A free AI visibility audit checklist you can run this week

An AI visibility audit checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude and Gemini name or cite your brand for the questions buyers already ask. Run a fixed prompt panel, record who gets named, fix crawl and content gaps, then earn mentions on the third party pages those engines already trust. Google says there is no special AI markup required. Useful, crawlable pages still come first. ( Google Search Central )

Buyers now ask answer engines before they click ten blue links. If your brand never appears in those answers, your Google ranking alone will not save the deal.

This checklist is the audit I run before any GEO or AEO work. It is free to copy. You need a spreadsheet, a browser and about half a day for a focused niche.

A mention without a citation still helps. A citation without a clear brand name is weaker. Both beat silence.

List 40 to 80 questions a real buyer would type. Include country variants if you sell in more than one market.

Brand prompts measure reputation. Buyer prompts measure discovery. Start with discovery.

Keep the panel stable for 30 days so next month's run is comparable.

I use five surfaces when the topic is commercial:

Run them in the same week. Note the date. Engines change. Dated rows age honestly.

Paste the full shortlist into your sheet. Save a screenshot for disputed rows. Record:

Third party pages often carry more weight than your own site. That matches what many practitioners report when they study citations, and it matches the GEO research finding that content shape changes how often engines pick a source. ( Aggarwal et al., GEO paper on arXiv )

Before you rewrite copy, check the boring gates Google lists for AI features:

Google's AI features guidance is clear: there are no extra AI files or special schemas required beyond normal Search eligibility. ( AI features and your website )

If ChatGPT never cites you, but Google also cannot index the page, fix indexing before you talk about "GEO tactics".

Open your top service and guide pages. Ask:

Google's generative AI guide pushes non commodity content with a clear point of view, not recycled tip lists. ( AI optimization guide )

From your sheet, count which domains appear most often for your prompts. Typical winners:

Your outreach list is that domain set, not a random guest post blast.

Pick one canonical bio block and reuse it:

Then align site schema, LinkedIn, Crunchbase and directory profiles to the same facts. Conflicting bios make models guess.

If the panel shows you lose on "how to choose" queries, write that guide with a table and sources. If you lose on technical prompts, publish a small study with method and sample size. The GEO paper showed that some content revisions raised visibility in generative answers by large margins in their tests, with results varying by domain. Treat that as motivation to test, not as a guarantee for your niche. ( arXiv:2311.09735 )

Change only what you changed on purpose. Report:

Share of voice by prompt beats vanity screenshots.

Do not spam Reddit with "hire me" threads. Do not buy fake reviews. Do not publish a hundred near duplicate "best of" pages for every city. Google calls scaled, manipulative variants out in its AI optimization guidance. ( AI optimization guide )

Do not treat llms.txt as a ranking switch. Google says it does not require special AI files for AI Overviews or AI Mode. ( AI features docs )

Day 1: Build the prompt panel and competitor list. Day 2: Run ChatGPT and Perplexity. Day 3: Run Google AI surfaces, Claude and Gemini. Day 4: Crawl and content checks on your top 10 URLs. Day 5: Build the third party source map. Day 6: Fix the highest impact page and one entity profile. Day 7: Write the 30 day retest plan and owners.

If you want a worked example of how this audit feeds a full GEO programme, I keep a plain language GEO service outline on vickylalwani.net. Use the checklist above first. Bring your sheet to any consultant you hire so they work from evidence, not vibes.