Free GEO Audit Tools for AI Visibility

You don’t need expensive tools to audit your AI search visibility. The most critical GEO checks — AI crawler access, content structure, schema markup, and basic citation monitoring — can all be done with free tools and manual methods. This guide walks through every free audit step.

Key takeaway: A complete free GEO audit covers four areas: technical access (can AI crawlers reach your content?), content quality (is your content structured for AI extraction?), structured data (do you have schema markup?), and citation status (are AI engines actually citing you?). Free tools cover all four. This relates closely to what we cover in How AI Search is Changing Consumer Behavior in 2026.

How Do You Audit AI Crawler Access for Free?

The first and most critical check: can AI search engines actually crawl your site?

Check 1: Robots.txt (30 seconds)

Open https://yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser. Look for these user agents:

If you see Disallow: / for any of these agents, AI crawlers are blocked from your entire site. If there’s no mention of these agents at all, check for a blanket User-agent: * with Disallow: / — this blocks everything.

What to do if crawlers are blocked:

Add explicit allow rules to your robots.txt:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Check 2: JavaScript rendering (2 minutes)

Disable JavaScript in your browser (Chrome: Settings → Privacy → Site settings → JavaScript → Disabled) and load your important pages. If the main content disappears, AI crawlers likely can’t see it either.

Most AI crawlers don’t execute JavaScript as comprehensively as Googlebot. Content that requires client-side rendering is at risk of being invisible to AI engines. For more on this, see our guide to On-Page SEO Checklist 2026: 25 Essential Optimizations.

Check 3: Google Search Console crawl stats (5 minutes)

In Search Console, go to Settings → Crawl Stats. Look for crawl requests from user agents you don’t recognize — some AI bots show up in Google’s crawl data. Also check your response time distribution — slow responses (>2 seconds) may cause AI crawlers to abandon requests.

Check 4: Server log analysis (30 minutes)

If you have access to server logs (Apache access logs, Nginx logs, or Cloudflare analytics), search for AI bot user agent strings:

grep -i "gptbot\|perplexitybot\|chatgpt-user\|anthropic" access.log | head -50

This shows you which AI bots are actually visiting your site, how often, and which pages they access. No visits from major AI bots is a red flag — even if your robots.txt allows them, something else might be blocking access (firewall, CDN rules, rate limiting).

How Do You Audit Content Structure for AI Readiness?

AI engines extract and cite content that’s well-structured, clearly written, and factually dense. Here’s how to audit your content for free. Our Why JavaScript Kills Your AI Visibility guide covers this in detail.

Check 1: Heading hierarchy (free browser tools)

Install the HeadingsMap browser extension (Chrome/Firefox). It shows the heading structure of any page in a sidebar. Check that:

• Every page has exactly one H1
• Headings follow a logical hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3, no skipping levels)
• Headings are descriptive and contain topic keywords
• There are 6-12 H2 sections on long-form content

Why this matters for GEO: AI engines use heading structure to understand content organization. A page with clear headings about specific subtopics is easier for AI to parse and cite specific sections from. As we discuss in GEO vs SEO: What’s the Difference and Do You Need Both?, this is a critical factor.

Check 2: Content clarity and citability

Read through your top 10 pages and check for “citable statements” — clear, factual sentences that AI engines could extract as answers to questions.

Good citable statement: “Core Web Vitals has three metrics: LCP (loading speed), INP (interactivity), and CLS (visual stability).”

Poor citable statement: “Performance is really important for websites and you should definitely make sure things load fast.”

For each important page, you should find at least 5-10 clear, factual statements that directly answer common questions in your field.

Check 3: Content comprehensiveness

Compare your top pages against the “People Also Ask” questions in Google for the same topic. Enter your target keyword in Google and note the PAA questions. Does your content answer these questions?

If Google shows 8 PAA questions and your content only addresses 3 of them, you have content gaps that reduce both your ranking potential and your AI citation potential.

Check 4: Author and expertise signals

Check whether your content has:

• Named authors with bios
• Author credentials or expertise mentioned
• Links to author profiles (LinkedIn, academic profiles)
• Date published and last updated
• Sources or references cited

AI engines increasingly weight E-E-A-T signals. Content with clear authorship and expertise markers is more likely to be cited as a trustworthy source.

How Do You Audit Structured Data for Free?

Structured data (schema markup) helps AI engines understand your content’s context, entities, and relationships. If you want to go deeper, Perplexity Market Share & Growth (2026) breaks this down step by step.

Google Rich Results Test (free)

Visit https://search.google.com/test/rich-results and enter your URL. This tool:

• Detects all structured data on the page
• Validates it against Google’s requirements
• Shows warnings and errors
• Previews how rich results would appear

Run this on your top 20 pages. Common findings:

• No structured data at all (most common)
• Invalid structured data (missing required properties)
• Structured data that doesn’t match visible content

Schema Markup Validator (free)

Visit https://validator.schema.org/ for a more detailed validation that covers all schema.org types, not just Google-supported ones. This is useful for checking markup that helps AI engines even if it doesn’t trigger Google rich results. (We explore this further in Why Every Page Needs an FAQ Section for GEO.)

What schema to check for:

Manual JSON-LD check:

View your page source (Ctrl+U) and search for application/ld+json. This shows your structured data in raw form. Verify it contains accurate information that matches what’s visible on the page.

If you have no structured data at all, adding basic Article schema to your blog posts and Organization schema to your about page are the two highest-impact additions for GEO.

How Do You Monitor AI Citations for Free?

Citation monitoring without paid tools requires manual effort, but it’s entirely feasible for tracking your most important queries.

The free monitoring workflow:

Step 1: Create your query list.

Build a spreadsheet with 20-30 queries in these categories:

• Brand queries: “What is [brand]?”, “[brand] review”
• Category queries: “Best [your category] tools”, “How to [solve problem]”
• Comparison queries: “[brand] vs [competitor]”
• Problem queries: Specific questions your customers ask

Step 2: Weekly monitoring sessions.

Set aside 1-2 hours per week. For each query, search on:

1. Perplexity.ai — The easiest to check because it shows sources with links. Note whether your site appears in the sources.
2. ChatGPT (with browsing enabled) — Check if your brand is mentioned in the response. Note the context (positive, neutral, negative).
3. Google — Look for AI Overviews at the top of results. Check if your site is cited as a source.

Step 3: Record results.

Use a simple spreadsheet:

Step 4: Track trends.

After 4-8 weeks, you’ll see patterns:

• Queries where you’re consistently cited (protect this content)
• Queries where competitors are cited and you’re not (content opportunities)
• Queries where no one is consistently cited (opportunity to become the authority)

Automating with free scripts:

If you’re technical, use the Perplexity API (limited free tier) or OpenAI API ($5 credit for new accounts) to automate monitoring. A basic Python script can check 30 queries daily for under $5/month in API costs.

How Do You Run a Complete Free GEO Audit?

Here’s the complete checklist, organized by time required:

15-minute quick audit:

• Check robots.txt for AI crawler blocks
• Run 5 key queries on Perplexity and note citations
• Check one page with Google Rich Results Test
• Disable JavaScript and check if content is visible

2-hour comprehensive audit:

• Full robots.txt review for all AI user agents
• Server log check for AI bot activity
• JavaScript rendering check on 5 key pages
• Heading hierarchy audit on top 10 pages
• Content citability review on top 5 pages
• PAA coverage check for 10 target keywords
• Schema validation on 10 key pages
• Author/expertise signal check
• Manual citation monitoring for 20 queries
• Mobile accessibility check

What to do with audit results:

Organize findings into three categories:

1. Critical fixes (do this week): AI crawlers blocked, main content requires JavaScript, no structured data on any page
2. Important improvements (do this month): Heading hierarchy issues, content gaps vs. PAA questions, missing author information
3. Ongoing optimization (continuous): Content citability improvements, structured data expansion, regular citation monitoring

Free tools summary:

You can run a thorough GEO audit without spending anything. The limitation of free tools isn’t accuracy — it’s efficiency. As your GEO efforts scale beyond 30 queries and monthly manual checks, paid tools become worthwhile for the time they save. But start with free tools to understand your baseline before investing.