Free SEO / GEO Audit: The Checklist, The Free Tools, And How The AI Models Behind The Answers Score

A free SEO / GEO audit is one check-up that tells you whether Google can crawl, index and rank your site, and whether AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews can find, cite and recommend you.

It costs nothing but time, because every tool you need has a free version or is free to use.

If you'd like a strategist to look at your site with you, book a free strategy session and get a custom visibility plan for Google and AI.

The problem it solves is that most businesses check Google and never check what AI answers say about them, or the other way round.

In this post I'll explain what the audit covers, give you the checklist and the free tools, and show you the order I'd fix things in.

Near the end, I'll show you how the AI models behind those answers score on this leaderboard, and what that does and doesn't tell you.

What is a free SEO / GEO audit?

SEO is classic search engine optimisation, which is the technical, on-page and link work that gets you ranked in Google.

GEO is generative engine optimisation, which is the work of getting your brand named and cited inside AI-generated answers.

The term comes from a paper called "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", which Pranjal Aggarwal and his co-authors first posted to arXiv in November 2023.

I audit both together, because Google's guide to AI features says a page only needs to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Google also says there's no special schema.org markup and no new AI text file you need to add for those features.

So the SEO half is the foundation, and the GEO half tells you whether AI tools are picking you up.

The free SEO / GEO audit checklist

Each row pairs a classic SEO check with the GEO check that sits next to it.

The free tools for each half

I only describe what each official page says, and I read every page on 17 October 2026.

Google's help centre calls Search Console "a free service offered by Google".

Microsoft announced the AI Performance report in public preview on 10 February 2026, with Total Citations, Average Cited Pages and sample grounding queries.

Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the "Web" search type of the Search Console Performance report.

How to run a free SEO / GEO audit

1. List your money pages and buyer prompts

Write down the ten to twenty pages that bring you leads, and twenty to fifty questions a real buyer would ask an AI tool.

2. Check crawl access

Open your robots.txt, which Google says tells crawlers which URLs they can access on your site.

OpenAI's crawler page recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot to appear in ChatGPT search, and treats GPTBot, its training crawler, as a separate setting. Perplexity's crawler page recommends allowing PerplexityBot to appear in its search results.

3. Check indexing

Paste each money page into URL Inspection in Search Console and fix anything that isn't indexed.

4. Check page experience

Run your top pages through PageSpeed Insights on mobile.

Google's Core Web Vitals page sets the good thresholds at Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1.

5. Check the first sentence

Read the first sentence under each main heading and make sure it answers the buyer's question directly.

My own rule is to keep that answer under fifty words and add a short FAQ section with the questions buyers actually ask.

6. Check structured data

Run each money page through the Rich Results Test, then compare the markup with the visible page.

7. Check links and mentions

Use the Links report in Search Console and a brand search to list who links to you and who mentions you.

My strategy session page says AI platforms look for consistent signals across trusted publications, expert articles, independent reviews, comparisons and credible third-party references.

8. Run your buyer prompts

Ask each prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google, and log mentions, citations, competitors and accuracy.

Ask each one more than once, because AI answers change between chats.

📞 Want a strategist to go through your checklist with you? Book a free strategy session with Goldie Agency and get a competitor gap analysis that shows why rivals appear more often in Google and AI answers.

The order I'd fix things in

What a free audit can't tell you

A free audit shows where you stand today, and it can't tell you why a model chose another brand.

Google's guide says meeting its requirements doesn't guarantee crawling, indexing or serving.

Nobody can guarantee a ranking or an AI mention, and that includes me.

The free strategy session works like a free audit conversation with a visibility plan and a roadmap, and it isn't a written report.

If you want a written audit, Goldie Agency's Complete Site Audit page describes 30+ pages of insights across technical health, content, keywords, backlinks and competitors.

That service is paid and scoped after a call, so I won't quote a price.

📞 Not sure which fix comes first for your site? Grab a free strategy session, and an experienced strategist will help you build a clear AI visibility roadmap.

Mistakes that waste a free SEO / GEO audit

• Many owners check Google and forget that buyers also ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.
• Some people ask each prompt only once, which misses how much AI answers vary between chats.
• Lots of sites block AI search crawlers by accident through a firewall or CDN rule, so ask your host as well as reading robots.txt.
• Some site owners block GPTBot and assume ChatGPT search is blocked too, even though OpenAI treats GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot as separate settings.
• Some businesses pay for "AI schema" packages, even though Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features.
• Many people fix ten things at once, so they never learn which change made the difference.

What to log so next month's audit is useful

An audit is only as good as the record you keep, because the second audit is the one that shows progress.

For every buyer prompt, log the date, the AI tool, whether you were named, whether your site was cited, which competitors appeared and whether the facts were right.

For every money page, log whether it's indexed, its three Core Web Vitals numbers and whether its first sentence answers the question.

Keep your Search Console clicks and impressions for the same pages, because Google counts its AI-feature traffic inside those numbers.

If you've verified your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, add the monthly Total Citations figure from the AI Performance report.

Then re-run the same prompts and checks a month later and compare them line by line.

That habit turns a one-off free audit into a measurement system, and it costs you nothing but an hour.

Google's AI features guide also tells businesses to keep Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date, so add those to your monthly check if you sell products or serve a local area.

Which AI models sit behind the answers in your audit?

Now for the GoldieBench part, and I need to be clear about what it measures.

GoldieBench scores AI models on one-shot builds such as landing pages, apps, games and visuals, on a 0 to 10 scale.

It doesn't measure which brands an AI recommends, and it doesn't measure SEO results.

A free SEO / GEO audit isn't a product and doesn't ship its own model, so there's nothing to score for the audit itself.

What the board can show you is how the makers of the assistants you test in step eight score on their live model pages.

Claude Opus 5 is the highest of these at 8.27, with GPT-5.6 Sol close behind at 8.16.

Gemini 3.6 Flash is the Gemini model on the board, so it's the closest view I have of the Gemini family.

Perplexity has no model on GoldieBench, so I can't give you a score for it.

The board also can't tell you which exact model a consumer app is running at any moment, because the makers change that themselves.

So please don't read these numbers as a ranking of which AI is easiest to get cited in.

Using a model to help run the audit

The scores matter more when you use a model as your audit assistant rather than as the thing you're testing.

A model can turn your money pages into buyer prompts, read your first sentences and flag the ones that don't answer the question.

It can also compare your structured data with the visible text and summarise a month of logged answers into a short list of changes.

A model that follows a detailed brief well first time makes fewer mistakes for you to catch, which is what a higher GoldieBench average hints at.

Even so, the checklist and your review matter more than the model, because a confident wrong answer looks exactly like a right one.

If you'd rather run local models for the repetitive parts, my local models page shows which ones I've scored.

Related reading on GoldieBench

My King of AEO post looks at answer engine optimisation from the model side.

My AI SEO optimization agency post covers what an agency should do if you'd rather hire the work out.

From this same batch, my free GEO audit post goes deeper on the GEO half.

If you want my team's view on your site, book a free strategy session and leave with a plan for traffic, mentions and leads.

Also On Our Network

• Agent Operatorsthe nine-step operator walkthrough for a free SEO and GEO audit
• AI Income Deskwhich audit fix earns a local business, shop or agency money first
• AI Tool Verdicteight free SEO and GEO audit tools rated on one scorecard
• agentos.guidea one-hour audit quick start that your Agent OS repeats monthly
• aiprofitboardroom.commy step-by-step process for ranking in Google AI Mode

Fix the blockers first, keep your prompt log, judge the model by the brief you give it, and you'll get real value from a free SEO / GEO audit.