The AEO-GEO Audit shows how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity name your brand, and who they name instead. Aemorph tests 16 questions written for your market and buying intents. It scores your site on four layers and benchmarks you against 3 to 5 competitors. You receive a score out of 100, an A to F grade and a ranked fix plan within 21 days of kick-off. In a G2 survey run in March 2026 and published in April, 51% of B2B software buyers and decision-makers said they start research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google.
The AEO-GEO Audit Measures the Two Layers of Search Your Audience Reads in AI
Your audience finds suppliers through search results, through Google's instant answers and through the AI chats, and the AEO-GEO Audit reviews your site's readiness for Google's answers and tests your brand's presence in the AI chats. SEO covers the list of links. AEO covers Google's instant answers: AI Overviews, featured snippets, answer boxes and voice search answers. GEO covers mention and citation inside the answers the AI chats write. The audit focuses on GEO: it captures the answers the AI chats give to your 16 prompts, while the AEO side is a review of your pages, not a test of Google's answer features.
| Layer | Where your audience sees the answer | What Aemorph checks for | What the audit measures |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | The list of links on a search results page | Relevant pages that crawlers reach and read | Crawler access and how much of your content crawlers extract |
| AEO | Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, answer boxes and voice search answers | Pages that lead with a direct answer, with accurate structured data where used; Google requires no special markup for AI Overviews | A readiness review of whether your key pages lead with the answer and carry structured data |
| GEO | Answers inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity | Accurate, consistent facts about your business across your site and other sources | How often each AI chat mentions or cites you in the captured answers to your 16 prompts, and what it says |
What each layer of search asks of your website, and what the AEO-GEO Audit measures in each.
Business and consumer audiences both use AI in their research. OpenAI reported more than 900 million weekly active ChatGPT users in February 2026, and Google reported over 2.5 billion monthly active users of AI Overviews in May 2026. On the business side, 69% of the B2B software buyers and decision-makers G2 surveyed in March 2026 said they chose a different vendor than first planned because the vendor was part of a chatbot's recommendation. On the consumer side, Semrush found that 55% of US shoppers who have tried AI tools use them for product research at least weekly, and 50% had bought after researching with AI. The AI search statistics hub keeps these figures with their dates.
| Figure | Audience | Sample | Publisher and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| More than 900 million weekly active ChatGPT users | ChatGPT users worldwide | Platform total, reported by the platform | OpenAI, 27 February 2026 |
| Over 2.5 billion monthly active AI Overviews users | Google Search users worldwide | Platform total, reported by the platform | Google, I/O keynote, 19 May 2026 |
| 51% said they start research in an AI chatbot more often than in Google | B2B software buyers | 1,076 B2B software buyers and decision-makers, surveyed March 2026 | G2, The Answer Economy, 15 April 2026 |
| 69% said they chose a different vendor than first planned, one the chatbot recommended | B2B software buyers | The same G2 survey | G2, The Answer Economy, 15 April 2026 |
| 55% use AI tools to research products at least weekly | US shoppers who have tried AI tools | 1,030 US shoppers who have tried AI tools, surveyed December 2025 | Semrush, 5 March 2026 |
| 50% have bought after researching with AI | US shoppers who have tried AI tools | The same Semrush survey | Semrush, 5 March 2026 |
The G2 and Semrush figures are surveys of their own samples; the Semrush sample is US shoppers and supports no conclusion about another market.
Source: OpenAI, Google, G2 and Semrush, 2026
What is the AEO-GEO Audit?
The AEO-GEO Audit is Aemorph's fixed-scope audit of your brand's visibility in the four AI chats, with a score out of 100, an A to F grade and a ranked fix plan. It runs four diagnostic pipelines across four scored layers, tests 16 custom prompts and benchmarks your domain against 3 to 5 competitor domains. Aemorph delivers the report within 21 days of kick-off and walks your team through it on a 30-minute call.
The Audit Records Whether AI Cites You, Mentions You or Leaves You Out
The AEO-GEO Audit records, for each of the 16 questions, whether the AI chats cite your brand, mention it or leave it out, and which brands they name in your place. In a search results page your audience compares the options and chooses. In an AI answer, the AI chat does the comparing and names the brands it recommends, and the audit records which brands appear in those answers for your 16 prompts.
| State | What the AI chat does | What it suggests in Aemorph's model | What the audit records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Cites your brand as a source, or recommends it | Your facts read clearly enough to recommend | The question, the AI chat, and the cited URL where the answer gives one |
| Mentioned | Names your brand without citing it as a source or recommending it | A possible weak definition of what you do, or thin structured content | The question, the AI chat and any source or brand cited instead |
| Absent | Leaves your brand out of the answer | Where the answer names a competitor, that competitor holds the place | The question, the AI chat and the brands named |
The three states the audit records for each question in each AI chat.
Which questions does the audit test?
The audit tests 16 custom prompts for your category and market: 8 middle-of-funnel questions and 8 bottom-of-funnel questions. Aemorph writes the prompts after the kick-off call, once your market, audience and intent are confirmed. Middle-of-funnel questions ask how to choose a product or service; bottom-of-funnel questions ask who to buy from for a specific need, the question asked closest to a purchase.
| Query intent | Example form | What Aemorph looks at | What the audit reports |
|---|---|---|---|
| Middle of funnel (MOFU), 8 prompts | "How to choose a [product or service]" | The depth of guide and question-and-answer content in your market | Which brands each AI chat names, and where you appear |
| Bottom of funnel (BOFU), 8 prompts | "Best [supplier] for [specific need]" | The sources the AI chat cites for that need | Which brands each AI chat recommends in your place |
The two query intents behind the 16 prompts.
Why do competitors win questions you expect to own?
In Aemorph's working model, competitors win questions because each AI chat draws on different training data, different retrieval and different sources, so the same question names different brands in different AI chats. In the same model, brands with clearer facts about what they do, structured data and content that extracts cleanly, and a presence across many independent sources such as directories, reviews and media coverage, are named more consistently. The audit records which brands the AI chats name instead of you, split by middle-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel questions, with the URLs they cite; a cited URL shows what appeared in the answer, not why a brand was chosen.
Four Scored Layers Turn Your AI Visibility Into One Score Out of 100
The AEO-GEO Audit scores your site on four weighted layers, from whether AI crawlers reach it to whether the AI chats recall you with no web access, and combines them into one score out of 100. The weights are Aemorph's own scoring model. Live citation carries the most weight because it measures the answers the AI chats give to your 16 prompts at the time of the audit.
| Layer | Weight | What it measures | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| L0 Bot access | 25% | Whether AI crawlers reach your site, bot by bot: search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot), training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) and Google-Extended, a robots.txt control for Gemini training and grounding | Each bot has its own job: a blocked search crawler limits that platform's access to your current pages, while training access is a separate choice; the fix is a configuration change |
| L2 Content crawlability | 25% | How much of your content an AI crawler extracts once it reaches the site | Content that loads only with JavaScript, sits in PDFs or iframes, or hides in tabs is an extraction risk that varies by crawler; the audit measures what each crawler recovers |
| L3 Live citation rate | 40% | How often the AI chats mention or cite your brand across the 16 prompts, with web access | It shows the gap between you and your competitors in the captured answers to the same prompts |
| L4 Training recall | 10% | Whether the AI chats know your brand and what you do with no web access | It shows what the AI chats state about you without live search, apart from answers that draw on the web |
The four layers and their weights in the AEO-GEO Audit score; layer numbering follows Aemorph's audit model.
What is browsing uplift?
Browsing uplift is your live citation rate (L3) minus your training recall (L4), and the audit reports it as a signal of how much your AI visibility depends on live web access. In Aemorph's working model, a high L3 with a low L4 is rented visibility: the AI chats name you when they search the web but far less often without web access, so the position rests on what live search finds at the time. A high L3 with a high L4 and a small gap is owned visibility: the AI chats name you with or without web access. High uplift is a gap to close; low uplift with a high L3 is a position to defend.
Four Pipelines Run in Parallel and Feed One Diagnosis
The AEO-GEO Audit runs four independent pipelines at the same time, so your score, your competitor benchmark and your fix plan rest on one set of tests run in the same 21 days. Three pipelines feed the four scored layers; the AI Perception Audit returns a separate brand risk band.
| Pipeline | What it checks | Layer it feeds | What you receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Citation Intelligence | A citation readiness check across six criteria: content quality, structured data coverage, schema types and how clearly your pages define your business | L2 | A citation readiness score out of 100, criterion by criterion |
| AI Perception Audit | A balanced crawl of your site, then a hallucination check across the four AI chats: what they get right and wrong about your brand | Brand risk | Errors scored by category, with an overall risk band: Clean, Mild, Moderate or Severe |
| Competitive Benchmark | Live API queries to the four AI chats across the 16 prompts, for your domain and 3 to 5 competitor domains | L3 | Citation URLs captured, traffic-light grades and a breakdown per AI chat and per query intent |
| Technical AEO and GEO Scan | Bot access, rendering type, firewall (WAF) detection, schema.org coverage, entity map, llms.txt and sitemap | L0, L2 and L4 | A technical profile and a content recovery heatmap of 13 content categories tested across several crawlers |
The four pipelines of the AEO-GEO Audit and what each one returns.
Which failure patterns does the audit test for?
The audit tests for four failure patterns: blocked bots, content crawlers fail to extract, AI chats that disagree about your business, and recall of your name without citation for the questions that decide a purchase. The patterns below are illustrations of what each pipeline looks for, not findings about your site.
| Pattern | What it looks like | What it costs you | Where the fix starts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bot access blocked | robots.txt or a firewall blocks a search crawler such as OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, for example with 403 or 429 errors | That platform's search crawler reaches fewer of your current pages, so content work waits on access | A robots.txt and firewall change, not a rebuild |
| Content not extracted | Crawlers reach the site but extract little text, because content loads with JavaScript or sits in PDFs, iframes or hidden tabs | Service pages, case studies and answers to common questions stay out of what those crawlers extract | Serve key content as HTML in the page |
| Inconsistent facts | One AI chat states facts about you that conflict with another AI chat's answer or with your website | Your audience reads different facts about you depending on the AI chat | One approved set of facts, published consistently across your site and third-party sources |
| Brand-only recall | The AI chats know your name when asked directly but leave you out of category and buying questions | You lose the questions where your audience chooses a supplier | Pages that answer those questions directly, with the question and answer marked up |
Illustrative failure patterns; the audit reports which ones apply to your site.
The Report Gives You the AI Answers, the Brands Named Instead and Your Grade
At the end of the AEO-GEO Audit you hold your score and grade, the answers each AI chat gave about you in the tests, the brands it named instead of you and a fix plan ranked by priority. The report sits at a live URL you share with your team, your stakeholders and your board.
| What you get | The problem it solves | What changes for you | Layer | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Composite AI visibility score | No single measure of AI visibility | A score out of 100, an A to F grade and a score for each layer | L0, L2, L3, L4 | Day 21 |
| Live AI answers, verbatim | Guessing what the AI chats say about you | The words each AI chat used about your brand in the captured answers to your 16 prompts | L3 | Day 21 |
| Competitor table | Not knowing who the AI chats recommend instead | The brands named in your place, and how often | L3 | Day 21 |
| Hallucination check | Wrong facts repeated to your audience | What the AI chats get right and wrong, scored by category | Brand risk | Day 21 |
| Citation readiness score | Content that looks fine to people but extracts poorly | Six criteria scored one by one | L2 | Day 21 |
| Technical profile and content recovery heatmap | Hidden access and rendering faults | Rendering, firewall, schema, entity map, llms.txt and sitemap, with 13 content categories by crawler | L0, L2, L4 | Day 21 |
| Prioritised fix plan | A long list with no order | P1, P2 and P3 fixes with the effort for each and the projected score after each phase | L0, L2, L3, L4 | Day 21 |
| Findings walkthrough | A report with nobody to explain it | A 30-minute call with questions and answers | Not applicable | After delivery |
What each AEO-GEO Audit deliverable changes.
How is the report structured?
The report runs to four pages: your composite score, the AI response capture, the technical audit and the fix plan.
- Composite score: your overall grade, the score for each layer, the browsing uplift signal and a one-sentence diagnosis for each layer.
- AI response capture: mentions and citations per AI chat across the 16 prompts, showing where you appear and where you do not.
- Technical audit: the content recovery heatmap, the technical profile and the hallucination check.
- Fix plan: ranked P1, P2 and P3 recommendations with effort, projected impact and the route to an A grade.
The Fix Plan Puts Access First So Later Content Work Counts
The AEO-GEO Audit fix plan ranks each change by priority, effort and the layers it targets, starting with access and extraction, because the AI crawlers pick up your content changes only on pages they read. The framework below shows the fix logic; your audit produces your own list, with the effort for each fix and the projected score after each phase.
| Priority | Fix | Effort | Layers it targets |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1 | Set AI bot access deliberately: allow the search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) in robots.txt and firewall rules, and decide training access (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) as a separate choice; set Google-Extended, a robots.txt control for Gemini training and grounding, on its own | Low | L0 |
| P1 | Add schema.org markup: Organization, Service and FAQ on key pages | Medium | L2, L3 |
| P1 | Restructure key pages to direct-answer format: the answer first, the support below | Medium | L2, L3 |
| P2 | Publish an entity map and llms.txt: structured, machine-readable facts about your brand | Low | L3, L4 |
| P2 | Move case studies, proof and key information into structured HTML, out of PDFs and slide decks | Medium | L2, L3, L4 |
| P3 | Build third-party authority: industry directories, partner mentions and indexed media coverage | High | L3, L4 |
Aemorph's fix framework; the projected score after each phase is an estimate, and no fix guarantees a citation.
The P1 fixes in this framework are configuration changes, markup additions or content edits, not development rebuilds. Aemorph specifies and verifies the structured data, and your developers implement and publish it. Entity work in depth runs as Entity Hardening (Sprint 2), Aemorph's technical entity SEO sprint.
| Phase | Focus | What changes | Fix type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Access, crawlability and schema | The AI crawlers reach and extract your key pages | Bot access (fastest, a configuration change); schema and direct-answer content (fast) |
| AEO visibility | Direct answers and clear facts about your business | Your pages give Google's answer features a clear, direct answer, with no guarantee of selection | Direct-answer pages and structured data |
| GEO authority | Presence across many sources and citation in the AI chats | More independent sources state the same facts about you | Entity map and llms.txt as supporting infrastructure; third-party sources (slower) |
The three phases of the fix plan. The audit delivers the plan; the fixes are separate work. The report shows the URLs each AI chat cited; Aemorph does not check those pages for wrong facts, and you decide which third-party pages to ask for corrections. Your nominated point of contact signs off any corrected wording before it goes live.
What does each grade mean?
Your grade comes from the four layer scores, and each grade from A to F describes a stage of AI readiness in Aemorph's own grading heuristics.
| Grade | What it describes | Typical state of the fixes | What moves it up |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Strong on the four layers; named consistently across the four AI chats in the live tests and in the no-web recall tests | P1, P2 and P3 fixes in place | Defending the position as competitors publish |
| B | Well optimised; schema and entity map in place | P1 and P2 fixes complete | Third-party authority (P3) |
| C | Some work done; citation inconsistent between the AI chats | P1 fixes partial | Completing P1, then P2 |
| D | Access issues, weak schema and thin page structure | P1 fixes not started | Bot access, schema and direct-answer pages |
| F | Structurally blocked: a firewall or JavaScript rendering stops AI crawlers reading the site | Access unresolved | Opening access first |
Aemorph's grading heuristics; the fix plan shows the projected score after each phase, so you see what moves your grade before you commit budget.
The AEO-GEO Audit Runs in 21 Days From One 30-Minute Kick-off
The AEO-GEO Audit needs three things from you and 30 minutes of your time, then runs to a fixed timeline and a fixed scope, so you hold a full diagnosis and fix plan three weeks after kick-off. The audit starts with a free strategic conversation.
| What Aemorph needs | Detail | Who provides it | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your primary domain and any subdomains | Regional variants or product sub-sites to include in scope | Your team | Before kick-off |
| A list of 3 to 5 competitor domains | The competitors you see as direct rivals; Aemorph suggests others the AI chats cite in your category when you confirm the 3 to 5 | Your team | Before kick-off |
| A 30-minute kick-off call | Confirms your market, your audience and the intent behind the prompts | Your decision-maker with Aemorph | Day 1 |
What the audit needs from you; no further time is needed from your team during the 21 days.
| Day | What happens | Who | Your input |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Context extraction and prompt writing for your category and market | Aemorph | The kick-off call |
| Days 1 to 7 | The four pipelines run in parallel | Aemorph | No input needed |
| Days 8 to 18 | Analysis, scoring and the fix plan | Aemorph | No input needed |
| Day 21 | Report delivered, live URL sent and the walkthrough scheduled | Aemorph | No input needed; the 30-minute walkthrough follows delivery |
The 21-day timeline of the AEO-GEO Audit.
| Scope item | What is included | Set by | Where it shows in the report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domains | Your primary domain and 3 to 5 competitor domains | You, confirmed at kick-off | The competitor table |
| Review | Website AEO and GEO review | Fixed scope | The technical audit page |
| AI chats | ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity | Fixed scope | The AI response capture page |
| Prompts | 16 custom prompts: 8 middle-of-funnel and 8 bottom-of-funnel | Aemorph, after the kick-off call | The AI response capture page |
| Pipelines | Citation Intelligence, AI Perception Audit, Competitive Benchmark, Technical AEO and GEO Scan | Fixed scope | The four report pages |
| Delivery | Within 21 days of kick-off, with a live report URL; the 30-minute walkthrough follows delivery | Fixed scope | The live report URL |
The fixed scope of the AEO-GEO Audit.
Who does the work on your AEO-GEO Audit?
Your AEO-GEO Audit runs with your own account manager and Aemorph's team: Kristine and Ryan, Senior SEO Specialists and Project Managers; Tent, Trinh, Wahyu and Minh, SEO Specialists; Michelle and Patrick, Content Specialists; Shiena, Web Project Manager; and Dom, Senior Web Developer. Your account manager introduces the team members assigned to your account at kick-off, and every message gets a reply within 24 hours.
Who is the AEO-GEO Audit for?
The AEO-GEO Audit suits businesses whose audience asks AI before choosing a supplier and that want to know where they stand against named competitors. It is built for:
- B2B companies whose buyers shortlist vendors in the AI chats before they contact sales.
- Consumer brands and retailers whose shoppers research products with AI before they buy.
- Professional services firms that win work when an AI chat names them for a specific need.
- Businesses with regional variants or product sub-sites that want those variants included in the scope of one audit.
It fits less well for smaller single-site businesses, which the free tools on tools.aemorph.com and the Foundation Audit serve first.
How does the AEO-GEO Audit differ from the Foundation Audit and the ESAG audit?
The AEO-GEO Audit and the Foundation Audit are separate audits with different scopes, and the ESAG audit, Aemorph's enterprise SEO, AEO and GEO audit, adds a crawl of up to 1,000 pages to the AEO-GEO Audit. The Foundation Audit pairs the AI Hallucination Diagnostic with a thirteen-area technical SEO audit that crawls 50 pages of your site. The AEO-GEO Audit is an AEO and GEO review of your site, with competitor benchmarking, live citation testing and a score out of 100 that the Foundation Audit does not include. The ESAG audit is built for large multi-market sites. Aemorph names the audit that fits your site at the end of the strategic conversation.
What comes after the audit?
After the audit, the Influencer Blueprint strategy month, Aemorph's SEO strategy and roadmap from S$15,000, turns the findings into a 6, 12 or 24-month plan across SEO, AEO and GEO, on-page and off-page, with who does what by when. It is a separate engagement, quoted after you see the data, and terms are set out in your quote. On the enterprise route, the strategic conversation leads to the AEO-GEO Audit or the ESAG audit, then the Influencer Blueprint, then Attain or Apex, with the Showstopper Sensor (Sprint 1) and Entity Hardening (Sprint 2) delivered inside the engagement.
How much does the AEO-GEO Audit cost?
The AEO-GEO Audit costs S$4,500 one-time, for a fixed scope delivered within 21 days of kick-off. Aemorph confirms each paid offer in a quote after the strategic conversation, a free first call.
| Offer | Price |
|---|---|
| Audits | From S$1,000 one-time |
| AEO-GEO Audit | S$4,500 one-time |
| Sprints | From S$5,000 per website |
| Influencer Blueprint (SEO strategy and roadmap) | From S$15,000 one-time |
| Enterprise monthly engagements (Attain, Apex) | From S$12,500 a month |
Smaller monthly packages are available by application only, against strict criteria; details are on the pricing page. Monthly packages are priced per market.
Want the most value for your budget and prefer to run the work in-house? Leveraged & Scalable, Aemorph's community, teaches your team to plan and execute SEO, AEO and GEO with AI tools, with the skills, tools and access Aemorph shares with members. Full details are on the pricing page.
The AEO-GEO Audit Shows Where You Stand Before You Commit Budget
Start with the AEO-GEO Audit to see which brands the AI chats recommend in your place and which fixes move your score first. Where the audit finds wrong or missing answers to the questions that stop a purchase, the Showstopper Sensor (Sprint 1) publishes your approved answers from your Brand Codex, your brand's single source of truth, with the Ground Truth Guarantee, an AI accuracy guarantee, when bought on its own. The Ground Truth Guarantee: within 30 days of publishing, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity answer your showstopper questions with the facts in your Brand Codex. If they do not, Aemorph refunds 100% of your Sprint 1 fee and keeps working on the answers for a further 60 days, 90 days in total.
Terms: the Ground Truth Guarantee covers Sprint 1 bought on its own; Sprint 1 inside a monthly package carries no refund; it does not cover Sprint 2 (Entity Hardening), search rankings or Google AI Overviews. Full terms
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