Free Resource
The AI-Search (GEO) Readiness Checklist
Thirty practical checks to get your business found, understood and quoted by AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. Work through it, tick what's done, fix what isn't.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is about being quotable by machines, not just ranked in a list. AI assistants read your site, decide whether your facts are clear and trustworthy, and then name a handful of businesses in their answer. This checklist covers the signals that decide whether you're one of them.
1. Machine-readable facts
Can an AI extract your key facts without guessing?
- Business name, location and services are stated in plain text on the page — not only inside an image or logo.AI reads text, not pixels. Anything trapped in an image is invisible to it.
- Prices or price ranges are written out where you're willing to share them."From £X" beats "contact for pricing" when an engine is comparing options.
- Opening hours and service area are on the page as text.Answer engines lean on concrete, checkable facts.
- Organization schema (JSON-LD) is present and valid with name, URL, logo, contact and sameAs links.Structured data removes ambiguity about who you are.
- Key pages use the right schema type — Service, FAQPage, Article, Product as appropriate.It tells the engine what kind of content it's reading.
2. Entity clarity
Does the web agree on who you are?
- Your name, address and phone (NAP) are identical everywhere — site, Google Business Profile, directories, socials.Conflicting details make an engine unsure which "you" to trust.
- A Google Business Profile exists and is verified.A primary entity source engines cross-reference.
- You're listed in 3–5 reputable directories for your sector and region.Corroboration from independent sources builds entity confidence.
- An About page names the real people behind the business with genuine expertise.Experience and authorship are core trust signals.
- sameAs links connect your profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, GitHub) in your schema.It stitches your identity together across the web.
3. Content that answers
Is your content shaped the way an AI wants to quote it?
- Each key page answers one clear question in the first paragraph, then expands.Answer-first content is easier to lift into a response.
- You have FAQ sections with real questions customers actually ask.Q&A pairs map directly to how people prompt assistants.
- Comparisons are laid out as tables ("X vs Y"), not buried in prose.Tables are highly extractable and often quoted verbatim.
- Definitions are explicit ("X is …") for the terms in your niche.Engines reuse clean definitions when explaining a topic.
- Statistics cite a named, linked source.Sourced facts get trusted and repeated; unsourced ones get ignored.
- Content reads as genuinely useful, not keyword-stuffed.Thin, spun content is a demotion risk with both Google and AI systems.
4. Technical crawlability
Can AI crawlers actually reach and read your pages?
- AI crawlers aren't blocked in robots.txt or at the CDN/firewall (e.g. GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended).If they can't fetch the page, none of the above matters.
- Core content is in the HTML, not rendered only by JavaScript after load.Some crawlers don't execute JS; server-rendered text is safest.
- Every important page is in your XML sitemap and returns a clean 200.Discoverability starts with a correct sitemap.
- Canonical tags are correct and you don't have duplicate versions competing.Ambiguity splits and weakens your signals.
- The site is fast and mobile-friendly.Performance is a baseline quality signal.
- HTTPS is enforced with a single canonical domain (www vs non-www resolved).One clean address, no redirect chaos.
5. Authority & proof
Why should an engine trust you over a competitor?
- You have genuine reviews on Google and relevant platforms.Third-party sentiment is a strong, hard-to-fake signal.
- Real case studies or testimonials are published — with real names and numbers.Demonstrated results beat claims every time.
- Other reputable sites link to or mention you.Independent citations lift both SEO and AI trust.
- You're mentioned in content the engines already read (industry roundups, directories, press).Being in the training/citation set makes you nameable.
- Author expertise is shown (bio, credentials, hands-on work) on your key content.E-E-A-T: experience and expertise underpin trust.
How to use your score: anything unticked is a concrete task, not a vague worry. Start with Section 4 (if crawlers are blocked, fix that first), then 1 and 2 (make your facts clear and consistent), then 3 and 5 (content and proof — the slower, compounding work).
Questions about GEO
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?
GEO is the practice of making your business visible to AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity — so when someone asks a question your business could answer, you're one of the names they mention. It's about being quotable by machines, not just ranked in a list of links.
How is GEO different from SEO?
Traditional SEO aims to rank your page in a list of blue links. GEO aims to get your business named inside a single AI-generated answer. They share fundamentals — clean structure, schema, useful content — but GEO leans harder on machine-readable facts, clear entities and answer-first writing.
Which AI engines should I care about?
For most UK small businesses: ChatGPT (by far the largest), Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Bing Copilot. You don't optimise for each one separately — you make your facts clear and consistent, which helps across all of them at once.
How long does GEO take to work?
Usually weeks to months, not days. Fixing crawlability and schema can help quickly; building the entity clarity and third-party citations that earn trust takes longer. The effect compounds over time.
Do I need to let AI crawlers onto my site?
Yes, if you want to appear in AI answers. If crawlers like GPTBot or Google-Extended are blocked in robots.txt or at your firewall, the engines can't read your content — and nothing else on this checklist will matter.
Want us to run this for you?
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