What a GEO audit should include

1. The questions your customers ask

Not "best dentist", but the questions people really type: "dentist in Didsbury taking new NHS patients", "emergency plumber Leeds tonight". An audit should use your trade, your town and your main services, and say which questions it asked.

2. Several runs per question

AI answers change from one ask to the next. One run proves little. Ask each question several times in each AI tool and report how often you're named, not just whether you were named once.

3. Who's named instead, and why

The businesses named instead of you are the most useful part of an audit. Compare what they have that you don't: service pages, review counts, listings, published prices. The sources each AI tool shows under its answer tell you what it relied on.

4. Technical checks

• Can the AI search crawlers read your site? Check robots.txt and the firewall for OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot, and the Google-Extended setting.
• Does your site show its text without JavaScript?
• Does your structured data include your business type, address, phone, hours, areas served and services?

5. Consistency checks

Your name, address, phone number, hours and services should match on your website, Google Business Profile and the directories your trade uses. Mismatches make AI tools less sure about you.

6. A short, ranked list of fixes

An audit is only useful if it tells you what to do first. Expect three to five fixes, ranked by likely impact and effort, each specific enough that you or your web person can act on it.

What a score can and can't tell you

A score is a snapshot of how often you were named for the questions asked on the day. It's useful for tracking change month to month with the same questions. It isn't a ranking, and it can't predict what any single customer will see.