Is your website ready for AI search? A 12-point checklist

Why a checklist

AI search systems do not rank pages; they read them and decide whether to trust them. The good news is that most of what earns that trust is checkable. Here are the twelve things we verify first on every audit. You can do most of them yourself with a browser and Google Search Console.

The technical foundation

1. Crawlers can reach the site. Open /robots.txt on your domain. It should allow search engines and, unless you have decided otherwise, the AI crawlers: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. A Disallow: / left over from a staging site is more common than you would think.

2. One URL per page. Visit a page with and without a trailing slash, and with www and without. All but one version should redirect. If two versions both load, search engines see duplicates and split the credit between them.

3. Fast on a phone. Run your homepage and a service page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile. Under 2.5 seconds for the largest content paint is the target. Slow pages are read less and trusted less.

4. Clean titles and descriptions. Every page needs a unique title under about 60 characters and a description under 160 that says what the page is. These are the first thing every system reads.

5. A sitemap that matches reality. /sitemap.xml should list every page you want found and nothing you do not, with last-modified dates that reflect real changes.

The content

6. Answers come first. Open your main service page. Does the first paragraph say what you do, for whom and where, in plain language? Systems that quote answers take them from the top of the page.

7. Questions are visible. The questions customers ask, about cost, timing, area served, what is included, should appear on the page as headings or an FAQ, with the answers right there. Hidden or paraphrased questions do not get matched.

8. The page proves it. Real photos of the business, named people, specific services and locations, and dates on articles. Generic text with stock photography reads as generic to machines too.

The facts

9. Structured data describes you correctly. Use Google’s Rich Results Test on your homepage. There should be an Organization or LocalBusiness entry with your name, address, phone and services, and it should match the visible page exactly.

10. Name, address and phone agree everywhere. Check the website footer, the contact page, the schema, your Google Business Profile and the top directories. One old phone number or suite address in the wrong place lowers confidence in all of them.

11. Your Google Business Profile is complete. Categories, services, hours, photos, and a description that matches the website. For local searches, this profile is often the source AI systems trust most.

12. There is an llms.txt. Open /llms.txt on your domain. If it exists, it should summarize the business, list the key pages and give contact details, and it should agree with the sitemap and the site. If it does not exist, it is a quick win.

What to do with the results

Most sites fail three to six of these, and the failures cluster: technical issues on one side, content that never states the answer on the other. Fix the technical items first, because nothing else counts until the site can be read. Then rewrite the top pages to answer first. Then make the facts agree everywhere.

If you would rather have us run the checks and explain what we find, request the free AI Readiness Audit and we will reply within a day.