AI Search Audit: See How AI Platforms Understand, Cite and Describe Your Brand.
AI Search Audit: See How AI Platforms Understand, Cite and Describe Your Brand.
AI Search Audit: See How AI Platforms Understand, Cite and Describe Your Brand.
Before you even think about optimising for AI search, you need to know where you actually stand. Not where you think you stand.
Find out where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews mention your brand, where they cite your competitors instead, and what to fix first.
An AI search audit is not a score from a free tool. It is a human-led strategic report built around the signals AI systems actually use when deciding which brands to surface, cite and recommend.
You receive: AI visibility testing across major platforms, a technical readiness review, brand entity analysis, competitor benchmarking, and a prioritised roadmap with specific actions tied to specific findings.
Before you even think about optimising for AI search, you need to know where you actually stand.
Not where you think you stand. Not what your analytics dashboard says. What ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are actually doing with your brand when no one from your team is in the room.
That's exactly what a decipher. AI Search Audit tells you.
Covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
Includes 5 to 7 direct competitor comparisons
Leaves you with a prioritised implementation roadmap you can act on immediately
Covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
Includes 5 to 7 direct competitor comparisons
Leaves you with a prioritised implementation roadmap you can act on immediately
Example Insight from a Client's Audit
A B2B consulting brand came to us with a new site they developed, separate from the corporate site. At a first glance, it appeared in certain key category queries but at a closer look, the sources that were used for the answers actually came from the corporate site.
The issue: LLMs didn't separate the two entities, but rather saw them as one.
The audit is not a checklist. It is a diagnosis. Every finding is tied to a specific signal, a specific platform, and a specific fix.
Why your brand might be invisible in AI search right now
If you're a brand that posts fresh content regularly but still don't appear in AI searches, it's not that you're writing about the wrong things (which you still might but an audit shows you that). You most likely have a clarity problem.
AI systems use multiple signals when choosing which sources to surface, including relevance, clarity, technical accessibility, authority and third-party corroboration. They increasingly respond to conversational intent and tend to favour sources that make relevant, well-supported answers easier to retrieve and cite.
A brand that publishes often but sends ambiguous signals will be ignored. A less prolific brand that signals clarity will win the citation every time.
The most common reasons brands get overlooked:
AI crawlers are blocked. Your robots.txt file may be preventing GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot from accessing your content entirely. This is more common than most brands realise.
Schema markup is incomplete. Having schema is not enough. Attribute-poor schema (missing author credentials, unclear entity relationships) signals lower confidence than no schema at all.
Content is not extractable. AI engines read raw HTML. If your key claims are buried inside JavaScript-rendered components, they may never be seen by the model.
Brand signals are inconsistent. Different descriptions on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase and press coverage confuse the entity graph AI systems use to build a picture of who you are.
No third-party corroboration. AI systems treat external citations as trust signals. If credible sources are not referencing your brand, you remain unverified in the eyes of the model.
Content answers the wrong questions. Most brand content is written to rank for keywords. AI systems are answering conversational queries. The format mismatch means your content gets skipped.
This is the zero-click era, where users act on the first AI-generated recommendation without visiting multiple sources. If you are not in that answer, you do not exist at the moment of decision.
The audit tells you exactly which of these issues are affecting your brand, and in what order they are worth fixing. For a broader understanding of how this differs from traditional search, our guide to AI search optimisation vs SEO covers the full picture.
If you're a brand that posts fresh content regularly but still don't appear in AI searches, it's not that you're writing about the wrong things (which you still might but an audit shows you that). You most likely have a clarity problem.
AI systems use multiple signals when choosing which sources to surface, including relevance, clarity, technical accessibility, authority and third-party corroboration. They increasingly respond to conversational intent and tend to favour sources that make relevant, well-supported answers easier to retrieve and cite.
A brand that publishes often but sends ambiguous signals will be ignored. A less prolific brand that signals clarity will win the citation every time.
The most common reasons brands get overlooked:
AI crawlers are blocked. Your robots.txt file may be preventing GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot from accessing your content entirely. This is more common than most brands realise.
Schema markup is incomplete. Having schema is not enough. Attribute-poor schema (missing author credentials, unclear entity relationships) signals lower confidence than no schema at all.
Content is not extractable. AI engines read raw HTML. If your key claims are buried inside JavaScript-rendered components, they may never be seen by the model.
Brand signals are inconsistent. Different descriptions on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase and press coverage confuse the entity graph AI systems use to build a picture of who you are.
No third-party corroboration. AI systems treat external citations as trust signals. If credible sources are not referencing your brand, you remain unverified in the eyes of the model.
Content answers the wrong questions. Most brand content is written to rank for keywords. AI systems are answering conversational queries. The format mismatch means your content gets skipped.
This is the zero-click era, where users act on the first AI-generated recommendation without visiting multiple sources. If you are not in that answer, you do not exist at the moment of decision.
The audit tells you exactly which of these issues are affecting your brand, and in what order they are worth fixing. For a broader understanding of how this differs from traditional search, our guide to AI search optimisation vs SEO covers the full picture.
What is an AI search audit?
What is an AI search audit?
An AI search audit (also called a GEO audit or AI SEO audit) is a structured assessment of how AI-powered platforms currently perceive, interpret and cite your brand.
It answers a different set of questions than a traditional SEO audit. Classic SEO asks: can Google find and rank this page? An AI search audit asks something harder: does AI understand what this brand stands for, trust it enough to cite it, and represent it accurately when someone asks a relevant question?
Those are not the same question. For most brands, the answers are not the same either.
How an AI search audit differs from an SEO audit
An AI search audit (also called a GEO audit or AI SEO audit) is a structured assessment of how AI-powered platforms currently perceive, interpret and cite your brand.
It answers a different set of questions than a traditional SEO audit. Classic SEO asks: can Google find and rank this page? An AI search audit asks something harder: does AI understand what this brand stands for, trust it enough to cite it, and represent it accurately when someone asks a relevant question?
Those are not the same question. For most brands, the answers are not the same either.
How an AI search audit differs from an SEO audit
You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible inside AI-generated answers. According to research published on Search Engine Land, brands with strong traditional SEO performance are frequently overlooked by generative AI systems because their content is optimised for crawlers, not for comprehension.
That gap is exactly what this audit is designed to close.
What AI systems actually evaluate
When ChatGPT or Perplexity decides which brand to mention in a response, it is evaluating a combination of signals:
Entity clarity: Does your brand have a consistent, well-structured identity across the web?
Citation-worthiness: Is your content specific, authoritative and easy to extract a clear answer from?
Technical accessibility: Can AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) actually access your content?
Third-party authority: Are credible external sources referencing and corroborating your brand?
Accuracy and consistency: Is the information about you coherent across your site, directories and media coverage?
An AI search audit examines all five layers. Most brands have meaningful gaps in at least three.
You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible inside AI-generated answers. According to research published on Search Engine Land, brands with strong traditional SEO performance are frequently overlooked by generative AI systems because their content is optimised for crawlers, not for comprehension.
That gap is exactly what this audit is designed to close.
What AI systems actually evaluate
When ChatGPT or Perplexity decides which brand to mention in a response, it is evaluating a combination of signals:
Entity clarity: Does your brand have a consistent, well-structured identity across the web?
Citation-worthiness: Is your content specific, authoritative and easy to extract a clear answer from?
Technical accessibility: Can AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) actually access your content?
Third-party authority: Are credible external sources referencing and corroborating your brand?
Accuracy and consistency: Is the information about you coherent across your site, directories and media coverage?
An AI search audit examines all five layers. Most brands have meaningful gaps in at least three.
You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible inside AI-generated answers. According to research published on Search Engine Land, brands with strong traditional SEO performance are frequently overlooked by generative AI systems because their content is optimised for crawlers, not for comprehension.
That gap is exactly what this audit is designed to close.
What AI systems actually evaluate
When ChatGPT or Perplexity decides which brand to mention in a response, it is evaluating a combination of signals:
Entity clarity: Does your brand have a consistent, well-structured identity across the web?
Citation-worthiness: Is your content specific, authoritative and easy to extract a clear answer from?
Technical accessibility: Can AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) actually access your content?
Third-party authority: Are credible external sources referencing and corroborating your brand?
Accuracy and consistency: Is the information about you coherent across your site, directories and media coverage?
An AI search audit examines all five layers. Most brands have meaningful gaps in at least three.
What the decipher. AI search audit covers.
The audit is a 30 to 60 slide strategic report: a human-led diagnostic built around the specific signals AI systems use to decide which brands get cited. Here is what is inside.
1. AI Citation Visibility Baseline
We run structured prompt testing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews using branded, category, comparison and buying-intent queries relevant to your business. We document:
Where your brand appears (and where it does not)
How accurately AI systems describe you
The sentiment tone of any mentions
Which competitors are being cited instead of you, and why
This gives you a real baseline. Not a guess. Actual evidence of how AI sees your brand today.
2. Technical AI Readiness Assessment
We audit the technical foundations that determine whether AI crawlers can access, parse and trust your content:
Robots.txt configuration for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Bing's AI crawler
Schema markup quality: not just presence, but attribute completeness and entity relationships
JavaScript rendering issues that hide content from AI crawlers reading raw HTML
Sitemap health and internal linking structure
Core technical SEO signals that feed into AI trust models
3. Brand Entity & Signal Consistency Audit
AI systems build a profile of your brand from dozens of sources. If those sources contradict each other, the model loses confidence. We check:
Consistency of your brand description, founding story and positioning across your site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Google Business Profile and key directories
Author and expert entity signals (E-E-A-T indicators that AI systems use to assess credibility)
Third-party citation landscape: who is referencing you, and whether those sources carry authority weight
4. Content Citation-Worthiness Review
We evaluate a selection of your key pages against the criteria AI systems use when deciding what to quote or reference:
Answer-format readiness (direct, extractable responses to real queries)
Conversational query alignment (how your content maps to the prompts people actually use in AI tools)
Topical authority signals and content gap analysis
Brand voice clarity (distinct brands get cited more; bland ones don't)
5. Competitor Signal Positioning
You don't exist in a vacuum. We analyse five to seven direct competitors to map where citation share is currently being won and lost. This includes which signals your competitors have that you don't, and which gaps are realistically winnable in the near term.
6. Prioritised Recommendations
The final section of the report is a ranked action plan. Not a list of 40 things to fix. A prioritised roadmap that separates:
Quick wins: fixes that remove blockers fast
Medium-term moves: content and authority work that compounds over 60 to 90 days
Strategic plays: longer-horizon positioning decisions that build durable citation advantage
Every recommendation is tied to a specific finding.
The audit is a 30 to 60 slide strategic report: a human-led diagnostic built around the specific signals AI systems use to decide which brands get cited. Here is what is inside.
1. AI Citation Visibility Baseline
We run structured prompt testing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews using branded, category, comparison and buying-intent queries relevant to your business. We document:
Where your brand appears (and where it does not)
How accurately AI systems describe you
The sentiment tone of any mentions
Which competitors are being cited instead of you, and why
This gives you a real baseline. Not a guess. Actual evidence of how AI sees your brand today.
2. Technical AI Readiness Assessment
We audit the technical foundations that determine whether AI crawlers can access, parse and trust your content:
Robots.txt configuration for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Bing's AI crawler
Schema markup quality: not just presence, but attribute completeness and entity relationships
JavaScript rendering issues that hide content from AI crawlers reading raw HTML
Sitemap health and internal linking structure
Core technical SEO signals that feed into AI trust models
3. Brand Entity & Signal Consistency Audit
AI systems build a profile of your brand from dozens of sources. If those sources contradict each other, the model loses confidence. We check:
Consistency of your brand description, founding story and positioning across your site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Google Business Profile and key directories
Author and expert entity signals (E-E-A-T indicators that AI systems use to assess credibility)
Third-party citation landscape: who is referencing you, and whether those sources carry authority weight
4. Content Citation-Worthiness Review
We evaluate a selection of your key pages against the criteria AI systems use when deciding what to quote or reference:
Answer-format readiness (direct, extractable responses to real queries)
Conversational query alignment (how your content maps to the prompts people actually use in AI tools)
Topical authority signals and content gap analysis
Brand voice clarity (distinct brands get cited more; bland ones do not)
5. Competitor Signal Positioning
You do not exist in a vacuum. We analyse five to seven direct competitors to map where citation share is currently being won and lost. This includes which signals your competitors have that you do not, and which gaps are realistically winnable in the near term.
6. Prioritised Recommendations
The final section of the report is a ranked action plan. Not a list of 40 things to fix. A prioritised roadmap that separates:
Quick wins: fixes that remove blockers fast
Medium-term moves: content and authority work that compounds over 60 to 90 days
Strategic plays: longer-horizon positioning decisions that build durable citation advantage
Every recommendation is tied to a specific finding. Nothing is generic.
The audit is a standalone deliverable. You will walk away with a full picture of your AI search visibility, a ranked list of what to fix, and enough context to act on it, whether that is with decipher. or with your own team.
That said, most brands that commission an audit choose to continue into implementation. The natural next step is GEO and technical foundations work: fixing the technical blockers, strengthening entity signals and building the content architecture that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you.
The audit feeds directly into that work. The findings become the brief. Nothing gets repeated or re-researched.
If you want to understand what generative engine optimisation actually involves before going further, that guide covers the full picture.
Who this audit is for.
The decipher. AI search audit is built for brands where discoverability directly affects revenue. It tends to be the right fit when one of these situations applies.
You are already investing in SEO and content, but you are not showing up in AI answers. Your Google rankings look reasonable, but when you search for your category in ChatGPT or Perplexity, your competitors get named and you do not. The audit tells you why.
You are entering a new market or repositioning. If AI systems have already formed an impression of your brand (or worse, no impression at all), you need to know what you are working with before you invest in new content.
You want to understand your baseline before committing to an ongoing programme. The audit is the right starting point. You cannot build a strategy on assumptions.
You are a marketing leader who needs to explain this to a board or leadership team. The report gives you a concrete picture of where your brand stands, what competitors are doing differently, and what the commercial case for acting looks like. The data is specific to your brand and your competitors. It tends to land differently in a boardroom than a generic slide about the rise of AI search.
The audit is not for brands that want a quick fix, a free tool score, or a list of generic recommendations. It is for brands that take their visibility seriously and want to understand the problem before they start solving it.
If that sounds like you, let's talk. The discovery call is free, and it is where we figure out whether the audit makes sense for your situation.
What happens after the audit.
Who this audit is for.
The decipher. AI search audit is built for brands where discoverability directly affects revenue. It tends to be the right fit when one of these situations applies.
You are already investing in SEO and content, but you are not showing up in AI answers. Your Google rankings look reasonable, but when you search for your category in ChatGPT or Perplexity, your competitors get named and you do not. The audit tells you why.
You are entering a new market or repositioning. If AI systems have already formed an impression of your brand (or worse, no impression at all), you need to know what you are working with before you invest in new content.
You want to understand your baseline before committing to an ongoing programme. The audit is the right starting point. You cannot build a strategy on assumptions.
You are a marketing leader who needs to explain this to a board or leadership team. The report gives you a concrete picture of where your brand stands, what competitors are doing differently, and what the commercial case for acting looks like. The data is specific to your brand and your competitors. It tends to land differently in a boardroom than a generic slide about the rise of AI search.
The audit is not for brands that want a quick fix, a free tool score, or a list of generic recommendations. It is for brands that take their visibility seriously and want to understand the problem before they start solving it.
If that sounds like you, let's talk. The discovery call is free, and it is where we figure out whether the audit makes sense for your situation.
What happens after the audit.
The audit is a standalone deliverable. You will walk away with a full picture of your AI search visibility, a ranked list of what to fix, and enough context to act on it, whether that is with decipher. or with your own team.
That said, most brands that commission an audit choose to continue into implementation. The natural next step is GEO and technical foundations work: fixing the technical blockers, strengthening entity signals and building the content architecture that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you.
The audit feeds directly into that work. The findings become the brief. Nothing gets repeated or re-researched.
If you want to understand what generative engine optimisation actually involves before going further, that guide covers the full picture.
AI Search Audit FAQ
What is an AI search audit?
How is an AI search audit different from an SEO audit?
What AI platforms does the audit cover?
What do I get at the end?
What do I get at the end?
How long does the audit take?
Do I need to already be doing SEO for the audit to be useful?
Can I use the audit to justify AI search investment internally?
What happens after the audit?
You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible inside AI-generated answers. According to research published on Search Engine Land, brands with strong traditional SEO performance are frequently overlooked by generative AI systems because their content is optimised for crawlers, not for comprehension.
That gap is exactly what this audit is designed to close.
What AI systems actually evaluate
When ChatGPT or Perplexity decides which brand to mention in a response, it is evaluating a combination of signals:
Entity clarity: Does your brand have a consistent, well-structured identity across the web?
Citation-worthiness: Is your content specific, authoritative and easy to extract a clear answer from?
Technical accessibility: Can AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) actually access your content?
Third-party authority: Are credible external sources referencing and corroborating your brand?
Accuracy and consistency: Is the information about you coherent across your site, directories and media coverage?
An AI search audit examines all five layers. Most brands have meaningful gaps in at least three.
Who this audit is for.
What happens after the audit.
The decipher. AI search audit is built for brands where discoverability directly affects revenue. It tends to be the right fit when one of these situations applies.
You are already investing in SEO and content, but you are not showing up in AI answers. Your Google rankings look reasonable, but when you search for your category in ChatGPT or Perplexity, your competitors get named and you do not. The audit tells you why.
You are entering a new market or repositioning. If AI systems have already formed an impression of your brand (or worse, no impression at all), you need to know what you are working with before you invest in new content.
You want to understand your baseline before committing to an ongoing programme. The audit is the right starting point. You cannot build a strategy on assumptions.
You are a marketing leader who needs to explain this to a board or leadership team. The report gives you a concrete picture of where your brand stands, what competitors are doing differently, and what the commercial case for acting looks like. The data is specific to your brand and your competitors. It tends to land differently in a boardroom than a generic slide about the rise of AI search.
The audit is not for brands that want a quick fix, a free tool score, or a list of generic recommendations. It is for brands that take their visibility seriously and want to understand the problem before they start solving it.
If that sounds like you, let's talk. The discovery call is free, and it is where we figure out whether the audit makes sense for your situation.
The audit is a standalone deliverable. You will walk away with a full picture of your AI search visibility, a ranked list of what to fix, and enough context to act on it, whether that is with decipher. or with your own team.
That said, most brands that commission an audit choose to continue into implementation. The natural next step is GEO and technical foundations work: fixing the technical blockers, strengthening entity signals and building the content architecture that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you.
The audit feeds directly into that work. The findings become the brief. Nothing gets repeated or re-researched.
If you want to understand what generative engine optimisation actually involves before going further, that guide covers the full picture.
AI Search Audit FAQ
What is an AI search audit?
How is an AI search audit different from an SEO audit?
What AI platforms does the audit cover?
What do I get at the end?
What do I get at the end?
How long does the audit take?
Do I need to already be doing SEO for the audit to be useful?
Can I use the audit to justify AI search investment internally?
What happens after the audit?
What the decipher. AI search audit covers.
The audit is a 30 to 60 slide strategic report: a human-led diagnostic built around the specific signals AI systems use to decide which brands get cited. Here is what is inside.
1. AI Citation Visibility Baseline
We run structured prompt testing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews using branded, category, comparison and buying-intent queries relevant to your business. We document:
Where your brand appears (and where it does not)
How accurately AI systems describe you
The sentiment tone of any mentions
Which competitors are being cited instead of you, and why
This gives you a real baseline. Not a guess. Actual evidence of how AI sees your brand today.
2. Technical AI Readiness Assessment
We audit the technical foundations that determine whether AI crawlers can access, parse and trust your content:
Robots.txt configuration for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Bing's AI crawler
Schema markup quality: not just presence, but attribute completeness and entity relationships
JavaScript rendering issues that hide content from AI crawlers reading raw HTML
Sitemap health and internal linking structure
Core technical SEO signals that feed into AI trust models
3. Brand Entity & Signal Consistency Audit
AI systems build a profile of your brand from dozens of sources. If those sources contradict each other, the model loses confidence. We check:
Consistency of your brand description, founding story and positioning across your site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Google Business Profile and key directories
Author and expert entity signals (E-E-A-T indicators that AI systems use to assess credibility)
Third-party citation landscape: who is referencing you, and whether those sources carry authority weight
4. Content Citation-Worthiness Review
We evaluate a selection of your key pages against the criteria AI systems use when deciding what to quote or reference:
Answer-format readiness (direct, extractable responses to real queries)
Conversational query alignment (how your content maps to the prompts people actually use in AI tools)
Topical authority signals and content gap analysis
Brand voice clarity (distinct brands get cited more; bland ones don't)
5. Competitor Signal Positioning
You don't exist in a vacuum. We analyse five to seven direct competitors to map where citation share is currently being won and lost. This includes the signals your competitors have that you don't, and the gaps that are realistically winnable in the near term.
6. Prioritised Recommendations
The final section of the report is a ranked action plan. Not a list of 40 things to fix. A prioritised roadmap that separates:
Quick wins: fixes that remove blockers fast
Medium-term moves: content and authority work that compounds over 60 to 90 days
Strategic plays: longer-horizon positioning decisions that build durable citation advantage
Every recommendation is tied to a specific finding.
Find out where your brand stands in AI Search
Most brands are making AI search decisions based on assumptions. The audit replaces those assumptions with evidence.
You'll know exactly where you appear, where you don't, why your competitors are getting cited instead of you, and what to do about it. In a format you can act on, share internally, and build a strategy from.
The discovery call is free. It's a short conversation to understand your brand, your competitive landscape, and what the audit would cover. No commitment required.
Book your free discovery call
Find out where your brand stands in AI Search
Most brands are making AI search decisions based on assumptions. The audit replaces those assumptions with evidence.
You'll know exactly where you appear, where you don't, why your competitors are getting cited instead of you, and what to do about it. In a format you can act on, share internally, and build a strategy from.
The discovery call is free. It's a short conversation to understand your brand, your competitive landscape, and what the audit would cover. No commitment required.
Book your free discovery call
Find out where your brand stands in AI Search
Most brands are making AI search decisions based on assumptions. The audit replaces those assumptions with evidence.
You'll know exactly where you appear, where you don't, why your competitors are getting cited instead of you, and what to do about it. In a format you can act on, share internally, and build a strategy from.
The discovery call is free. It's a short conversation to understand your brand, your competitive landscape, and what the audit would cover. No commitment required.
Book your free discovery call