- Business owners checking whether AI can find and accurately describe their business.
- Marketers comparing audit findings before choosing what to improve on a website.
- Anyone planning content around the questions their customers ask Google and AI assistants.
AEO/GEO Part 1: Find Out Where Your Brand Appears in AI Search
In this guide, you will learn how to run an "AI SEO" audit on a website.
Introduction
In this guide, you will learn how to run an "AI SEO" audit on a website. You will learn where your site appears in AI answers and identify opportunities to improve its visibility.
Step-by-step 5 steps
Instructions
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Step 1 of 5 Run a Peekaboo Audit
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization: making your information easy to find and use in direct answers. GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: improving how your business and content appear in AI-generated answers. The terms overlap. For this exercise, the useful question is whether someone looking for what you offer can discover your business and understand it correctly.
Open Peekaboo (https://www.aipeekaboo.com/), enter your website URL, and select Check my AI Visibility. Review the business name and description it pulls from your website. Correct the location or category if needed before starting the report.
Peekaboo detecting The Arlington Bagel and its newsletter description Confirm the detected description. The 72/100 card on the right is labeled “Example”; it is not the Bagel's result.
Choose Quick Start for the suggested setup or Customize to review the choices. Complete the free-report flow, then check which questions and AI products it tested. Read the actual answers and cited sources alongside the score.
Use the Brand mentioned filter to inspect the individual answers. In our check, the Bagel appeared in one result while other results omitted it. Open the citations to see which pages supported those answers.
Keep the report open for comparison with the next tools. Note whether your brand appears, whether the description is accurate, and which other businesses are mentioned. Peekaboo's free report and ongoing paid monitoring are separate options.
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Step 2 of 5 Check How HubSpot Describes Your Brand
Open HubSpot AI Search Grader (https://www.hubspot.com/ai-search-grader). Enter your brand name, location, industry, and what you offer. Use the same description you checked in Peekaboo so the tools are evaluating the same business.
HubSpot offers a free one-time check of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini describe your brand based on their training data. Complete the report form and read the written assessment, including brand recognition and sentiment.
We got a HubSpot report back, but the useful part is checking what supports its assessment. Does it know what your business does, associate it with the right location, and describe its offering accurately? Keep those findings separate from live web-search recommendations. A tool that recognizes your brand when you supply its name answers a different question from one that recommends it without being prompted.
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Step 3 of 5 Run Semrush's SEO Checker
Open the Semrush SEO Checker (https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/seo-checker/), enter your domain, and choose Analyze Website. Once the report finishes, start with Overview, then open Issues and Recommendations.
Our Arlington Bagel result showed 61/100, with six critical issues and two minor issues flagged by Semrush. Treat those as the tool's findings to investigate, rather than eight independently confirmed defects.
Semrush SEO Checker showing a 61 out of 100 score for The Arlington Bagel The SEO report gives you a starting list of website improvements to inspect.
Semrush also has a separate AI Visibility Checker (https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/). Use it if you want another AI-search snapshot; keep its results separate from this SEO report.
Read the explanation behind each recommendation and choose the items relevant to your site. The SEO score measures different things from the AI-brand reports above, so keep the scores in separate columns rather than averaging them together.
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Step 4 of 5 Set Up and Check Google Search Console
Open Google Search Console (https://search.google.com/search-console) and sign in with your Google account. If your site is already listed, select its property. Otherwise, choose Add property and follow Google's verification instructions. A Domain property covers subdomains and protocols and normally requires DNS verification; a URL-prefix property offers other verification methods. Google setup instructions (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34592)
Once you have access, open Performance → Generative AI. Look at impressions and the pages appearing in Google's AI features, with the date range visible. Google documents this report for AI Overviews and AI Mode, with a separate Discover report. Google report details (https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/06/gen-ai-performance-reports)
Search Console navigation showing Performance and Generative AI Find the Google AI report under Performance.
Also check Search results → Queries for the search terms already bringing your site into Google results. Newly added properties can take a few days to show data. Keep each property's results with its own website. The Generative AI view reports Google visibility, not ChatGPT or Claude mentions.
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Step 5 of 5 Choose the Questions You Want to Answer
Think about what a potential customer would ask before knowing your brand name. For the Bagel, useful examples include:
- What newsletters cover events and local business in Arlington, Virginia?
- What is happening in Arlington this weekend?
- Where can I learn about new restaurants opening in Arlington?
For a garden store in Houston, “Where can I buy fertilizer in Houston?” is a useful question because it connects a product to the area the business serves. Think about who you want arriving at your site and what they need.
Choose a small set that matches what you actually offer. Beside each question, identify the existing page that answers it, or note where a useful page is missing. The query table above suggests newsletter landing pages, an events hub, and restaurant-opening coverage as possible targets.
Try the questions in ChatGPT and Google, then compare the answers and citations. You can repeat them in Claude, Perplexity, or Gemini for another view.
Use the audits to prioritize this list. An inaccurate brand description suggests a different next action from a relevant page that is difficult to find. Save the exact questions so you can repeat the same checks after making improvements.
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Overview Back to the steps
Background and context
Who This Is Useful For
What You Will Build
You will build a baseline for your website's search visibility and a short list of questions you want it to answer. We use The Arlington Bagel, a weekly newsletter covering events and local business in Arlington, Virginia. You can follow the same steps with your own website.
Use the audit findings to choose queries and pages to work on. These are suggested targets, not measured search volumes or rankings.
What You Need To Get Started
- A public website URL and a short description of your business.
- An email address for the audit tools' report or signup forms.
- A Google account and permission to verify your website in Search Console, or access to an existing property.
- Codex with browser access if you want to compile the reports in Going Further.
Going Further
Have Codex run the free audits and compile the findings into a one-page report. If you already have the reports open, point it to those browser tabs or provide the exports so it can start with your actual results.
Give Codex the reports, your website, and the decision you want help making.
Here is a reusable version:
Run these free audits for [YOUR WEBSITE]:
- Peekaboo: https://www.aipeekaboo.com/
- HubSpot AI Search Grader: https://www.hubspot.com/ai-search-grader
- Semrush SEO Checker: https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/seo-checker/
- Optional Semrush AI visibility check: https://www.semrush.com/free-tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/
Reuse my completed reports if they are already open in [BROWSER] or attached here. Check the site's Google Search Console property if I have given you access.
Create a one-page PDF report with:
- The main findings from each report, including source links and dates.
- My top three priorities and why they matter.
- Five customer queries we should target and the best page for each. Link an existing page when available; otherwise label it a proposed new page.
- A quick checklist of next actions.
Keep SEO scores, AI mentions, and Google AI impressions separate. Use actual results and label recommendations as recommendations. If a report is inaccessible, say what is missing. Ask me to handle login or verification when needed, and don't start paid plans or change the website.Use that page to choose the first improvements you want to make. Keep the original reports linked so you can check the evidence and compare the next audit with this baseline. Part 2 covers the website improvements you can make from these findings.
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