How to Run a GEO Audit: Step-by-Step

A GEO audit is a structured review of your website's AI search visibility signals - covering technical access, structured data, content quality, brand authority and platform performance. Here is how to run one properly.

Before you start: define your scope

Decide which URLs you are auditing. For most websites, start with:

• Homepage
• Your 5 to 10 highest-traffic pages
• Your core product or service pages
• Your most important content or blog posts
• Your about and team pages

Step 1: AI Visibility audit

What to check:

• Visit yoursite.com/robots.txt - verify GPTBot, PerplexityBot and ClaudeBot are not blocked
• Visit yoursite.com/llms.txt - verify file exists and is complete
• Check each key page returns a 200 status code
• Verify core content loads in HTML source (not only via JavaScript)

Tools: Browser (view-source), Google Search Console Robots.txt Tester, Screaming Frog

Step 2: Brand Authority audit

What to check:

• Does Organisation schema exist on the homepage with sameAs links?
• Are all sameAs links accurate and live?
• Search your brand name in ChatGPT and Perplexity - how is it described?
• Check for Wikipedia or Wikidata entries
• Check NAP consistency across 5 to 10 key directory listings

Step 3: On-Page Structure audit

What to check:

• Run each key page through Google Rich Results Test
• Verify Organisation, Article, FAQPage and Person schema are present where relevant
• Check for schema validation errors
• Confirm Article schema includes author, datePublished and dateModified

Tools: Google Rich Results Test, Schema.org Validator

Step 4: Content Quality audit

What to check:

• Is every article attributed to a named author?
• Does each author have a bio page with credentials?
• Does the first paragraph of each key page state the answer directly?
• Are H2/H3 headings formatted as questions where relevant?
• Is content dated and regularly reviewed?

Step 5: Technical Platform audit

What to check:

• HTTPS active across entire site
• Canonical tags present and correct on all pages
• H1 on every page, logical heading hierarchy
• Image alt text populated
• Core Web Vitals passing (check PageSpeed Insights)
• XML sitemap submitted to Search Console

Scoring your audit

For each category, score your website against the checklist items and calculate a percentage. A weighted score combining all five areas gives you your overall GEO health score. Track this quarterly to measure improvement.

Alternatively, run a SearchScore automated audit which scores all 130+ signals across eight categories in under 60 seconds and gives you a prioritised fix list.