Short answer: A GEO (generative engine optimization) audit asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude the questions your buyers ask, records who gets named and which sites the answers cite, then checks your site and listings for the reasons it isn't you.
You get a baseline you can measure against later and a fix list in order of what matters most.
What the audit checks
| Part | What we check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer questions | 10 or more questions your buyers really ask, sent to each assistant, more than once | Shows who is named today, by assistant and by question |
| Cited sources | Every site each answer links to as a source | These are the pages that decide the answer. Most are not yours |
| Your site | Whether AI crawlers are allowed in, whether pages state plainly what you do and for whom, and the structured data behind them | An assistant can't recommend what it can't read |
| Company facts | Your name, services and location across directories, listings and profiles | Facts that disagree make you a risky answer |
| Competitors | What the named companies have that you don't: lists they're on, pages they've published | Turns "they're winning" into a list of things to do |
What an audit can't do
Promise you a place in an AI answer. The AI companies decide what their assistants say. An audit shows where you stand and what is in your hands to change.
What you get at the end
- A table of every question and assistant: named or not, in what position, and who was named instead.
- The sites the answers cited, counted, so you know which lists, directories and articles to get onto.
- A ranked fix list for your site and listings, written so your team or ours can do it.
- The raw answers and the date, so the same check can be repeated and compared next month.
An example: our own audit
When we audited Advance Labs on November 9, 2026, none of 70 answers from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini named us, across ten buyer questions. The answers cited 244 other sites.
One of those ten questions was "GEO audit service for B2B companies". The answers cited loudface.co, rocktherankings.com and ruess-group.com four times each. That is what the audit is for: a dated starting point, and a list of the exact sites to work on. We published the method and every number.
Read our 0 of 70 auditFor a client the result can look very different. AI assistants named Kuzyn Builds, a London, Ontario builder whose site we built and track, in 29 of 29 checks for "best ADU builder in London Ontario" between June 27, 2026 and November 9, 2026. One client and one question, so read it as an example, not a promise.
Kuzyn Builds case studyWhat you can check yourself first
Run the free site check
Our free check at advancelabs.dev/tools/audit shows in about a minute whether AI assistants can read your site. It covers the "your site" part of the table above.
Ask three questions yourself
Put three of your buyers' questions into ChatGPT and Perplexity and write down who gets named. Use a logged-out window so your history doesn't shape the answer.
Look at the sources
Open the links each answer cites. If the same two or three "best of" lists keep appearing, those are worth more to you than another blog post.
What a quick check can't give you is the full picture: every assistant, every question, more than one run, the sources counted, and the same check repeated every month. That's what the paid audit and the maintenance after it are for.
Run the free site checkWho it's for
- B2B companies whose buyers now ask an AI assistant who to hire before they search.
- In-house marketing teams that need a number to report, not a feeling.
- Marketing agencies whose clients ask about ChatGPT. We run the audit behind your agency, under your name.
Agencies can start with one client.
White-label AEO for agenciesCommon questions
Is a GEO audit the same as an AEO audit?
Yes, in practice. GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) are two names for getting named in AI answers. Some people also call it an AI visibility audit.
How much does a GEO audit cost?
It depends on how many questions, services and locations need checking, so we quote after a 30-minute call, in writing, before anything starts.
What do you need from us?
Your website, the questions your buyers ask, and the companies you lose deals to. Read access to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools helps, but the audit runs without it.
Which assistants do you check?
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, through their official APIs with web search turned on, so no answer is shaped by someone's logged-in history.
What happens after the audit?
You can take the fix list and do it yourself. Or we do the fixes and re-run the same questions every month as maintenance, so you see what moved.
Related guides
After the audit
Want this done and re-checked every month? Our monthly maintenance re-runs your buying questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, ships the fixes that keep you out of the answers, and reports what moved. Or run the free check on your site first at advancelabs.dev/tools/audit.
See how it works