score 2: FAQ sections with validated FAQ schema markup.

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Point 5: Content Opening Quality (0, 1, or 2)

Open your three most important pages. Does the first paragraph answer the main question directly, with specific facts?

Score 0: Introductory preamble, no direct answer.

Score 1: Answer is present but buried.

Score 2: First sentence answers the main question directly, with a specific, citable fact or definition.

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Point 6: External Citation Footprint (0, 1, or 2)

Search your brand name on Google. Count the number of third-party, independent websites that mention your brand on the first page of results.

Score 0: Only your own website and social profiles appear.

Score 1: 1-3 independent mentions (reviews, directories, one or two articles).

Score 2: 5+ independent mentions from diverse, authoritative sources.

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Point 7: Reddit Presence (0, 1, or 2)

Search site:reddit.com "[your brand name]" in Google. Are there positive discussions about your brand in relevant subreddits?

Score 0: No Reddit mentions, or only negative ones.

Score 1: A few mentions, mostly neutral.

Score 2: Multiple positive, substantive discussions referencing your brand in relevant subreddits.

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Point 8: Content Freshness (0, 1, or 2)

When were your key pages last updated? And does your sitemap's lastmod tag reflect those actual update dates?

Score 0: Core pages haven't been updated in 12+ months, or lastmod is set to the sitemap generation date.

Score 1: Updated within the past year, but not regularly.

Score 2: Core pages updated within the past 3 to 6 months with accurate lastmod tags.

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Point 9: Manual AI Mention Test (0, 1, or 2)

Open ChatGPT and ask: "What's the best [your category] for [your target use case]?" and "What are your thoughts on [your brand]?"

Score 0: Not mentioned, or mentioned negatively.

Score 1: Mentioned once, neutrally, without specific positive attributes.

Score 2: Mentioned with positive framing and specific attributes accurately described.

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Point 10: Competitor Benchmarking (0, 1, or 2)

Ask ChatGPT the same queries you tested in Point 9, and note how your top two competitors are described by comparison.

Score 0: Competitors mentioned prominently, you are not.

Score 1: Both you and competitors mentioned but competitors more favorably.

Score 2: You are mentioned at least as favorably as your main competitors.

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Your Score

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Why This Self-Audit Is Just the Beginning

This checklist tells you the obvious signals. What it doesn't tell you: how exactly AI describes your brand in 100 different prompts, across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini simultaneously. It doesn't analyze the sentiment of your mentions at scale. It doesn't tell you which specific sources AI is drawing on when it talks about your brand. It doesn't benchmark you against your top competitors across every relevant query type.

Show Your Brand's GEO audit does all of this. We send 100 carefully designed prompts across multiple AI platforms. We scan your technical configuration completely — robots.txt, llms.txt, HTML structure, schema markup. We deliver a report organized by impact priority: what's working, what's broken, and what to fix first.

If this self-audit revealed even two or three gaps, a professional audit will reveal the full picture. And the full picture is what lets you invest your optimization effort where it actually matters.

Your brand deserves to be found — by humans, and by the AI systems that are increasingly recommending brands to them.