AI Search Visibility Audit

A technical eligibility checklist for Google, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity

By Asfand Yar Junejo · tap to start

The short answer

IN ONE PARAGRAPHAn AI search audit checks whether a site can be discovered, accessed, processed and considered by AI search. Test what you can verify directly, and keep it apart from what you only observe: impressions, citations and traffic.

Five stages of AI search visibility (1/2)

1. 1
   DiscoveryIs there a route to the URL? Internal links, sitemaps, Search Console.
2. 2
   AccessCan the intended crawler get the content? robots.txt, CDN, firewall, redirects.
3. 3
   EligibilityIndexed, snippet-eligible, and Google's AI inclusion setting switched on.

Five stages of AI search visibility (2/2)

1. 4
   Content interpretationIs the key text in the initial HTML, with consistent entities?
2. 5
   Observed visibilityImpressions, citations, mentions and referrals actually seen.

Search, training and user fetch are separate

• OpenAIOAI-SearchBot · GPTBot · ChatGPT-User
• AnthropicClaude-SearchBot · ClaudeBot · Claude-User

Blocking GPTBot does not block OAI-SearchBot. Record each choice as a policy decision.

Rate every finding by severity

• CriticalConfirmed exclusion from a platform you want to be on
• HighVerified access failure on important URLs
• ModerateConflicting signals, such as two canonicals
• LowA supporting improvement, no eligibility loss

Asfand's take

THE BOTTOM LINEEligibility can be measured. Citation selection cannot be guaranteed. Prove the first, then observe the second.

Want the full method?

The complete guide has every check, source and example behind this story.

Free AI search audit kit inside the guide.

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