AI Search Audit: Understand if AI understands your brand.
AI Search Audit: Understand if AI understands your brand.
Before you optimise for AI search, you need to know where you actually stand.
Not where you think you stand. Not what your analytics dashboard says. What ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are actually doing with your brand when no one from your team is in the room.
That's exactly what a decipher. AI Search Audit tells you.
Before you optimise for AI search, you need to know where you actually stand.
Not where you think you stand. Not what your analytics dashboard says. What ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews are actually doing with your brand when no one from your team is in the room.
That's exactly what a decipher. AI Search Audit tells you.
Most brands invest in content, SEO, and digital PR without knowing whether AI systems are citing them, misrepresenting them, or ignoring them entirely. Our audit changes that.
Most brands invest in content, SEO, and digital PR without knowing whether AI systems are citing them, misrepresenting them, or ignoring them entirely. Our audit changes that.
Just a comprehensive strategic report that covers your current AI citation visibility, technical gaps, competitor signal positioning, and a prioritised roadmap of what to fix first. Not a checklist. Not a score from a free tool. A real diagnosis.
If you've been wondering why you're not showing up in AI-generated answers, this is where you find out.
Most agencies treat AI search optimisation as an SEO add-on. They produce more content, add a few FAQ schemas, and call it GEO. But AI systems don't select sources based on their word count. They select based on confidence. Understanding how AI search optimisation is different from SEO is the starting point for understanding why the approach has to be different.
AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are not running keyword matches. They understand intent and judge which sources are clear, authoritative, and consistently positioned within a given topic area. A brand that publishes often but signals ambiguity will be ignore, while a less prolific brand that signals clarity will win the citation every single time.
This is the distinction that shapes everything decipher. does.
Most agencies treat AI search optimisation as an SEO add-on. They produce more content, add a few FAQ schemas, and call it GEO. But AI systems don't select sources based on their word count. They select based on confidence. Understanding how AI search optimisation is different from SEO is the starting point for understanding why the approach has to be different.
AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are not running keyword matches. They understand intent and judge which sources are clear, authoritative, and consistently positioned within a given topic area. A brand that publishes often but signals ambiguity will be ignore, while a less prolific brand that signals clarity will win the citation every single time.
This is the distinction that shapes everything decipher. does.
What is an AI Search Audit?
An AI search audit (also called a GEO audit or AI SEO audit) is a structured assessment of how AI-powered platforms currently perceive, interpret, and cite your brand.
It answers a different set of questions than a traditional SEO audit. Classic SEO asks: "Can Google find and rank this page?" An AI search audit asks something harder: "Does AI understand what this brand stands for, trust it enough to cite it, and represent it accurately when someone asks a relevant question?"
Those are not the same question. And for most brands, the answers are not the same either.
What AI systems actually evaluate.
When ChatGPT or Perplexity decides which brand to mention in a response, it's not counting keywords. It's evaluating a combination of signals:
Entity clarity: Does your brand have a consistent, well-structured identity across the web?
Citation-worthiness: Is your content specific, authoritative, and easy to extract a clear answer from?
Technical accessibility: Can AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) actually access your content?
Third-party authority: Are credible external sources referencing and corroborating your brand?
Accuracy and consistency: Is the information about you coherent across your site, directories, and media coverage?
An AI search audit examines all five layers. Most brands have gaps in at least three.
GEO audit vs. traditional SEO audit.
An AI search audit (also called a GEO audit or AI SEO audit) is a structured assessment of how AI-powered platforms currently perceive, interpret, and cite your brand.
It answers a different set of questions than a traditional SEO audit. Classic SEO asks: "Can Google find and rank this page?" An AI search audit asks something harder: "Does AI understand what this brand stands for, trust it enough to cite it, and represent it accurately when someone asks a relevant question?"
Those are not the same question. And for most brands, the answers are not the same either.
What AI systems actually evaluate.
When ChatGPT or Perplexity decides which brand to mention in a response, it's not counting keywords. It's evaluating a combination of signals:
Entity clarity: Does your brand have a consistent, well-structured identity across the web?
Citation-worthiness: Is your content specific, authoritative, and easy to extract a clear answer from?
Technical accessibility: Can AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) actually access your content?
Third-party authority: Are credible external sources referencing and corroborating your brand?
Accuracy and consistency: Is the information about you coherent across your site, directories, and media coverage?
An AI search audit examines all five layers. Most brands have gaps in at least three.
GEO audit vs. traditional SEO audit.
The two are related but not interchangeable. You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible inside AI-generated answers. According to research published on Search Engine Land, brands with strong traditional SEO performance are frequently overlooked by generative AI systems because their content is optimised for crawlers, not for comprehension.
That gap is exactly what this audit is designed to close. If you want a deeper understanding of how generative engines work before diving in, our complete guide to generative engine optimisation covers the full picture.
The two are related but not interchangeable. You can rank on page one of Google and still be completely invisible inside AI-generated answers. According to research published on Search Engine Land, brands with strong traditional SEO performance are frequently overlooked by generative AI systems because their content is optimised for crawlers, not for comprehension.
That gap is exactly what this audit is designed to close. If you want a deeper understanding of how generative engines work before diving in, our complete guide to generative engine optimisation covers the full picture.
Why your brand might be invisible in AI search right now.
Most brands that are invisible in AI answers don't have a content problem. They have a clarity problem they've been trying to solve with content.
More blog posts. More keyword pages. More "comprehensive guides." And still, when someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a brand in their category, a competitor gets named instead.
Here's why that happens.
AI systems don't reward volume. They reward confidence.
Generative AI platforms are built to give reliable answers. That means they cite sources they're confident about, not just sources that exist. When your brand sends ambiguous signals, has inconsistent descriptions across directories, structured data that's technically present but poorly filled in, and content that buries the point under three paragraphs of text, AI systems quietly choose someone else.
The most common reasons brands get overlooked:
AI crawlers are blocked: Your robots.txt file may be preventing GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot from accessing your content entirely. This is more common than you'd think.
Schema markup is incomplete: Having schema isn't enough. Attribute-poor schema (missing author credentials, unclear entity relationships) actually signals lower confidence than no schema at all.
Content isn't extractable: AI engines read raw HTML. If your key claims are buried inside JavaScript-rendered components, they may never be seen.
Brand signals are inconsistent: Different descriptions on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and press coverage confuse the entity graph AI systems use to build a picture of who you are.
No third-party corroboration: AI systems treat external citations as trust signals. If credible sources aren't referencing your brand, you remain unverified in the eyes of the model.
Content answers the wrong questions: Most brand content is written to rank for keywords. AI systems are answering conversational queries. The format mismatch means your content gets skipped.
This is the zero-click era, where users act on the first AI-generated recommendation without visiting multiple sources, so if you're not in that answer, you don't exist at the moment of decision.
The audit tells you exactly which of these issues are affecting your brand, and in what order they're worth fixing.
Most brands that are invisible in AI answers don't have a content problem. They have a clarity problem they've been trying to solve with content.
More blog posts. More keyword pages. More "comprehensive guides." And still, when someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a brand in their category, a competitor gets named instead.
Here's why that happens.
AI systems don't reward volume. They reward confidence.
Generative AI platforms are built to give reliable answers. That means they cite sources they're confident about, not just sources that exist. When your brand sends ambiguous signals, has inconsistent descriptions across directories, structured data that's technically present but poorly filled in, and content that buries the point under three paragraphs of text, AI systems quietly choose someone else.
The most common reasons brands get overlooked:
AI crawlers are blocked: Your robots.txt file may be preventing GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot from accessing your content entirely. This is more common than you'd think.
Schema markup is incomplete: Having schema isn't enough. Attribute-poor schema (missing author credentials, unclear entity relationships) actually signals lower confidence than no schema at all.
Content isn't extractable: AI engines read raw HTML. If your key claims are buried inside JavaScript-rendered components, they may never be seen.
Brand signals are inconsistent: Different descriptions on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and press coverage confuse the entity graph AI systems use to build a picture of who you are.
No third-party corroboration: AI systems treat external citations as trust signals. If credible sources aren't referencing your brand, you remain unverified in the eyes of the model.
Content answers the wrong questions: Most brand content is written to rank for keywords. AI systems are answering conversational queries. The format mismatch means your content gets skipped.
This is the zero-click era, where users act on the first AI-generated recommendation without visiting multiple sources, so if you're not in that answer, you don't exist at the moment of decision.
The audit tells you exactly which of these issues are affecting your brand, and in what order they're worth fixing.
What the decipher. AI search audit covers.
The audit is a 30 to 60 slide strategic report; a human-led diagnostic built around the specific signals AI systems use to decide which brands get cited.
Here's what's inside.
1. AI Citation Visibility Baseline
We run structured prompt testing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews using branded, category, comparison, and buying-intent queries relevant to your business. We document:
Where your brand appears (and where it doesn't)
How accurately AI systems describe you
The sentiment tone of any mentions
Which competitors are being cited instead of you, and why
This gives you a real baseline. Not a guess. Actual evidence of how AI sees your brand today.
2. Technical AI Readiness Assessment
We audit the technical foundations that determine whether AI crawlers can access, parse, and trust your content:
Robots.txt configuration for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Bing's AI crawler
Schema markup quality not just presence, but attribute completeness and entity relationships
JavaScript rendering issues that hide content from AI crawlers reading raw HTML
Sitemap health and internal linking structure
llms.txt configuration (the emerging standard for AI crawler guidance)
Core technical SEO signals that feed into AI trust models
3. Brand Entity & Signal Consistency Audit
AI systems build a profile of your brand from dozens of sources. If those sources contradict each other, the model loses confidence. We check:
Consistency of your brand description, founding story, and positioning across your site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Google Business Profile, and key directories
Author and expert entity signals (E-E-A-T indicators that AI systems use to assess credibility)
Third-party citation landscape who's referencing you, and whether those sources carry authority weight
4. Content Citation-Worthiness Review
We evaluate a selection of your key pages against the criteria AI systems use when deciding what to quote or reference:
Answer-format readiness (direct, extractable responses to real queries)
Conversational query alignment (how your content maps to the prompts people actually use in AI tools)
Topical authority signals and content gap analysis
Brand voice clarity (distinct brands get cited more; bland ones don't)
5. Competitor Signal Positioning
You don't exist in a vacuum. We analyse five to seven direct competitors to map where citation share is currently being won and lost. This includes which signals your competitors have that you don't, and which gaps are realistically winnable in the near term.
6. Prioritised Recommendations
The final section of the report is a ranked action plan. Not a list of 40 things to fix. A prioritised roadmap that separates:
Quick wins: fixes that remove blockers fast
Medium-term moves: content and authority work that compounds over 60 to 90 days
Strategic plays: longer-horizon positioning decisions that build durable citation advantage
Every recommendation is tied to a specific finding.
The audit is a standalone deliverable. You'll walk away with a full picture of your AI search visibility, a ranked list of what to fix, and enough context to act on it, whether that's with decipher. or with your own team.
That said, most brands that commission an audit choose to continue into implementation. The natural next step is GEO and technical foundations work: fixing the technical blockers, strengthening entity signals, and building the content architecture that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you.
The audit feeds directly into that work. The findings become the brief. Nothing gets repeated or re-researched.
The audit is also the fastest way to build internal alignment
One of the most common uses for the report is internal. Marketing teams use it to show leadership why AI visibility matters, what the competitive gap looks like, and what investment is required to close it. The data is specific to your brand and your competitors. It's not a generic industry report. That specificity tends to land differently in a boardroom than a slide about "the rise of AI search."
If you want to understand what AI search optimisation actually involves before going further, that's a good place to start.
What happens after the audit.
Who this audit is for.
The decipher. AI Search Audit is built for brands where discoverability directly affects revenue. That usually means one of these situations applies.
You're already investing in SEO and content, but you're not showing up in AI answers. Your Google rankings look reasonable, but when you search for your category in ChatGPT or Perplexity, your competitors get named and you don't. The audit tells you why.
You're entering a new market or repositioning. If AI systems have already formed an impression of your brand (or worse, no impression at all), you need to know what you're working with before you invest in new content.
You've heard about GEO or AI search optimisation and want to understand your baseline before committing to an ongoing programme. The audit is the right starting point. You can't build a strategy on assumptions.
You're a marketing leader who needs to explain this to a board or leadership team. The report gives you a concrete picture of where your brand stands, what competitors are doing differently, and what the commercial case for acting looks like.
The audit is not for brands that want a quick fix, a free tool score, or a list of generic recommendations. It's for brands that take their visibility seriously and want to understand the problem before they start solving it.
If that sounds like you, let's talk. The discovery call is free, and it's where we figure out whether the audit makes sense for your situation.
What happens after the audit.
The audit is a standalone deliverable. You'll walk away with a full picture of your AI search visibility, a ranked list of what to fix, and enough context to act on it, whether that's with decipher. or with your own team.
That said, most brands that commission an audit choose to continue into implementation. The natural next step is GEO and technical foundations work: fixing the technical blockers, strengthening entity signals, and building the content architecture that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you.
The audit feeds directly into that work. The findings become the brief. Nothing gets repeated or re-researched.
The audit is also the fastest way to build internal alignment
One of the most common uses for the report is internal. Marketing teams use it to show leadership why AI visibility matters, what the competitive gap looks like, and what investment is required to close it. The data is specific to your brand and your competitors. It's not a generic industry report. That specificity tends to land differently in a boardroom than a slide about "the rise of AI search."
If you want to understand what AI search optimisation actually involves before going further, that's a good place to start.
AI Search Audit FAQ
What is an AI search audit?
How is an AI search audit different from an SEO audit?
What AI platforms does the audit cover?
What do I get at the end?
What do I get at the end?
How long does the audit take?
Do I need to already be doing SEO for the audit to be useful?
Can I use the audit to justify AI search investment internally?
What happens after the audit?
Why your brand might be invisible in AI search right now.
Most brands that are invisible in AI answers don't have a content problem. They have a clarity problem they've been trying to solve with content.
More blog posts. More keyword pages. More "comprehensive guides." And still, when someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a brand in their category, a competitor gets named instead.
Here's why that happens.
AI systems don't reward volume. They reward confidence.
Generative AI platforms are built to give reliable answers. That means they cite sources they're confident about, not just sources that exist. When your brand sends ambiguous signals, has inconsistent descriptions across directories, structured data that's technically present but poorly filled in, and content that buries the point under three paragraphs of text, AI systems quietly choose someone else.
The most common reasons brands get overlooked:
AI crawlers are blocked: Your robots.txt file may be preventing GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot from accessing your content entirely. This is more common than you'd think.
Schema markup is incomplete: Having schema isn't enough. Attribute-poor schema (missing author credentials, unclear entity relationships) actually signals lower confidence than no schema at all.
Content isn't extractable: AI engines read raw HTML. If your key claims are buried inside JavaScript-rendered components, they may never be seen.
Brand signals are inconsistent: Different descriptions on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and press coverage confuse the entity graph AI systems use to build a picture of who you are.
No third-party corroboration: AI systems treat external citations as trust signals. If credible sources aren't referencing your brand, you remain unverified in the eyes of the model.
Content answers the wrong questions: Most brand content is written to rank for keywords. AI systems are answering conversational queries. The format mismatch means your content gets skipped.
This is the zero-click era, where users act on the first AI-generated recommendation without visiting multiple sources, so if you're not in that answer, you don't exist at the moment of decision.
The audit tells you exactly which of these issues are affecting your brand, and in what order they're worth fixing.
Who this audit is for.
What happens after the audit.
The decipher. AI Search Audit is built for brands where discoverability directly affects revenue. That usually means one of these situations applies.
You're already investing in SEO and content, but you're not showing up in AI answers. Your Google rankings look reasonable, but when you search for your category in ChatGPT or Perplexity, your competitors get named and you don't. The audit tells you why.
You're entering a new market or repositioning. If AI systems have already formed an impression of your brand (or worse, no impression at all), you need to know what you're working with before you invest in new content.
You've heard about GEO or AI search optimisation and want to understand your baseline before committing to an ongoing programme. The audit is the right starting point. You can't build a strategy on assumptions.
You're a marketing leader who needs to explain this to a board or leadership team. The report gives you a concrete picture of where your brand stands, what competitors are doing differently, and what the commercial case for acting looks like.
The audit is not for brands that want a quick fix, a free tool score, or a list of generic recommendations. It's for brands that take their visibility seriously and want to understand the problem before they start solving it.
If that sounds like you, let's talk. The discovery call is free, and it's where we figure out whether the audit makes sense for your situation.
The audit is a standalone deliverable. You'll walk away with a full picture of your AI search visibility, a ranked list of what to fix, and enough context to act on it, whether that's with decipher. or with your own team.
That said, most brands that commission an audit choose to continue into implementation. The natural next step is GEO and technical foundations work: fixing the technical blockers, strengthening entity signals, and building the content architecture that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you.
The audit feeds directly into that work. The findings become the brief. Nothing gets repeated or re-researched.
The audit is also the fastest way to build internal alignment
One of the most common uses for the report is internal. Marketing teams use it to show leadership why AI visibility matters, what the competitive gap looks like, and what investment is required to close it. The data is specific to your brand and your competitors. It's not a generic industry report. That specificity tends to land differently in a boardroom than a slide about "the rise of AI search."
If you want to understand what AI search optimisation actually involves before going further, that's a good place to start.
AI Search Audit FAQ
What is an AI search audit?
How is an AI search audit different from an SEO audit?
What AI platforms does the audit cover?
What do I get at the end?
What do I get at the end?
How long does the audit take?
Do I need to already be doing SEO for the audit to be useful?
Can I use the audit to justify AI search investment internally?
What happens after the audit?
What the decipher. AI search audit covers.
The audit is a 30 to 60 slide strategic report; a human-led diagnostic built around the specific signals AI systems use to decide which brands get cited.
Here's what's inside.
1. AI Citation Visibility Baseline
We run structured prompt testing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews using branded, category, comparison, and buying-intent queries relevant to your business. We document:
Where your brand appears (and where it doesn't)
How accurately AI systems describe you
The sentiment tone of any mentions
Which competitors are being cited instead of you, and why
This gives you a real baseline. Not a guess. Actual evidence of how AI sees your brand today.
2. Technical AI Readiness Assessment
We audit the technical foundations that determine whether AI crawlers can access, parse, and trust your content:
Robots.txt configuration for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Bing's AI crawler
Schema markup quality not just presence, but attribute completeness and entity relationships
JavaScript rendering issues that hide content from AI crawlers reading raw HTML
Sitemap health and internal linking structure
llms.txt configuration (the emerging standard for AI crawler guidance)
Core technical SEO signals that feed into AI trust models
3. Brand Entity & Signal Consistency Audit
AI systems build a profile of your brand from dozens of sources. If those sources contradict each other, the model loses confidence. We check:
Consistency of your brand description, founding story, and positioning across your site, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, Google Business Profile, and key directories
Author and expert entity signals (E-E-A-T indicators that AI systems use to assess credibility)
Third-party citation landscape who's referencing you, and whether those sources carry authority weight
4. Content Citation-Worthiness Review
We evaluate a selection of your key pages against the criteria AI systems use when deciding what to quote or reference:
Answer-format readiness (direct, extractable responses to real queries)
Conversational query alignment (how your content maps to the prompts people actually use in AI tools)
Topical authority signals and content gap analysis
Brand voice clarity (distinct brands get cited more; bland ones don't)
5. Competitor Signal Positioning
You don't exist in a vacuum. We analyse five to seven direct competitors to map where citation share is currently being won and lost. This includes the signals your competitors have that you don't, and the gaps that are realistically winnable in the near term.
6. Prioritised Recommendations
The final section of the report is a ranked action plan. Not a list of 40 things to fix. A prioritised roadmap that separates:
Quick wins: fixes that remove blockers fast
Medium-term moves: content and authority work that compounds over 60 to 90 days
Strategic plays: longer-horizon positioning decisions that build durable citation advantage
Every recommendation is tied to a specific finding.
Find out where your brand stands in AI Search
Most brands are making AI search decisions based on assumptions. The audit replaces those assumptions with evidence.
You'll know exactly where you appear, where you don't, why your competitors are getting cited instead of you, and what to do about it. In a format you can act on, share internally, and build a strategy from.
The discovery call is free. It's a short conversation to understand your brand, your competitive landscape, and what the audit would cover. No commitment required.
Book your free discovery call
Find out where your brand stands in AI Search
Most brands are making AI search decisions based on assumptions. The audit replaces those assumptions with evidence.
You'll know exactly where you appear, where you don't, why your competitors are getting cited instead of you, and what to do about it. In a format you can act on, share internally, and build a strategy from.
The discovery call is free. It's a short conversation to understand your brand, your competitive landscape, and what the audit would cover. No commitment required.
Book your free discovery call
Find out where your brand stands in AI Search
Most brands are making AI search decisions based on assumptions. The audit replaces those assumptions with evidence.
You'll know exactly where you appear, where you don't, why your competitors are getting cited instead of you, and what to do about it. In a format you can act on, share internally, and build a strategy from.
The discovery call is free. It's a short conversation to understand your brand, your competitive landscape, and what the audit would cover. No commitment required.
Book your free discovery call