Quick answer: A GEO audit scores how easy it is for AI engines to find, understand, trust, and quote a page. Use this 10-point checklist — covering crawl access, answer-first structure, schema, specificity, authority, and freshness. Score each item 0–1; 8+ means your page is well positioned to be cited, below 6 means there’s clear, fixable upside.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. This 10-point GEO audit turns “is my page AI-citable?” into a concrete score you can act on in an afternoon.
The 10-point GEO audit checklist
- Crawl access: AI crawlers (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) are allowed in robots.txt.
- Indexed: the page is indexed by Google and Bing and appears in a site: search.
- Answer-first: each section opens with a direct, self-contained answer.
- Question-shaped headings: H2s match how people actually ask.
- Quick Answer summary: a concise TL;DR sits near the top.
- Schema: valid Article, FAQ, and Organization structured data is present.
- Specificity: concrete numbers, dates, and named entities back up claims.
- Authority & E-E-A-T: clear author, first-hand experience, and credible references.
- Freshness: a visible “last updated” date within the last 90 days.
- Internal links: the page links to its pillar and related cluster articles.
How to score it
| Score | What it means | Next move |
|---|---|---|
| 8–10 | Strongly citable | Maintain freshness, build authority |
| 6–7 | Decent, with gaps | Fix the 2–4 missing items |
| 0–5 | Hard for AI to cite | Restructure: access, answer-first, schema first |
The highest-impact fixes first
If you’re short on time, fix these three in order: (1) unblock AI crawlers, (2) rewrite sections answer-first, (3) add Article and FAQ schema. Together they remove the biggest barriers between your page and a citation.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I run a GEO audit?
Audit cornerstone pages quarterly, and any time you publish or significantly update important content.
Can I automate this?
Parts of it — crawl access, indexing, and schema can be checked with tools. Answer-first structure and authority still need a human eye for now.
What’s the single most overlooked item?
Crawl access. Many sites unknowingly block AI crawlers and wonder why they’re never cited.
The bottom line
A GEO audit converts a vague worry into a clear to-do list. Score your page across these ten items, fix the gaps in priority order, and watch your AI-citability climb.
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