Is Your Website AI-Ready? A Plain English Checklist

You do not need to be technical to assess whether your website is ready for AI search. This plain English checklist walks you through the key questions - and tells you what to ask your developer if something needs fixing.

How to use this checklist

Work through each section. You will be able to check some items yourself. For the technical ones, the "what to ask your developer" guidance gives you the exact question to ask - even if you do not understand the technical detail behind it.

Section 1: Can AI visitors get in?

• ☐ Check yourself: Go to yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. Does the page load and show text? (Good.) Does it say Disallow: /? (Possible problem.)
• ☐ Ask your developer: "Can you check our robots.txt to make sure ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude's bots are allowed to visit our site?"
• ☐ Check yourself: Go to yourwebsite.com/llms.txt. Does a page load with information about your business? If not, ask: "Can you create an llms.txt file for our website explaining what we do?"

Section 2: Does your website explain itself clearly?

• ☐ Check yourself: Read your homepage first paragraph aloud. Does it clearly state what your business does and who it helps - in one or two sentences? If not, it needs rewriting.
• ☐ Check yourself: Search for your business name on Google. Is the information accurate and up to date?
• ☐ Ask your developer: "Can you add schema markup to our homepage so AI tools have clear, structured information about our business?"

Section 3: Does your business appear credible online?

• ☐ Check yourself: Search for your business name on ChatGPT and Perplexity. Is the information accurate?
• ☐ Check yourself: Do you have an active, complete Google Business Profile?
• ☐ Check yourself: Are you listed in the main directories for your industry?
• ☐ Check yourself: Do you have reviews on at least one trusted platform (Google, Trustpilot, etc.)?

Section 4: Is your content helpful to AI?

• ☐ Check yourself: Does your homepage answer "what do you do?" in the first sentence?
• ☐ Check yourself: Do your key pages include FAQs or Q&A sections?
• ☐ Ask your developer: "Can you add FAQ schema markup to our key pages so AI tools can read our frequently asked questions directly?"

What your score means

• 12 or more checked: Good baseline - a few targeted improvements can get you to AI-ready
• 8 to 11 checked: Average - there are gaps to address, start with Section 1
• Under 8 checked: Below average - prioritise Section 1 fixes immediately