An AEO audit assesses whether AI platforms — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot — can find, understand, and cite your content. It differs from a traditional SEO audit because SEO optimises for ranking while AEO optimises for citation. Roughly 60–70% overlaps with standard SEO checks, but 30–40% is genuinely new: AI crawler access, content extractability for answer engines, platform-specific readiness across five AI search backends, off-site citation signals, and AI-specific measurement infrastructure. With fewer than 5% of sites even configuring robots.txt for AI crawlers and fewer than 4% implementing entity-graph schema, the first-mover advantage for UK B2B brands that audit their AEO readiness is substantial.
If you have already read our guides to ChatGPT optimisation, Google AI Overviews, and measuring AI search visibility, the next step is an audit — a structured assessment of where you stand today and what to fix first. This guide gives you the framework. It covers six audit areas, each with specific checks you can run this week.
This guide is part of Whitehat's Answer Engine Optimisation learning path.
What Does an AEO Audit Cover That an SEO Audit Doesn't?
An AEO audit builds on your existing SEO foundations but adds six areas that traditional audits miss entirely. The overlap is real — 76% of Google AI Overview citations come from pages already in the top 10 — but only 12% of ChatGPT citations come from top-ranking pages. For everything outside Google's own AI features, you need a different lens.
Keyword rankings & positions
Googlebot crawlability
Backlink profile & domain authority
On-page keyword optimisation
Core Web Vitals & page speed
Technical health (canonicals, sitemaps, HTTPS)
AI crawler access (30+ bots)
Content extractability for AI citation
Brand mentions & off-site citation signals
Platform-specific readiness (5 backends)
Schema for AI entity recognition
AI visibility measurement infrastructure
Several major audit frameworks now exist — SE Ranking's 129,000-domain study, Otterly.AI's 25+ factor GEO Audit, Semrush's AI Search Health Score, Ahrefs' 82-point checklist, and Kevin Indig's three-stage Retrieval → Citation → Trust model. What follows is a practical synthesis of the best elements from each, adapted for UK B2B marketing leads.
Audit Area 1: Can AI Crawlers Access Your Content?
Your first check is the simplest and most impactful. Visit your site's robots.txt file and look for AI bot directives. The critical distinction: AI companies now operate separate crawlers for training (scraping data to improve models) and search (building indexes for real-time citation). You want to allow the search crawlers while optionally blocking training crawlers.
OAI-SearchBot — ChatGPT Search
ChatGPT-User — User browsing
PerplexityBot — Perplexity index
Claude-SearchBot — Claude search
Amazonbot — Alexa/AI apps
GPTBot — OpenAI training
ClaudeBot — Anthropic training
Google-Extended — Gemini training
Meta-ExternalAgent — Meta AI
Bytespider — ByteDance
AI bots = 4.2% of HTML requests
GPTBot: 569M requests/month
ClaudeBot: 370M requests/month
Training = 80% of AI crawling
Only 4.5% of sites configure AI bots
Use the Merkle robots.txt tester (technicalseo.com) or Screaming Frog to simulate AI crawler interpretation. Semrush's Site Audit now includes an AI Search Health Score with a "Blocked from AI Search" widget that checks eight major crawlers. One nuance: blocking crawlers does not guarantee exclusion — the BBC tops Perplexity citations despite blocking PerplexityBot, and the New York Times received 240,600 ChatGPT visits in January 2025 despite blocking its crawlers. But allowing search crawlers is still the best practice for maximising citation opportunities.
A note on LLMs.txt: this proposed markdown file at your site root has 10% adoption but zero major LLM providers officially support it. SE Ranking's analysis found no correlation with AI citations. Implement it if you like — it is low-cost, low-risk — but do not expect measurable impact.
Audit Area 2: Is Your Content Structured for AI Extraction?
Content extractability is the single most actionable area of an AEO audit. Kevin Indig's analysis of 1.2 million ChatGPT search results (February 2026) identified the specific characteristics that distinguish cited content from non-cited content. Here are the benchmarks to audit against:
The practical audit: open your top 10 pages by traffic and check each one against these benchmarks. Does the page lead with a direct answer in the first 40–60 words below each H2? Is the key insight in the first third of the page? Does the content use definitive language ("is defined as," "refers to") rather than hedging ("might be," "could be")? Does it name specific brands, tools, and people rather than using generic descriptions?
Two additional checks are critical. First, JavaScript rendering: 69% of AI crawlers cannot execute JavaScript (searchVIU). GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot do not render JS — only Googlebot does. Run curl -s https://yoursite.com | less to see what AI crawlers actually receive. If your content loads via React, Angular, or Vue client-side rendering, it is invisible to most AI engines.
Second, content structure: pages with original data tables earn 4.1× more AI citations (Princeton GEO research), pages with 19+ statistical data points average 5.4 citations versus 2.8 without (SE Ranking), and pages with expert quotes average 4.1 versus 2.4 (SE Ranking). Audit each page for the presence of tables, statistics, and expert attribution.
Audit Area 3: Are You Visible on Each AI Platform?
Each AI platform draws from a different search backend. Optimising for Google alone — even for Google AI Overviews — leaves your brand invisible to ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. The platform fragmentation is extreme: only 13.7% of citations overlap between Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and just 20% between Claude and ChatGPT.
The audit methodology: design 20 prompts that your ideal customers would ask AI about your category. Run each prompt across at least ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI. SparkToro's research shows single-query testing is statistically meaningless — you need 60–100 runs per prompt for valid visibility data. For a manual audit, run each prompt five times across three platforms (75 queries) and record whether your brand is mentioned, cited, or absent.
For automated tracking, Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance dashboard (launched February 2026) is free and shows citations, grounding queries, and cited pages for Copilot. For paid tools, our AI visibility measurement guide compares Semrush (from £159/month), Peec AI (from £75/month), and Ahrefs Brand Radar (from £159/month per index).
Audit Area 4: Do You Have Off-Site Citation Signals?
This is the paradigm shift in AEO: brand mentions now outweigh backlinks for AI citation. Ahrefs analysed 75,000 brand mentions and found mentions have a 0.664 correlation with AI Overview visibility — three times stronger than backlinks at 0.218. Brands in the top 25% for web mentions earn over 10× more AI Overview citations than the next quartile. Yet 26% of brands have zero mentions in AI Overviews.
For UK B2B brands, the off-site audit checklist is: Google Business Profile and Bing Places (Foursquare powers 60–70% of ChatGPT's local results), Wikipedia page quality, Reddit and industry forum presence, review platform profiles (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot), Companies House listing accuracy, YouTube channel with how-to content, and press coverage indexed by AI platforms. Government sources are 11.75× more likely to be cited in AI Overviews — if your brand appears on gov.uk or industry regulatory sites, protect those mentions.
Audit Area 5: Is Your Schema and Technical Setup AI-Ready?
Schema markup matters more for AEO than many practitioners realise. AccuraCast tested 2,000+ prompts and found 81% of web pages receiving AI citations included schema markup. Pages with comprehensive schema are 3× more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews (BrightEdge). But not all schema types contribute equally — and generic schema produces no statistically significant effect (Growth Marshal). The opportunity lies in attribute-rich, entity-graph schema, where fewer than 4% of pages compete.
| Schema Type | Citation Impact | Current Adoption | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| FAQPage | 41% citation rate vs 15% without (2.7×) | Only 10.5% of cited pages | High |
| Product (with attributes) | 54.2% vs 31.8% for generic (1.7×) | Low for attribute-rich | High |
| Organization (with sameAs) | Enables AI entity recognition | <4% use entity-graph schema | High |
| Article / BlogPosting | E-E-A-T authorship signals | Common but often incomplete | Medium |
| BreadcrumbList | Site structure signal (supportive) | Widely adopted | Low |
Beyond schema, audit your topic clustering: brands with 15–40 interconnected pages on a topic receive 5–7× more AI citations than standalone articles (upGrowth). AI gauges depth of coverage across a topic, not just single-page relevance. Check content freshness — content updated within three months averages 6 citations versus 3.6 for older pages (SE Ranking) — and ensure XML sitemaps have accurate lastmod dates so AI crawlers discover your most important pages first.
How to Score Your Audit and Prioritise Fixes
Score your overall AEO readiness using a traffic-light system: Red (critical gaps, 0–30%), Amber (partially optimised, 31–65%), Green (strong AEO readiness, 66–100%). Then prioritise fixes by effort versus impact. Quick wins are visible in 4–8 weeks; strategic investments compound over 6–12 months.
Unblock AI search crawlers in robots.txt
Implement FAQPage and Organization schema (2.7× citation lift)
Fix JavaScript rendering issues (SSR)
Add 40–60 word direct answers under H2 headings
Front-load key insights in first 30% of content
Update Google Business Profile and Bing Places
Original research and proprietary data (up to 40% visibility boost)
Digital PR for brand mentions (0.664 citation correlation)
Reddit community engagement (4× citation chance)
Topic cluster architecture (15–40 pages = 5–7× citations)
Review platform optimisation (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot)
YouTube content strategy (39.2% of AIO social citations)
Re-audit quarterly at minimum. AI models update frequently — Ahrefs found citations change 46% of the time for the same query. The competitive window is wide open today but will narrow as adoption grows. Ramp went from 3.2% to 22.2% AI visibility in one month using a structured audit-and-fix approach; Future Processing achieved 12.5% AI search coverage, outranking Deloitte in LLM citations. The brands that audit first, fix fastest.
UK Regulatory Context for AEO Audits
The CMA designated Google as having Strategic Market Status under the DMCCA in October 2025 — AI Overviews are explicitly in scope. February 2026 conduct requirement consultations include a Publisher CR giving publishers more control over AI content use and a Fair Ranking CR requiring notice of algorithm changes. When using AI visibility tools, ensure GDPR Article 25 compliance for data processing, particularly for US-based tools (Profound, Semrush) — verify adequate cross-border data transfer mechanisms. The DMCCA's fake reviews ban (April 2025) means all review-based citation strategies must use authentic reviews only.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an AEO audit?
An AEO audit assesses whether AI-powered answer engines — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot — can find, understand, and cite your content. It covers AI crawler access, content extractability, platform-specific readiness, off-site citation signals, schema markup, and measurement infrastructure. Roughly 60–70% overlaps with a traditional SEO audit, but 30–40% is genuinely new territory specific to AI search visibility.
How much does a professional AEO audit cost in the UK?
UK AEO audit pricing ranges from £400–£3,000 per month at entry level to £6,000+ per month for comprehensive multi-platform strategies. One-time audits typically cost £2,500–£5,000. Enterprise agencies charge £5,000–£25,000+ per month. AEO is usually positioned as a 20–30% incremental uplift on existing SEO retainers. Many agencies, including Whitehat, offer AEO audits as part of broader website audit packages starting from £2,500.
Can I run an AEO audit myself?
You can run a meaningful DIY audit using this guide. Check robots.txt for AI crawler access, audit your top pages against the extractability benchmarks (front-loading, entity density, definitive language), test your brand visibility manually across three AI platforms, and review your off-site presence on YouTube, Reddit, Wikipedia, and B2B review sites. Where DIY falls short: statistically valid visibility testing (requires 60–100 runs per prompt), automated cross-platform monitoring, and competitive gap analysis at scale.
How often should an AEO audit be repeated?
Run a comprehensive AEO audit quarterly, with monthly citation monitoring and content refreshes between audits. AI models update frequently — Ahrefs found AI citations change 46% of the time for the same query, and content changes 70% of the time. The minimum recommended AEO programme is three months (audit, implementation, expansion). After the initial audit, quarterly reviews assess whether optimisations are translating into measurable visibility improvements.
What tools do I need for an AEO audit?
Free tools: Google Search Console (AI Mode filter), Bing Webmaster Tools (AI Performance dashboard), GA4 (custom AI channel group), Merkle robots.txt tester, HubSpot AEO Grader. Paid audit-specific tools: Otterly.AI GEO Audit (from $29/month, 25+ factors), Semrush AI Search Health Score ($99/month add-on), Ahrefs Brand Radar ($199–$699/month). For enterprise: Profound ($399+/month, G2 Winter 2026 AEO Leader) offers GA4 attribution integration and competitive gap analysis.
What ROI can I expect from fixing AEO audit findings?
AI search visitors convert 4.4× better than traditional organic visitors (Semrush) and show 27% lower bounce rates (Position Digital). Ramp went from 3.2% to 22.2% AI visibility in one month after a structured audit. Quick wins like unblocking AI crawlers and adding FAQPage schema can show initial citation signals in 2–4 weeks. A B2B tech company achieved $45,360/month pipeline value by month three, representing a 642% 90-day ROI (Discovered Labs). Results compound — most teams see measurable Share of Voice gains within 4–6 weeks.
Want a Professional AEO Audit?
Whitehat's AEO audit covers all five areas in this guide — AI crawler access, content extractability, platform-specific visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot, off-site citation signals, and schema readiness. You get a scored report with prioritised recommendations and a 90-day action plan.
Book Your AEO AuditPackages from £2,500. Includes cross-platform visibility baseline.
This article was researched and written by Whitehat SEO's content team using data from SE Ranking (November 2025, 129,000 domains), Kevin Indig/Growth Memo (February 2026, 1.2M ChatGPT results), Ahrefs (75,000 brand mentions, 2025–2026), Semrush (2025–2026), SparkToro/Gumshoe.ai (January 2026, 2,961 prompts), Otterly.AI (February 2026), BrightEdge (2025), AccuraCast (2,000+ prompts), Princeton GEO research, Growth Marshal (n=1,006 pages), searchVIU, Conductor (2026, 13,770 domains/3.3B sessions), Cloudflare/Vercel server data, Web Almanac 2025, CMA/DMCCA documentation, and additional sources cited throughout. All statistics verified against primary sources at time of publication. Last updated: February 2026.