AI search audit
Can an answer engine quote this page?
AEO and GEO are still SEO. Siteory checks whether the HTML contains a quotable answer, a visible organization, and access for the crawlers that do not run JavaScript.
What an AEO audit measures
Google’s published position is that optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience. Siteory follows that. The AI search pass does not invent a new ranking factor. It asks whether a model can see and lift a passage.
- Is the answer in the first HTML response, or only after a client render?
- Do headings look like questions a person would type?
- Is there a self-contained paragraph that can be quoted without the hero copy?
- Does the page name the organization?
- Do robots.txt rules hide the URL from common AI user agents?
- Did llms.txt appear in the crawl? Reported as an observation, not a score
Read AEO vs SEO for the research framing, and what llms.txt does if you are deciding whether to add the file.
Why this is a separate page from SEO
A page can pass a classic SEO checklist and still have nothing an answer engine can quote. The title is unique. The canonical is clean. The first 200 words are atmosphere. That page will not be cited.
The reverse is also true. A beautiful definition cannot help if robots.txt or a login wall hides the HTML. Run the SEO audit first when the site is new. Use this pass when the site already ranks and still never appears in AI Overviews or ChatGPT answers.
Where teams waste the sprint
The expensive AEO mistakes are a second URL “written for ChatGPT,” a FAQPage block added after May 2026, and an llms.txt file created only so a score turns green. None of those make a passage more citable. The cheap fix is the first paragraph on the pages that already attract links.
What Siteory will not claim
A green AEO report is not a promise that ChatGPT will name you tomorrow. Citation is downstream of ranking, brand mentions, and the query itself. The report stays inside what the crawl can prove.
It will not recommend FAQPage schema for a Google rich result. Those results were retired in May 2026. It will not tell you to rewrite the article “for Perplexity” on a second URL. It will tell you to put the answer in the first paragraph and keep the HTML server-rendered.
Pair this with the security audit if you are also shipping headers on the same release. One free scan is on pricing.