A Clickhouse Media tool Edition 1 · Reviewed Oct 19, 2026
00 / Brief
25 questions
5 pillars, weighted
About 6 minutes
Runs in your browser
Generative engine optimization · Readiness audit

Can AI assistants find, trust and quote your business?

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews now answer the questions your customers used to type into a search box. Score your site on the five things that decide whether they cite you, and get the fixes in the order that pays back first.

AI answer, citedIllustration
QWho does same-week crowns in Back Bay, Boston?
A few practices offer it. Harbor Dental Studio books same-week crown appointments with evening hours, and lists crowns from $1,150 on its site.1a b c Two others offer next-month slots.23
1 harbordental.example/crowns2 directory.example3 news.example
  1. aA direct answer in the page’s opening lines
  2. bA specific number written in text
  3. cA crawlable page the engine can link to
40%Top visibility gain from adding citations, quotations or statistics, KDD 2024 study1
2BMonthly users of Google AI Overviews, as Google reported in July 202514
1%Of visits where users clicked a link inside a Google AI summary, Pew 20259
58%Lower click-through for the top result against forecast when an AI Overview shows, Ahrefs 202610
01 / Audit

The GEO readiness audit.

Answer for your site as it is today. The answers start preset to a typical small business, so you can see a result first.

A Access25
B Entity15
C Answers20
D Evidence20
E Off-site20

Crawlability and access

Pillar A · weight 25 · 5 questions

Whether AI crawlers can reach and read your pages at all. This is the gate: if it fails, nothing else can help.

A1Your robots.txt and firewall let the AI search crawlers in: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot.

Why it mattersBlocking a search crawler takes you out of that engine’s answers. Training bots such as GPTBot are a separate choice.

A2The text of your key pages is in the HTML your server sends, not added by JavaScript after the page loads.

Why it mattersIn Vercel’s 2024 measurement, the crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity fetched pages but ran no JavaScript.

A3Your important pages are indexed in Google and Bing, checked in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Why it mattersGoogle says a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews.

A4An XML sitemap lists your key pages with accurate last-modified dates, and it is submitted.

Why it mattersIt helps every crawler find new and changed pages without guessing.

A5Pages you want quoted have no nosnippet or tight max-snippet rules, and no login wall or pop-up covering the text.

Why it mattersGoogle’s snippet controls also limit what its AI features can show from your page.

Next: Entity clarity and consistency

Entity clarity and consistency

Pillar B · weight 15 · 5 questions

Whether every source on the web describes the same business, in the same words.

B1Your business name, address and phone number are identical on your site, Google Business Profile and main directories.

Why it mattersMatching details let a system treat every mention as the same business instead of several.

B2An About page says, in plain sentences, who you are, what you do, where, since when, and who runs it.

Why it mattersIt is the page an engine reads to describe you, so make the description easy to lift.

B3Your home page has Organization or LocalBusiness structured data, with sameAs links to your official profiles.

Why it mattersGoogle does not require it for AI features, but it states your facts in a machine-readable form and ties your profiles together.

B4You use one consistent one-sentence description of what you do, on your site and on every profile.

Why it mattersIf every source says the same sentence, that sentence is the one most likely to be repeated about you.

B5Each core service or product has its own page with a clear, specific name.

Why it mattersAn engine can only cite you for a service if one page clearly covers it.

Next: Answer-first content

Answer-first content

Pillar C · weight 20 · 5 questions

Whether your pages hold short, direct passages an engine can lift as an answer.

C1Your key pages open with a direct answer of 40 to 60 words before any background.

Why it mattersA short, complete answer near the top is the easiest passage for a system to lift and quote.

C2Headings are phrased as the questions customers ask, for example “How much does a crown cost in Boston?”

Why it mattersPeople ask assistants full questions, so a heading that matches the question signals the answer below it.

C3You publish FAQs that answer real customer questions in two to four sentences each.

Why it mattersShort, self-contained answers are easy to quote without the surrounding page.

C4You have pages for decision questions: costs, comparisons, alternatives and how to choose.

Why it mattersBuyers ask assistants to compare and recommend. Without these pages there is nothing of yours to cite.

C5Prices or price ranges, timelines and service areas are written in the text, not only in images or PDFs.

Why it mattersA figure inside an image or a PDF is easy to miss, and often missing from the answer.

Next: Evidence

Evidence

Pillar D · weight 20 · 5 questions

Whether your claims carry the specifics that make them worth quoting: numbers, sources, people, dates.

D1Your pages use specific numbers, such as prices, outcomes, timeframes and counts, rather than vague claims.

Why it mattersAdding statistics was one of the methods the authors name as most effective in the KDD 2024 GEO study.

D2Claims cite named sources you can link to: studies, regulators, standards or official data.

Why it mattersCiting sources gave the biggest lift to lower-ranked pages in the GEO study, +115.1% for pages ranked fifth.

D3Pages quote named people: your experts, clients or independent third parties.

Why it mattersAdding quotations was the strongest single edit in the GEO study.

D4Key pages show a named author or reviewer, with their role or credentials.

Why it mattersIt tells readers and machines who stands behind the claim. No public test isolates its effect on AI citations yet.

D5Pages show a visible last-updated date, and you review them at least once a year.

Why it mattersA date tells a reader, human or machine, whether the facts are still current.

Next: Off-site signals

Off-site signals

Pillar E · weight 20 · 5 questions

Whether other people’s sites, reviews and lists vouch for you.

E1Credible third-party sites mentioned your business in the last 12 months: press, trade bodies, partners.

Why it mattersIn Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands, web mentions had the strongest link to appearing in AI Overviews.

E2You have recent reviews on Google and on one or two platforms for your industry, and you reply to them.

Why it mattersReviews are third-party text about you, and for local businesses they are often what an assistant summarizes.

E3You are listed in the main directories for your industry and city, with matching details.

Why it mattersDirectories are among the sources assistants check when asked to recommend a local business.

E4You appear in “best of” lists, comparisons or roundups written by others.

Why it mattersA 2025 study found AI search engines lean heavily on earned, third-party media over brand-owned pages.

E5People from your business contribute, under their own names, to podcasts, forums or industry communities.

Why it mattersIt creates more independent text that ties your people to your topic.

That is all 25See your score ↓
Your scoreEdition 1
ABCDE
46of 100
Verdict

Partly visible

An assistant can probably find you, but it has little reason to quote you over a competitor. Work through the fixes in order.

PillarPoints
ACrawlability and access21.9 / 25
BEntity clarity and consistency10.0 / 15
CAnswer-first content5.0 / 20
DEvidence3.3 / 20
EOff-site signals5.5 / 20
Fix first, by impact against effortGain
  1. 01Cite named, linkable sources for the claims on your top pages.D2 · Evidence · Low effort+5.0
  2. 02Show a named author or reviewer, with role or credentials, on key pages.D4 · Evidence · Low effort+3.3
  3. 03Open each key page with a direct answer of 40 to 60 words.C1 · Answers · Medium effort+5.0
  4. 04Publish pages for cost, comparison and how-to-choose questions.C4 · Answers · Medium effort+5.0
  5. 05Add quotes from named experts, clients or third parties.D3 · Evidence · Medium effort+5.0
  6. 06Earn mentions on credible third-party sites: trade press, associations, partners.E1 · Off-site · High effort+5.5
  7. 07Get included in independent best-of lists, comparisons and roundups.E4 · Off-site · High effort+5.5
  8. 08Claim the main directory listings for your industry and city, with matching details.E3 · Off-site · Low effort+1.8

10 smaller fixes not shown. Gains are points out of 100.

How it scores. Each answer counts Yes as 1, Partly as 0.5, and No or Not sure as 0. Within a pillar, questions are weighted by impact (1 to 3), and each pillar contributes its weight to a total of 100. Why these weights: access gets 25 because nothing else counts if crawlers cannot read the page, and the vendors document exactly how their bots behave.38 Evidence and off-site signals get 20 each because they have the strongest published support: a controlled test for evidence1 and large observational studies for third-party mentions.122 Answer-first content gets 20 because it is what an engine lifts, though no public test isolates it. Entity clarity gets 15 because its case rests on reasoning rather than tests. The gate: if A1 is No or Not sure, the score is capped at 30. The fix list ranks each gap by the points it would add divided by effort (1 low, 3 high). The weights are Clickhouse judgment from the evidence on this page, not a published standard. A high score raises your chances. It does not guarantee a citation, because each engine chooses its sources and the answers change from run to run.

02 / Figures
16 rows
15 Sourced
1 Confirm
Checked Oct 19, 2026

What is known, from the people who measured it.

Most GEO advice online is vendor blogs repeating each other. Every figure here is traced to the study, dataset or official documentation it came from. Where we could not confirm a claim at source, the row says Confirm.

Benchmark or ruleValueStatus
Citations, quotations and statistics, lab testThe authors report relative gains of about 30 to 40% for these methods on the study’s main measure of visibility in generated answers. Keyword stuffing scored below the unoptimized baseline. Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024.1Sourced
Who gains most from those editsLower-ranked pages. Citing sources lifted visibility 115.1% for pages ranked fifth, while top-ranked pages lost 30.3% on average.1Sourced
Whose content AI search citesA 2025 study of AI search services found a strong, consistent preference for earned, third-party media over brand-owned and social content.2Sourced
GPTBot (OpenAI)Crawls content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models. Blocking it is a training opt-out, and does not remove you from ChatGPT search.3Sourced
OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User (OpenAI)OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT search, and sites that block it are left out of search answers. ChatGPT-User fetches pages when a user asks, and robots.txt rules may not apply to it.3Sourced
ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User (Anthropic)ClaudeBot collects training data. Claude-SearchBot indexes for search results. Claude-User fetches pages for a user’s question. Each is controlled separately in robots.txt.4Sourced
PerplexityBot and Perplexity-UserPerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in Perplexity results and is not used for model training. Perplexity-User fetches pages for a user’s question and generally ignores robots.txt.5Sourced
Google-ExtendedA robots.txt token that controls use of your content for training Gemini models and for grounding. Google says it does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search.6Sourced
Eligibility for Google AI Overviews and AI ModeThe page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Google says no special optimization, AI text file or schema.org markup is required, and the snippet controls nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex apply.7Sourced
JavaScript rendering by AI crawlersIn Vercel’s December 2024 measurement, none of the major AI crawlers rendered JavaScript. Gemini (through Googlebot) and Applebot were the exceptions.8Sourced
Clicks when Google shows an AI summaryUsers clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one, and clicked a link inside the summary on 1%. Pew Research Center, 900 US adults, March 2025.9Sourced
Top-result click-through with an AI OverviewA 58% lower average click-through rate for the page ranked first in December 2025, compared with the rate Ahrefs forecast, from December 2023 data, had AI Overviews not launched. Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords, February 2026.10Sourced
Organic click-through on AI Overview queriesFell from 1.76% to 0.61% between June 2024 and September 2025. Brands cited in the overview had a 35% higher organic click-through rate (0.70% vs 0.52%) than those not cited, a correlation. Seer Interactive, 3,119 queries, November 2025.11Sourced
Signals linked to appearing in AI OverviewsBranded web mentions had the strongest correlation (0.664), ahead of branded anchors (0.527), branded search volume (0.392) and backlinks (0.218). Ahrefs, 75,000 brands, May 2025.12Sourced
Reach of Google AI Overviews2 billion monthly users, up from 1.5 billion in May 2025, as reported from Alphabet’s July 2025 earnings call.14Sourced
Whether AI engines use llms.txtllms.txt is a proposal from September 2024, not a standard.13 Google says no AI text file is needed for its AI features. We found no statement from OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity that their answers use it, and are checking.Confirm
Sources
  1. Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, KDD 2024. arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  2. Chen, Wang, Chen and Koudas, “Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI Search”, September 2025. arxiv.org/abs/2509.08919. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  3. OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI crawlers” (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User). developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  4. Anthropic Help Center, article on ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User and how to block them. support.claude.com/en/articles/8896518. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  5. Perplexity, “Perplexity crawlers” (PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User). docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  6. Google Search Central, “Google’s common crawlers”, entry for Google-Extended. developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/google-common-crawlers. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  7. Google Search Central, “AI features and your website”, last updated December 10, 2025. developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  8. Vercel, “The rise of the AI crawler”, December 17, 2024. vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  9. Pew Research Center, “Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results”, July 22, 2025. pewresearch.org, July 2025. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  10. Ahrefs, “Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%”, February 4, 2026. ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  11. Seer Interactive, “AIO impact on Google CTR: September 2025 update”, November 4, 2025. seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-september-2025-update. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  12. Ahrefs, “An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)”, May 26, 2025. ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  13. Jeremy Howard, “The /llms.txt file”, a proposal first published September 3, 2024. llmstxt.org. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
  14. TechCrunch, report of Alphabet’s Q2 2025 earnings call: AI Overviews at 2 billion monthly users, July 23, 2025. techcrunch.com, July 2025. Checked Oct 19, 2026.
03 / Evidence
Clickhouse synthesis
October 19, 2026
13 claims graded

The GEO evidence ledger: what is tested, and what is folklore.

We took the thirteen claims we hear most from clients and graded each one by the best public evidence we could trace to its origin. This is our synthesis, not a new study, and the grades will move as better evidence appears.

ClaimGradeWhat the evidence says
Adding statistics, quotations and cited sources gets you quoted more.TestedThe strongest result in the field: 30 to 40% gains in a controlled test across 10,000 queries, partly confirmed on Perplexity.1 Limits: 2023 and 2024 models, and one live engine.
AI answers cut clicks to websites.MeasuredThree independent datasets agree on the direction: Pew’s browsing panel, Ahrefs’ Search Console data and Seer’s client data.91011 The size varies with the method.
AI crawlers see the page the way a visitor does.ContradictedOpenAI’s and Anthropic’s crawlers fetched JavaScript files but did not run them.8 Text added by scripts after load may never be read.
Blocking GPTBot keeps you out of ChatGPT answers.ContradictedOpenAI documents GPTBot as its training crawler. ChatGPT search uses OAI-SearchBot, a separate user agent with its own robots.txt rule.3
Blocking Google-Extended takes you out of AI Overviews.ContradictedGoogle says Google-Extended does not affect Search, and that AI Overviews follow the normal Search controls: Googlebot access and snippet rules.67
You need special schema markup or an AI text file for AI Overviews.ContradictedGoogle states that neither is required.7 Structured data can still state your facts clearly, which is why the audit gives it a low weight, not zero.
Keyword stuffing for AI prompts helps.ContradictedIt scored below the unoptimized baseline in the controlled test, and about 10% worse than baseline on the main measure on Perplexity.1
Third-party mentions matter more than your own pages.CorrelationalWeb mentions are the signal most linked to AI Overview visibility across 75,000 brands, and AI search leans on earned media.122 Neither study proves cause.
Being cited in an AI Overview wins clicks back.CorrelationalCited brands had a 35% higher organic click-through rate (0.70% vs 0.52%) than uncited ones.11 Seer itself notes that stronger brands may simply be cited more often.
Opening with a short, direct answer gets you quoted.ReasonedEngines quote passages, so a self-contained answer is easy to lift. No public controlled test isolates the effect yet. We think it is sound practice, and say so.
Named authors and credentials raise AI citations.ReasonedIt helps readers judge a claim and costs little. We found no public test of its effect on AI citations.
Fresh dates on a page get it cited more.UncheckedVendor studies claim AI engines prefer recent content. We have not traced one to a method we could check, so this is unconfirmed. The audit weights it lowest.
An llms.txt file gets you cited.UnsupportedIt is a proposal, and Google says it is not needed.137 We publish one for every Clickhouse tool site because it is cheap, not because it is proven.
Grades:Tested: controlled experimentMeasured: large observational dataContradicted: tested or documented as falseCorrelational: linked, cause unprovenReasoned: logic, no public testUnchecked or Unsupported: no evidence we could verify

Method. For each claim we looked for the original experiment, dataset or platform documentation, read it, and graded the claim by the strongest of those we could open. Secondary articles were used only to find originals. Every source is listed under the figures table.

Limits. AI engines change their models and source selection often, so documented behavior can change between editions. Lab results may not transfer to every engine. We will re-check each grade at every quarterly edition.

04 / Explained
Five pillars
Three kinds of bot
When to skip GEO

Five pillars, in plain terms.

Generative engine optimization is not a new trick. It is the work of being reachable, recognizable and worth quoting, for systems that write an answer instead of listing ten links.

AWeight 25
Access

Can the bot read the page?

Search crawlers allowed in robots.txt and the firewall, text in the served HTML, pages indexed. If this fails, nothing else on the list matters.

BWeight 15
Entity

Is it clear who you are?

One name, one address, one description, everywhere. An engine that finds “Harbor Dental” and “Harbour Dental Studio LLC” may think it found two businesses.

CWeight 20
Answers

Is there a passage to lift?

A direct answer in the first lines, headings that match real questions, prices and timelines in text. Engines quote passages, not whole pages.

DWeight 20
Evidence

Is it worth quoting?

Specific numbers, named sources, quotations from real people, a named author and a date. This is where the controlled evidence is strongest.

EWeight 20
Off-site

Do others vouch for you?

Press, trade bodies, reviews, directories and independent roundups. AI search leans on what others say about you more than on what you say.

×The limit
No promise

What no audit can do

Each engine picks its sources and changes them between runs. A high score improves your odds. Anyone who guarantees a ChatGPT citation is selling something they do not control.

Robots.txt

Training bots, search bots and user fetchers: what to allow.

Each AI company now runs several crawlers, and they do different jobs. Training bots collect text for future models: GPTBot, ClaudeBot and the Google-Extended token. Search bots build the index an assistant cites from: OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.345 User fetchers visit a page because someone asked about it: ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User, and robots.txt may not bind them.

Allow for visibility

OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot.

Googlebot, which also feeds AI Overviews.7

A business decision

GPTBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended. Blocking them is a training opt-out.

Blocking Google-Extended does not affect Google Search.6

The common mistake is not in robots.txt at all. Bot protection in a firewall or hosting plan often blocks unknown user agents by default. Check both, then confirm in your server logs that the search bots are getting pages back.

The research

What the GEO study tested, and what it did not.

The term generative engine optimization comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton University and IIT Delhi, presented at KDD 2024.1 They rewrote source pages nine ways and measured how much of each page showed up in generated answers across a benchmark of 10,000 queries.

Citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics scored highest. Keyword stuffing scored below the baseline.

The gains were largest for pages that ranked lower to begin with, which is good news for smaller businesses. A later study found AI search engines lean heavily on earned, third-party media.2 Read both with care: the models tested are older than today’s, and most tests ran on a research engine, not on ChatGPT or AI Overviews. They show what tends to work, not what is guaranteed.

Honest framing

When GEO is not your priority yet.

GEO builds on ordinary search foundations. If those are missing, fix them first, because AI features mostly draw on the same indexes.7 Skip GEO for now if:

  • Your site is not indexed, or gets almost no search traffic at all. Start with indexing and the basics.
  • You have no Google Business Profile and you serve a local area. That listing comes first.
  • Your offer is unclear. If customers cannot say what you do and for whom, no engine can either.
  • Nearly all your work comes from referrals and you have no capacity for more. Visibility you cannot serve costs you.
  • Your buyers do not research online, for example a closed trade network. Put the budget where they are.

For everyone else, the first pillar is usually an hour of work and the most valuable hour on the list.

05 / Examples
Three sites
Scored with this audit
Composite cases

Three businesses, three different first fixes.

Illustrative composites, not clients, each scored with the tool above.

Dental practice · Boston, MA

Great reviews, thin pages

44to 64 after four fixes

Crawlers get in and the Google Business Profile is strong, with 300 reviews. But the service pages say “affordable, gentle care”, with no prices, no sources and no named dentist. Evidence scores 1.7 of 20 and answers 1.7 of 20.

First fixesPrices and timelines in text, sources for clinical claims, answer-first openings on the five main treatments, and a crown cost page. About 43 to 86 hours of writing on the planner’s estimates, and no development.
Employment law firm · London

Strong content, door shut

30to 84 after one fix

Named partners, cited case law, dated guides. Uncapped, it scores 78. But the hosting firewall blocks unknown bots, including OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, so the gate caps it at 30. Engines that cannot fetch the guides cannot quote them.

First fixOne firewall rule and a robots.txt check, one to three hours. The score moves to 84 before a word of content changes.
Outdoor gear online store · Denver, CO

Products a crawler cannot see

45to 67 after five fixes

The storefront loads product names, specs and prices with JavaScript after the page opens, so an AI crawler that does not run scripts sees an empty template. Some categories are not indexed. Reviews and listings are in good shape.

First fixesPrerender product and category pages, fix indexing, then add specific specs, sources and buying-guide openings. The rendering work is the big item, 16 to 60 developer hours.
06 / Planner
Tool 2: effort and timeline
Tool 3: entity worksheet

Turn the score into a plan.

Cost the fixes in hours and weeks, then check the one thing most small businesses get wrong without knowing: whether the web describes them the same way everywhere.

Fix planner

Tool 2 of 3
Fixes to cost
Rates (typical market range, not a Clickhouse quote)
h / week
Estimate for 10 fixes

109 to 248 h of work

At your rates that is $9,205 to $21,360. At 10 hours a week, about 13 to 26 weeks of calendar time.

By roleHours · cost
Developer at $100/h22 to 72 h · $2,200 to $7,200
Content and SEO writer at $75/h55 to 112 h · $4,125 to $8,400
PR and outreach at $90/h32 to 64 h · $2,880 to $5,760
SequenceWeeks
  1. 01Access and identityServer-render or prerender key pages; align name, address, phone and description everywhere; organization structured data with sameAs links. 22 to 74 h.Wk 1 to 8
  2. 02Pages that answerAnswer-first openings and figures in text, top 10 pages; question headings and FAQs on top pages; three decision pages: cost, comparison, how to choose; statistics, named sources and quotes on top 10 pages; author bylines and last-updated dates. 55 to 110 h.Wk 9 to 19
  3. 03Earned mentionsEarned mentions: pitches to trade press and roundups; expert contributions to communities, three months. 32 to 64 h.Wk 20 to 26

Earned mentions take months to show in answers. The hours above are the work, not the wait.

Assumptions. Hours are Clickhouse estimates for a site of 20 to 60 pages with about 10 key pages, shown as a low to high range. They are effort estimates, not quotes. Rates default to editable starting points: set them to your own team’s or supplier’s rates. Rates are capped at 2,000 an hour and capacity at 80 hours a week. The currency setting changes the symbol only and does not convert. Phases run one after another, access first, and the week ranges per phase use the high estimate. Earned mentions and reviews keep paying off for months after the hours are spent. Results in AI answers are not guaranteed.

Entity consistency worksheet

Tool 3 of 3
Copy each detail exactly as it appears

Your websiteReference

Google Business Profile

LinkedIn page

Main directory

Industry directory

Consistency

60% consistent

4 mismatches and 4 variants across 15 compared details. Fix mismatches first: they can make one business look like two.

SourceBusiness nameAddressPhoneDescription
Google Business ProfileVariantMatchMatchMatch
LinkedIn pageMismatchVariantBlankMismatch
Main directoryMatchVariantMismatchMismatch
Industry directoryVariantMatchMatchMatch
What to changeStatus
  • LinkedIn page, business name“Harbour Dental Studio LLC”. Does not match the website.Mismatch
  • LinkedIn page, one-line description“A modern dental practice focused on patient experience.” Describes the business differently (0% shared terms).Mismatch
  • Main directory, phone“(617) 555-0199”. Different number.Mismatch
  • Main directory, one-line description“Dentist in Boston offering cleanings, whitening and implants.” Describes the business differently (7% shared terms).Mismatch
  • Google Business Profile, business name“Harbor Dental Studio Back Bay”. Same name with words added or missing.Variant
  • LinkedIn page, address“Boston, MA”. Same address with parts missing.Variant
  • Main directory, address“210 Newbury St, Boston, MA 02116”. Same address with parts missing.Variant
  • Industry directory, business name“Harbor Dental”. Same name with words added or missing.Variant

How it compares. Your website is the reference. Names ignore case, punctuation and legal suffixes such as LLC or Ltd, and count as a variant when one contains the other. Addresses treat common abbreviations as equal (Street and St, Suite and Ste) and count as a variant when parts are missing. Phone numbers compare digits only, ignoring +1 and +44 prefixes. Descriptions compare shared meaningful words: 50% or more counts as consistent, 25% to 50% as drifted. A spelling difference such as Harbor and Harbour counts as a mismatch, because a machine may read it as a different business. Nothing you type leaves this page.

07 / Process
Four steps
About six months

From audit to cited, in four steps.

The technical work is quick. The evidence and the earned mentions take longer, and they are where most of the gains are.

Week 1

Audit and baseline

Score the site, then list 20 to 30 questions your buyers ask and record by hand what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews answer today.

Run the questions by hand, from a clean browser, and save every answer with its date.
Weeks 2 to 3

Open the doors

Allow the AI search crawlers, get key text into the served HTML, fix indexing, and make the name, address and description identical everywhere.

Check server logs to confirm the search bots are getting pages back.
Weeks 3 to 8

Rebuild the answering pages

Answer-first openings, question headings, decision pages, and specific evidence with named sources and quotes on the ten pages that matter most.

One page done well beats ten pages touched lightly.
Months 2 to 6

Earn mentions and re-measure

Reviews, directories, trade press and independent roundups. Re-run the same buyer questions each month and compare with the baseline.

Expect variation between runs. Judge the trend over months, not a single answer.
08 / Questions
14 questions
Plain answers
Ask one we missed →

What owners ask about AI search.

01What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

GEO is the work of making your website easy for AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to find, understand and quote when they write an answer. The term comes from a 2023 research paper presented at KDD 2024. In practice it covers crawler access, a consistent business identity, answer-first pages, specific evidence and mentions on other sites.

02How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?

Make sure OAI-SearchBot can crawl your site, publish pages that answer your buyers’ questions directly with specific facts, keep your business details identical everywhere, and earn mentions on credible third-party sites. None of this guarantees a recommendation, because ChatGPT chooses its sources, but each step removes a reason to leave you out.

03Is GEO different from SEO?

It builds on SEO rather than replacing it. Google says AI Overviews draw on pages that are indexed and eligible for a snippet, so search foundations still come first. GEO adds more weight on quotable passages, cited evidence and what other sites say about you, and it measures success in citations and mentions as well as rankings and clicks.

04Should I block GPTBot in robots.txt?

It is a business decision. OpenAI documents GPTBot as the crawler that collects training data, so blocking it opts you out of training. It does not remove you from ChatGPT search, which uses a separate crawler, OAI-SearchBot. If you want to appear in ChatGPT answers, keep OAI-SearchBot allowed whatever you decide about GPTBot.

05Does blocking Google-Extended remove my site from AI Overviews?

No. Google says Google-Extended controls use of your content for Gemini training and grounding, and does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search. AI Overviews follow the normal Search controls: Googlebot access in robots.txt, and snippet rules such as nosnippet and max-snippet.

06Do I need an llms.txt file for AI search?

Not as far as anyone has shown. llms.txt is a September 2024 proposal for a plain-text guide to a site. Google says no AI text file is needed for its AI features, and we found no statement from OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity that their answers use it. It costs little to publish one, so we do, but do not expect it to change your visibility.

07Does schema markup help me show up in AI Overviews?

Google says there is no special schema.org markup you need for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Organization or LocalBusiness markup still states your name, address and official profiles in a machine-readable form, which supports a consistent identity. Treat it as tidy housekeeping, not a ranking lever.

08Can ChatGPT and Perplexity read JavaScript websites?

Often not fully. In Vercel’s December 2024 measurement, the crawlers of OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity did not run JavaScript, while Gemini, through Googlebot, and Applebot did. If your text is added by scripts after the page loads, use server-side rendering or prerendering for the pages you want quoted.

09Do AI Overviews reduce traffic to my website?

For many informational searches, yes. Pew Research Center found users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits that showed an AI summary, against 15% without one. Ahrefs found the top-ranked page’s click-through rate on keywords with an AI Overview was 58% below its forecast from December 2023 data, a correlation. Commercial and local searches can behave differently, so check your own Search Console data.

10How long does GEO take to work?

Access fixes can take effect within days, once crawlers revisit; OpenAI says robots.txt changes for its search bot take about 24 hours. Content changes show as pages are recrawled, usually over weeks. Earned mentions and reviews build over months. Plan on six months before judging the trend.

11Can an agency guarantee my business will appear in AI answers?

No. Each engine chooses its own sources, and answers vary from one run to the next even for the same question. An honest agency can improve the odds and show you the trend over time. Treat any guarantee of ChatGPT or AI Overview placement as a warning sign.

12How do I check whether AI assistants mention my business?

Write down 20 to 30 questions your buyers ask, run each one by hand in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, and record who is named and which sources are cited, with the date. Repeat monthly with the same questions. Check each service’s terms of use before using any tool that queries it automatically. Doing it by hand avoids the question.

13What kind of content gets cited in AI answers?

In the KDD 2024 GEO study, pages that cited sources, quoted people and included specific statistics gained the most visibility, by about 30 to 40%. Pages that answer a question directly, use the words buyers use, and are backed by independent mentions are the ones an engine can quote with confidence.

14When is GEO not worth doing yet?

When your site is not indexed, when a local business has no Google Business Profile, when your offer is unclear, or when your buyers do not research online. Fix the foundations or the offer first. GEO amplifies a business that is already easy to understand. It does not make one.

Free checklist

The one-page GEO readiness checklist we use on every audit.

  • Robots.txt lines for the AI search bots
  • Firewall and bot-protection checks
  • Name, address and description sheet
  • Answer-first page template
  • Evidence checklist for every key page
  • Thirty buyer questions to test by hand
Request the checklist → One page, sent by a Clickhouse strategist. Ask for it in the form below.
09 / Who built this
[name, role]Strategy lead, GEO
[name, role]Technical SEO and content
Who built this tool

Clickhouse Media, Nicosia.

Clickhouse is a strategy-first marketing agency. Decisions before deliverables: we decide what a business should be known for, and by whom, then build the pages and the proof that make search engines and AI assistants say so. We measure the result in inquiries, customers, revenue and margin, not likes.

Based inNicosia, Cyprus Works withBusinesses in Cyprus and internationally, including the US LanguagesEnglish and Greek Websiteclickhouse.media MethodEvery figure on this page traced to its source, re-checked each quarter
10 / Contact

Want a second pair of eyes on your score?

Send us your score and your site. A Clickhouse strategist checks the answers that matter most against the live site and tells you, in plain words, what to fix first and what to leave alone.

  • 01A full GEO audit of your site, with the baseline answers recorded by hand
  • 02Technical fixes: crawler access, rendering and structured data
  • 03An evidence and earned-media plan for the pages that sell
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