GEO Checklist: Generative Engine Optimization Audit (2026)

A GEO audit checks whether AI answer engines can reach, understand and trust your site. Run it in eight areas: crawl access, answer-first structure, entity consistency, structured data, third-party corroboration, reviews, freshness and measurement. Start with crawl access, because nothing else matters if a crawler is blocked. No one can guarantee that an engine will cite you.

GEO stands for generative engine optimization, the work of making your brand findable and accurately described in AI-written answers. Everything below can be run by one person on one site in an afternoon. Each row says what to check, why it matters and how to verify it on your own pages. If you would rather have an analyst do the first pass, we offer a free AI visibility audit that covers the same ground and ends with a written list of what to fix first. Where a row comes from an engine's own documentation we say so, and where it is our editorial judgment we label it.

To use it, copy the tables into a spreadsheet, check each row against the pages that matter most (your home page, your top service page, your About page), and mark every row pass, fail or not applicable. The same list works whether you call the discipline GEO, AEO, LLMO or AI SEO. For how those labels differ, see AEO vs GEO vs SEO. If you want definitions first, read what GEO is and what AEO is.

What is documented and what is judgment

Two engine documents ground this list. Google's page on AI features in Search says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet to be a supporting link in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that there are no additional technical requirements. It says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup, and that no special schema.org structured data is required. It also says meeting the requirements does not guarantee that Google will crawl, index or serve a page. OpenAI's crawler documentation describes three separate user agents: OAI-SearchBot for search, GPTBot for content that may be used to train its models, and ChatGPT-User for certain user-initiated actions.

Neither document says anything about reviews, third-party mentions or how often to refresh a page. Those rows are editorial judgment, labeled as such. Treat them as hypotheses to test on your own panel, not as published ranking factors.

Part 1: Crawl access and eligibility

This is the gate. If a crawler cannot fetch a page, or the page is not allowed to show a snippet, the rest of the list cannot help it.

• Robots.txt allows Googlebot, and no CDN or host rule blocks it

  Why it matters

  Google says to allow crawling in robots.txt and in any CDN or hosting infrastructure (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Open yoursite.com/robots.txt, then run your key pages through the URL Inspection tool in Search Console and confirm a live fetch works

• Key pages are indexed and snippet-eligible

  Why it matters

  Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet to be a supporting link (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Check each page's indexing status in Search Console and search the source and response headers for noindex, nosnippet and max-snippet

• OAI-SearchBot is allowed

  Why it matters

  OpenAI says OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT's search features, and an opted-out site will not appear in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Read robots.txt for any rule that names OAI-SearchBot or blocks all bots, and ask your host whether a firewall filters it

• OpenAI's published IP ranges are not blocked

  Why it matters

  OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt and allowing requests from its published IP ranges (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Check your firewall or bot-protection settings against the ranges OpenAI lists on its bots documentation page

• GPTBot is a deliberate decision

  Why it matters

  OpenAI says disallowing GPTBot signals that your content should not be used for training, and that each setting is independent, so you can allow OAI-SearchBot and disallow GPTBot (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Write down your training decision and confirm robots.txt matches it; whether to allow training is a business choice, not a visibility requirement (editorial judgment)

• A robots.txt change has had time to take effect

  Why it matters

  OpenAI says its search systems can take about 24 hours to adjust after an update (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Note the date of each change and wait before testing again

One caution: OpenAI says ChatGPT-User handles actions a person starts inside ChatGPT, so robots.txt rules may not apply to it, and it is not used to determine search eligibility. Use OAI-SearchBot for search opt-outs.

Part 2: Answer-first structure

• The page opens with a direct answer to its main question

  Why it matters

  A short, complete opening is easy to extract and credit (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Cover everything below the first paragraph; does the opening still answer the headline?

• Headings state the question or topic

  Why it matters

  Each section becomes a clearly labeled passage (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Read only the headings; does the outline tell the story?

• Important content is in text

  Why it matters

  Google says to make sure important content is available in text form (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  View the page with images and scripts off; is the answer still there?

• Key pages are easy to reach through internal links

  Why it matters

  Google says to make content easy to find through links on your site (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Search your site for the page's URL; does at least one relevant page link to it?

A note on files. Google says you do not need AI text files for its AI features. If you are weighing an llms.txt file for other reasons, our guide to llms.txt covers what it is and what to expect from it. Do not let it displace the rows above.

Part 3: Entity consistency and structured data

An entity is the thing a page is about, such as your company or a person. Every place that describes it should say the same true things.

• Name, description, location and key facts match across your site and profiles

  Why it matters

  Conflicting facts make a clean, accurate answer harder to give (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Put your home page, About page, Google Business Profile and main directory listings side by side and note every mismatch

• Business Profile and Merchant Center details are current

  Why it matters

  Google lists keeping this information current among its practices (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Sign in to each account and compare hours, services and links with your site

• About and author pages name real people and credentials

  Why it matters

  Clear authorship helps a reader or a system judge who is speaking (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Check that each key article has a named author with a page that states real experience

• Structured data describes what the page shows

  Why it matters

  Google says structured data should be consistent with the visible page text (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Compare every markup field with the words on the page and remove anything that is not shown

If facts have drifted across many properties, our entity SEO services page explains how we clean that up.

Part 4: Third-party corroboration and reviews

Engines that search the web at answer time may draw on pages you do not own. Google says its AI features can run several related searches across subtopics and data sources to find a wider set of supporting links. Whether a given engine leans on independent sources for your category is something to test, not assume.

• Independent sources describe you the way you describe yourself

  Why it matters

  Agreement between your site and outside sources is a plausible trust signal (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Ask three engines about your brand and category, list every source they cite, and compare their facts with yours

• You appear in the places your category is researched

  Why it matters

  If engines cite directories, trade publications or industry lists, absence there is a gap (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  In your panel results, note which third-party domains recur and check whether you are listed on them

• Reviews are recent and on the platforms your buyers use

  Why it matters

  Review sites are public pages that engines and people can read (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Count reviews and note the newest date on each platform that matters in your category

• Inaccurate claims about you are logged

  Why it matters

  An error repeated in several sources tends to resurface (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Keep a log of each wrong statement, the engine, the date and the source it came from

• No fake or incentivized reviews are in play

  Why it matters

  Fake reviews are a legal and platform-policy risk, and the cost can outweigh any gain (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Review your own request process and confirm every review comes from a real customer

The work here is earning and correcting real mentions, not manufacturing them. Our guide to improving brand visibility in AI search covers the sequence, and our LLM seeding page explains how we approach third-party presence.

Part 5: Freshness

No engine publishes a freshness rule, so these rows are about avoiding stale or conflicting facts.

• Key pages show a visible updated date

  Why it matters

  Readers and reviewers can judge how current an answer is (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Look for a dated update line on your top pages and compare it with the last real edit

• Old pages with conflicting facts are removed or redirected

  Why it matters

  Two pages that disagree make a clean answer harder (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Search your site for old service names, addresses and staff and fix or redirect what you find

• A recrawl has been given time

  Why it matters

  Google's page says to allow time for recrawling and points to the URL Inspection tool for checking (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  After a major edit, inspect the URL in Search Console and note when it was last crawled

Part 6: Measurement and the monthly prompt panel

You cannot manage what you do not measure, and AI answers vary between runs. The fix is a fixed list of prompts asked on a schedule. This is our recommended method, not an engine requirement.

Build the panel once. Write 10 to 20 prompts in the words customers use: your brand name, your category, comparisons with competitors, and the problems you solve. Keep the wording identical every month so changes reflect the answers, not the questions.

Run it the same way each month. Pick a fixed day, ask each prompt in each engine you care about, and record the date, engine, exact prompt, whether you were mentioned, whether you were cited, whether the facts were right, which sources were cited and which competitors appeared. Save a screenshot of each answer.

Read the pattern, not the run. An answer can change between two asks on the same day, so look for movement across months and for sources that recur.

• A fixed prompt panel exists and is versioned

  Why it matters

  Without a constant list, month-to-month changes cannot be compared (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Open your panel document; is every prompt written out word for word?

• Factual accuracy is scored

  Why it matters

  A mention that gets your facts wrong is a problem, not a win (editorial judgment)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Add an accurate, partly accurate or wrong column and note the correct fact

• Search Console is checked for AI-feature traffic

  Why it matters

  Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the Web search type in the Performance report, not shown separately (documented)

  How to verify it on your own site

  Open the Performance report, filter to the Web search type and watch clicks and impressions for the pages on your panel

For a fuller treatment of KPIs, see our guide to AI search visibility metrics, and for the monitoring method, our guide to monitoring your brand in AI search.

What to fix first

This order is our editorial judgment. Fix crawl access and snippet eligibility first, because they are binary. Then rewrite the openings of your five most important pages to answer first, and reconcile your entity facts. Then work on corroboration and reviews, which take longest. Start the prompt panel in month one for a baseline, and re-run the whole list quarterly.

When to get help

Do it yourself when the site is small and one person controls the pages. Bring in help when many teams own the facts, when the site is large, or when you want the panel run and reported without owning it. Whoever you hire should say in writing what they will do, how they will measure it and what they cannot promise. Our guide on how to choose an AI SEO agency lists the questions to ask, and our AI search optimization page explains how we scope the work. Reputation Resolutions has worked on online reputation since 2013, is A+ BBB accredited, is a Google Partner and has clients in 40+ countries.