A GEO checklist tests whether AI assistants and search engines can fetch your website, whether your pages answer customer questions clearly and with support, and whether information about your business says the same thing everywhere. This GEO checklist has twenty checks in five groups: access, content, business information, mentions outside your site and measurement. Each point explains how to check it yourself.
Start with the first group. If a search bot cannot fetch your page, better content will not help.
Five groups, in this order
- AccessCan search bots fetch and read your pages? Points 1 to 6.
- ContentDo your pages answer the questions customers ask? Points 7 to 12.
- Business informationDo your site and your profiles say the same thing about who you are? Points 13 to 16.
- Outside your siteWhat do other sites say about you? Points 17 and 18.
- MeasurementDo you know what AI assistants say about you and what it brings in? Points 19 and 20.
Access: can search bots fetch your pages?
| # | Check | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | robots.txt allows the search bots of the platforms where you want to be visible: Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. | Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. Look for lines with User-agent and Disallow. A line Disallow: / under one of these names or under User-agent: * blocks the whole site. |
| 2 | You have made a deliberate choice about training bots, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and the Google-Extended token. | Look in the same file. OpenAI says the settings for search and training work independently. According to Google, Google-Extended has no effect on your place in Google Search. |
| 3 | Important pages have no unintended noindex, in the code or in the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header. | View the page source and search for noindex. Check the headers in your browser’s developer tools (Network tab). |
| 4 | Pages return status code 200 and are not behind a login or a security layer that blocks bots. | Use URL Inspection in Google Search Console. A search bot cannot read a page that returns an error code or asks for a login. |
| 5 | The most important text is in the HTML the server sends, not added later by JavaScript. | Right-click the page, choose “View page source” and search for a sentence from your main text. Google notes that not every bot can run JavaScript (JavaScript SEO basics). |
| 6 | Each page’s canonical points to the right version, and that version works and may be indexed. | Search the page source for rel="canonical". Open the URL it contains and check that the page loads without a redirect, an error or a noindex. |
More on bots and robots.txt in Allowing or blocking AI crawlers with robots.txt. For JavaScript and server HTML, read Can AI crawlers read your website?
Content: do your pages answer customers’ questions?
| # | Check | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | Every important page opens with the answer to the question people come for. | Read only the first paragraph. Do you know the answer afterwards? If not, rewrite that paragraph. |
| 8 | You have pages for the questions customers really ask, including questions about cost, differences and suitability. | Put the questions from your inbox, quote requests and customer conversations next to your website. Note which questions have no answer of their own. |
| 9 | Facts have a source and figures have a year. | Look for numbers and claims on your pages. Does it say where they come from? In the GEO study (2024), citations and statistics gave the largest increase in visibility within the test setup. |
| 10 | The “last updated” date matches the content. | Check whether prices, rules and terms still applied on that date. Google warns against changing dates to make a page seem fresher. |
| 11 | Articles and advice pages show who wrote or checked the text. | Check whether a name with a role or background is visible. Google mentions clear author information under the question of who created the content. |
| 12 | Every page has its own title, description and heading structure, and covers one topic. | Search the page source for <title>, meta name="description" and <h1>. Two pages with the same title compete with each other. |
Point 7 is the quickest to improve. Here is what that looks like for a made-up heating company:
The first paragraph of a service page, before and after
VoorAt Warmtehuis Heating, craftsmanship and service come first. We are happy to think along with you about all your questions on heating and sustainability.
NaReplacing a boiler starts with a survey at your home. You then receive a quote covering the boiler, the work and the removal of your old boiler. Below, we explain what happens at each step.
How to write text like this is covered in Writing content AI assistants can cite.
Business information: do systems know who you are?
| # | Check | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| 13 | Your name, address, phone number and opening hours are the same everywhere: on your website, in your Google Business Profile, in your registration with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KvK) or your local business register, and in profiles on other sites. | Put the details from each place side by side in a table. Google lists an up-to-date Business Profile among the basics for its AI features. |
| 14 | Your homepage or about page contains Organization schema with, among other things, your name, URL, logo and links to your profiles (sameAs). | View the page source and search for application/ld+json. Google describes the fields in Organization structured data. Test the code with the Rich Results Test. |
| 15 | An about page says who you are, what you deliver, for whom and where. | Read the page as an outsider would. Is your speciality stated in concrete terms? |
| 16 | Structured data matches the visible text on the page. | Compare prices, names and addresses in the JSON-LD with what visitors see. Google explicitly asks for that match. |
For point 13, it helps to actually put the details side by side. Differences then stand out straight away:
The same bakery in three places
| Own website | Google Business Profile | Industry directory | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | De Korenschoof Bakery | De Korenschoof Bakery | Korenschoof Bread and Pastry |
| Address | 12 Example Street, Zwolle | 12 Example Street, Zwolle | 3 Old Market, Zwolle |
| Saturday | 8.00 to 16.00 | 8.00 to 16.00 | Closed |
| Website | example.com | example.com | None |
More in Make sure search engines and AI know who you are.
Outside your site: what do others say about you?
| # | Check | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| 17 | Your profiles on review and industry sites are up to date and you reply to them. | Search for your business name in Google and open the first profiles. Is your offer still correct? Do you respond to questions? |
| 18 | Mentions on other sites, such as trade associations, suppliers and local media, use your correct name and website. | Search for your business name in quotation marks. Ask for a correction where details are out of date. |
AI assistants that search live do not only fetch your own site. Google describes how its AI features search across several data sources. An outdated profile elsewhere can end up in an answer that way.
Is De Korenschoof Bakery in Zwolle open on Saturdays?
According to a listing in an online industry directory, De Korenschoof Bakery is closed on Saturdays. Check the opening hours with the bakery itself, as details on other sites can be out of date.
Bronnen: directory.example.com
Measurement: do you know what AI assistants say about you?
| # | Check | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | You regularly put a fixed set of customer questions to the same AI assistants and record the answers. | Use a spreadsheet with columns for date, platform, question, mentioned yes or no, competitors mentioned and source links. Ask each question in a new conversation. |
| 20 | You measure traffic from search engines and AI assistants. | Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode in the Web search type in Search Console, and a separate generative AI report shows how often your pages appeared in those features (Google, June 2026). Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity and other assistants show up as referral traffic in your web analytics. |
How to set up point 19 is covered in How do you measure your visibility in AI answers? For point 20, the method is in Tracking traffic from ChatGPT and other AI assistants in Google Analytics 4.
Which points does Atlas investigate?
Atlas, the research engine developed by Outseen, investigates the public code and technical signals a website returns. From this checklist, Atlas technically tests the robots rules (point 1), indexing instructions in code and headers (point 3), HTTP responses (point 4), canonicals and what the target page actually returns (point 6), and titles, descriptions and headings (point 12). Atlas reads the HTML the server sends and does not examine what only appears after JavaScript runs. Our specialists assess the points on content, mentions outside your site and AI answers. For a first impression of a limited number of technical items, use the website check.
What does this mean for your business?
You do not have to do all twenty points at once. Go through points 1 to 6 first: they are the least work, and a fault there blocks everything after it. If you find a block or a wrong canonical, have it fixed first by whoever builds or manages your website.
The points on content and business information are ongoing work. Pick the five questions customers ask most often, check whether each one has a page that opens with the answer, and put your business details side by side once. Measuring only makes sense once you know which questions you are following, so record that list before you start.