How do I check whether AI sees and cites my website?
A GEO audit checks three things in order. First, whether an AI crawler can reach the site and whether any content exists without JavaScript. Second, whether the page declares facts through structured data, authorship and dates. Third, whether the text is shaped for citation. Each step has its own method.
"Can ChatGPT see my website" is a question no single check answers. It is three separate questions checked in different ways — and until the first is answered, the other two mean nothing.
Step 1: can a bot reach you
Start with access, because everything else depends on it.
Open /robots.txt. Look for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot,
PerplexityBot, Google-Extended. If any carries Disallow: /, that route is
closed. What each of them actually does is
a topic of its own.
Look at the page without JavaScript. Browser menu → view page source
(Ctrl+U). If all you see is <div id="app"> and scripts with no text, several
models will find nothing on your page. This is the most common and most
expensive GEO fault.
Check indexing. Search Console → page indexing report. Google AI Overviews draws on the same index, so an unindexed page will never appear in it.
Step 2: does it understand you
A model chooses between pages where a fact has to be inferred and pages where it is declared. The latter win, because they need no interpretation.
The check is short:
Organization schema who you are, contacts, sameAs links
Article / Service what kind of page this is
a named author who stands behind the claims
a date on the page when this held true
Google's Rich Results Test shows whether the markup is valid. What it does not show is whether the schema matches what is visible on screen — that is checked by eye, and it is where mismatches usually turn up. The full list of what you actually need is under structured data.
Step 3: are you worth citing
A model does not read a document in order. It splits it into passages and picks the one that answers most precisely. So what gets judged is the paragraph, not the page.
Do headings actually divide the text. A block without them is one passage, and no precise answer can be taken from it.
Are the passages self-contained. A paragraph that only makes sense after two sections above it is unusable.
Is there anything to quote. A concrete number, a date or a link to a primary source is something that can be passed on without changing the meaning. An adjective is not.
What asking a model does and does not tell you
The natural instinct is to ask ChatGPT "what do you know about example.com". That is useful, but not in the way it appears.
Do not name your own domain. Given a URL, a model will often simply open it, and the answer says nothing about whether it would choose you.
Ask the way a customer would. "Who does technical SEO audits" or "what tool checks site speed". If you are not among the answers, that is your result.
Repeat several times in different words. The answer is generated per query and is not stable the way a ranking is. One attempt measures nothing.
What can be automated
The first two steps are mechanical — a machine does them faster and without gaps. The third requires judging text, so automation reports the shape but not the substance.
The GEO optimization check covers both mechanical steps and the structural part: crawler access, rendering, schema, authorship, passage length and heading structure. Whether your claim is interesting is for a person to decide.
Related articles
The same topic from another angle — each answers its own question:
How this feeds into the score is described under what we check.
Sources
What this text is based on — primary sources, not retellings:
Frequently asked
How often should a GEO audit be repeated?
After every significant site change, and roughly once a quarter. Crawler lists and model behaviour change faster than search algorithms do.
Is checking the home page enough?
No. The home page is usually the tidiest one, while the pages that matter for citation are the ones answering specific questions — services and articles.
What if a model describes me incorrectly?
Fix the source. A model usually repeats what is written on your own pages or in a directory — start by checking whether the fact is declared wrongly somewhere.
Does a GEO audit show how often I am mentioned?
Not directly, and no tool measures that precisely. What gets measured is what is measurable: access, declarations and the shape of the text.
Check yours
A free scan shows which of the things described here your site already does, and which it does not.