GEO audit
How do you run a GEO audit? A step-by-step checklist
Last reviewed: · By Kraffic.ai
Short answer
A GEO audit checks what AI assistants say about your brand and why. Confirm your business facts, list your competitors, collect the prompts buyers ask, run them on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and record who is named. Then review the websites cited, the accuracy and tone of what is said, and your site's readability for machines, and turn the gaps into a plan.
Key takeaways
- A GEO audit starts with your confirmed facts and approved competitors, because every later measure depends on them.
- The core of the audit is running real buyer prompts on each assistant and saving the answers.
- Citations show which websites shape the answers, which tells you where to work.
- Checking accuracy and tone is part of the audit, not an extra.
- An audit is finished only when its findings are turned into a dated plan and a re-scan is scheduled.
Prompts this guide answers
- “GEO audit checklist”
- “AI visibility audit”
- “how to audit my website for AI search”
- “generative engine optimization audit steps”
- “I want to check how my brand shows up in ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini before hiring anyone. What steps should I follow?”
- “What should be included in an AI search visibility audit for a US ecommerce or SaaS company?”
- “check if AI can read my website”
What is a GEO audit?
A GEO audit is a structured review of how AI assistants describe and recommend your brand, and of the factors you can influence. It produces a baseline you can measure against later.
It differs from an SEO audit in its main evidence. An SEO audit examines your site and your search rankings; a GEO audit examines the actual answers given by assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini.
What do you need before you start?
You need three things: a list of facts about your business that you know are correct, a list of real competitors, and access to the assistants you want to check.
- Confirmed facts: what you sell, who it is for, locations served, key product or service details.
- Competitors: the companies buyers actually compare you with.
- Assistants: ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini at minimum, plus any other your buyers use.
- A place to save answers with the prompt, assistant and date.
What are the steps of a GEO audit?
Follow the steps in order. Each one produces something the next step uses.
1. Confirm your business facts
Write down the facts an assistant should get right. These become the standard you check AI statements against.
2. Approve your competitor list
Name the competitors that count. Leave out companies that share a keyword but not your buyers.
3. Build the prompt set
Collect the questions buyers ask: short search-style prompts and longer conversational ones, mostly without your brand name.
4. Run the prompts on each assistant
Run every prompt on ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini and save the full answers. Repeat important prompts, since answers vary.
5. Record mentions and rank
For each answer, note whether your brand and each competitor are named, and calculate visibility score and share of voice.
6. Review citations
List the websites named in the answers. Note which ones mention competitors and not you.
7. Check accuracy and tone
Compare what the assistants state about you with your confirmed facts, and note recurring positive or negative themes with the exact quotes.
8. Check your site for machine readability
Review robots.txt, whether main content is in the HTML, structured data, and whether key pages answer buyer questions directly.
9. Prioritize and plan
Turn the gaps into tasks, order them by likely impact and effort, and assign them to weeks.
10. Schedule the re-scan
Run the same prompts again after the work is done and compare with the baseline.
What should you check on your own website?
Check whether a machine can reach your pages and understand them without guessing. Most problems fall into access, clarity or structure.
| Area | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Access | robots.txt and bot-protection rules for AI crawlers | A blocked crawler cannot retrieve your pages |
| Rendering | Main text present in the HTML, not only after scripts run | Some crawlers do not run scripts |
| Core facts | A plain statement of what you do, for whom and where | Gives assistants a clear description to repeat |
| Question coverage | Pages or sections that answer buyer prompts directly | Direct answers are easier to quote |
| Structured data | Organization, Product or Service, FAQ and Article markup that validates | Removes ambiguity about what a page describes |
| Consistency | Same name, category and details across site and profiles | Conflicting facts lead to wrong statements |
| Freshness | Outdated pages with old prices or discontinued products | Old pages are a common source of errors |
What does a good audit report contain?
A good audit report contains the evidence as well as the conclusions. You should be able to open any finding and see the AI answer that supports it.
- The prompt list, competitor list and confirmed facts used.
- Visibility score, per-assistant results, rank and share of voice.
- The websites cited, with notes on where you are absent.
- Wrong statements found, with the exact quotes.
- On-site findings.
- A prioritized plan with tasks by week.
How does Kraffic.ai run this audit?
Kraffic.ai automates most of these steps. You enter your website; it reads the site and records business facts you confirm or correct, finds competitors for you to approve, and discovers buyer prompts, to which you can add your own or upload a CSV.
It then runs the tracked prompts on Claude, ChatGPT and Google Gemini and reports visibility, citations, sentiment, FactCheck results, recommendations and a week-by-week 30-day plan. Human judgment is still needed to confirm facts, approve competitors and decide priorities.
FAQ
Questions and answers
How long does a GEO audit take?
It depends on the size of the prompt set and how it is run. Done by hand, collecting and recording answers for dozens of prompts across three assistants takes many hours. A tracking platform collects the answers automatically, leaving your time for confirming facts, approving competitors, reading the findings and deciding what to do.
How many prompts should a GEO audit include?
Enough to cover the main ways buyers ask about your category: different products or services, different buyer situations, and both short and conversational phrasing. There is no fixed correct number. A smaller, well-chosen set you keep stable over time is more useful than a large set that changes with every scan.
Can I do a GEO audit myself?
Yes. The checklist above can be followed with nothing more than access to the assistants and a spreadsheet. The demanding parts are choosing prompts that reflect real buyers, repeating runs to allow for variation, and keeping records detailed enough to compare later. Many businesses do a first audit by hand and then automate.
How is a GEO audit different from an SEO audit?
An SEO audit reviews your site's technical health, content and search rankings. A GEO audit reviews what AI assistants actually say: whether they name you, how they describe you, which competitors and websites they cite, and whether the facts are right. The on-site checks overlap, but the central evidence in a GEO audit is the saved AI answers.
How often should a GEO audit be repeated?
Treat the first audit as a baseline and then keep measuring on a regular schedule, using the same prompts and competitors. Assistants change as models are updated and as web content changes, so a one-time audit goes out of date. Repeat a fuller review when you launch products, change positioning or see a sharp change in results.