What does AI search say about your company?

When a buyer asks an AI system about your category, the response may mention the company, cite one of its pages, describe the offer incorrectly or omit it entirely. An audit turns those answers into a clear list: what is accurate, what is missing and what should be fixed first.

SEO, AEO and GEO work together

SEO makes pages discoverable, indexable and understandable. AEO organises information around questions buyers want answered. GEO looks at how the company and its sources appear in generated answers. Google confirms that sound technical foundations and useful content remain central to its AI features, so Nuklias and FindCraft treat these as parts of one visibility system. (Google Search Central)

• SEO helps pages become discoverable, understandable and eligible across conventional search and AI features grounded in the same index
• AEO, or answer engine optimisation, focuses attention on clear answers to specific questions
• GEO, or generative engine optimisation, focuses attention on how sources are retrieved, represented and cited in generated answers
• AIO is ambiguous. It may refer to AI optimisation or Google AI Overviews, so define the platform and surface before measuring it

Treat four representation states separately

• Mention: the company name appears, but the answer may provide no source
• Citation: a company or third-party page is referenced, without implying that the platform endorses the business
• Accuracy: claims about services, markets, experience and differentiators are correct and supported
• Recommendation: the company is included in a shortlist or suggested for a need. This is a separate, query-dependent outcome

Run the check consistently

1. Choose one market, language and buyer profile. Europe is too broad for one useful first check
2. Use a short set of real questions about services, locations, comparisons and common objections
3. Keep the market, language and questions consistent when you compare platforms
4. Try each important question more than once because one answer is only one observation
5. Compare important statements with current company information and relevant independent or official sources
6. List what is wrong or missing, what should be fixed first and when to check again

Bing Webmaster Tools separates total citations, cited pages and the grounding queries used to retrieve sources, while warning that these signals do not indicate page rank or authority. OpenAI states that OAI-SearchBot access is required for content to be considered for ChatGPT summaries and snippets. Crawler access is a technical prerequisite; it does not mean that a page will be cited. (Microsoft Bing Blogs / OpenAI Help Center)

Keep a simple comparison table

• The buyer question, platform and answer
• Whether the company is mentioned, cited, described accurately or recommended
• The current source that confirms or contradicts important information
• What should be corrected first and when to check again

What improves discoverability and what is packaging

Google's official guidance prioritises original, useful, well-structured and crawlable content. It also says that Google Search does not require special files such as llms.txt, artificial micro-chunking, AI-only rewrites, manufactured mentions or special structured data. For ChatGPT, separately verify that OAI-SearchBot can access the pages you want to make eligible for search summaries and citations. (Google Search Central / OpenAI Help Center)

• Worth doing: verifiable first-party information, concrete explanations, named references, visible dates and a point of view that a commodity summary cannot reproduce
• Worth doing: consistent company information across controlled pages and remediation of material contradictions in authoritative sources
• Worth doing: clear technical structure, indexable pages, correct canonicals and RO/EN versions that preserve factual and decision parity
• Unsupported as a system: one page for every keyword variant or mechanically fragmented copy written for assumed AI chunks
• Not credible: a guaranteed citation, fixed AI rank or proprietary score presented as if it came from the platform
• Counterproductive: paid or fabricated mentions designed to simulate independent reputation

What to track after the first check

• Query-set coverage: where the organisation is present, absent or confused with another entity
• Accuracy: the share and type of material errors found across reviewed answers
• Citation: how often an owned source appears in the controlled run set and which third-party pages recur
• Source quality: official, independent, current, contradictory or difficult to verify
• Observable referral and platform reporting from AI features, kept separate from unlinked mentions
• Commercial consequence: better-qualified conversations, better-informed questions and fewer material representation errors, not appearances alone

Google provides a generative AI performance report in Search Console, while Bing reports citations and grounding queries in Webmaster Tools. Use each signal within the platform's stated limitations: a citation is not automatically rank, authority or conversion. (Google Search Central / Microsoft Bing Blogs)

What to fix after the audit

Correct inaccurate information that could change a buyer decision first, close gaps on priority pages next and expand coverage only after that. A FindCraft audit compares questions, answers and sources and shows what deserves attention first. FindCraft publishes M.A.R.C. as its own editorial methodology. (FindCraft)