SearchlightAudits

What is a GEO (AI visibility) audit?

A GEO audit measures what AI assistants say about your business. GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is the practice of becoming visible inside AI-generated answers. A GEO audit runs real buying-intent questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, and live web search, then reports whether your business is mentioned, whether it's cited, whether the facts are right, and which competitors get recommended instead of you. It answers one question an SEO audit can't: what does AI tell your customers about you?

Last updated: 2026-10-01

The definition, three ways

Same idea, three angles — pick the one that fits your vocabulary:

A GEO audit is a visibility test for the AI era. It treats ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot as the new search results page and checks whether your business shows up on it.
A GEO audit is a citation audit. It records, query by query, whether AI assistants name your business, link to your site, state correct facts about you (hours, prices, services), or hand the customer to a competitor.
A GEO audit is a discovery audit. It finds out at what point in the buying journey AI sends customers your way — or quietly removes you from the shortlist before you ever knew you were on it.

Why it matters now

AI assistants are becoming a discovery channel. The numbers behind that shift:

49%

of US adults use a chatbot, and 24% use one daily — 42% use them as a Google replacement.

Pew Research Center, n=5,119, Feb 2026
1 in 3

B2B buyers have purchased from a vendor they first discovered through an AI assistant; 85% view a vendor more favorably when the AI cites it by name.

G2 "Answer Economy" report, n=1,076, Apr 2026
84%

of AI citations point to sources the brand neither owns nor pays for — third-party mentions, not the brand's own site.

Muck Rack, 1M+ links analyzed, May 2026
−25%

is Gartner's projection for traditional search volume by 2026, as queries move to AI assistants and AI Overviews.

Gartner, 2026 forecast

The takeaway: customers increasingly ask AI instead of Google, AI cites third parties far more than brand sites, and no ranking you own protects you if the assistant's answer names your competitor. That's the gap a GEO audit measures.

What a GEO audit covers

Searchlight Audits' $99 AI Visibility Audit runs 15–25 real buying-intent prompts across GPT, Gemini, and live web search. The $299 Full AI + SEO Audit adds the complete Google Search side — 9 sections total:

  1. AI visibility and citations — mention rate, citation rate, and share of voice across engines, query by query.
  2. Google Search presence and indexation — are your pages indexed, and what ranks for your brand and money keywords.
  3. Technical SEO crawl — broken links, redirects, crawl blocks, and anything stopping search engines (or AI crawlers) from reading your site.
  4. Core Web Vitals — measured loading speed, interactivity, and layout stability.
  5. On-page SEO and content quality — titles, headings, content depth, and whether pages answer real questions directly.
  6. Schema and structured data — whether your site's structured data is complete and machine-readable (clean schema helps search engines and AI systems parse what you actually offer).
  7. Local SEO and Google Business Profile — NAP consistency, reviews, categories, and local-pack presence.
  8. Sampled backlink profile — a labeled snapshot of who's linking to you (sampled public data, never presented as a Google metric).
  9. Competitive gap analysis — the same checks run on 2 named competitors, so you see exactly where they beat you.

You get a branded PDF within 48 hours: verbatim AI answers, the scores, and a prioritized fix list with quick wins first. No logins required — everything is measured from the outside, exactly as a customer sees it.

GEO audit vs. SEO audit

They're complementary, not competing. Here's the clean split:

QuestionSEO audit answers itGEO audit answers it
Can Google find and rank my site?Yes — crawlability, indexation, rankingsNo
Does ChatGPT mention my business?NoYes — mention rate per query
Are the facts AI states about me correct?NoYes — hours, prices, services verified
Which competitor does AI recommend instead?Partially (rankings only)Yes — head-to-head per query
Is my site fast and technically sound?Yes — Core Web Vitals, crawl errorsNo
Do third-party sites mention my brand?Partially (backlinks)Yes — mentions drive 84% of AI citations

If you only fix SEO, you can rank #1 on Google and still lose the customer to a competitor the AI assistant named first. If you only fix GEO, a broken site undermines everything the AI says about you. The $299 Full AI + SEO Audit covers both for that reason.

Who needs one

  • Local service businesses — plumbers, lawyers, clinics, contractors: customers ask AI "who's the best X near me" and the assistant picks a shortlist. If you're not on it, you never hear the phone ring.
  • Any business that runs on Google — if search drives your leads, AI Overviews and chatbots are already intercepting a share of them. An audit quantifies how much.
  • Businesses with wrong AI answers — AI assistants confidently state wrong hours, old prices, and discontinued services. The audit catches each one with the exact prompt that produced it.
  • Businesses losing to a specific competitor — the competitor gap analysis shows precisely where they outrank you in AI answers, so the fix list is targeted, not generic.

If none of your customers use AI tools yet, you can wait — but with 49% of US adults already using chatbots (Pew, Feb 2026), that segment is shrinking fast.

What it costs

Our ladder, plain and fixed — full dated competitor comparison on the pricing page:

$99AI Visibility Audit · one-time
$299Full AI + SEO Audit · one-time
$29/moVisibility Monitoring · cancel anytime
See how we undercut the market

Agency one-time audits run $997–$1,997; monitoring tools run $19–$495/month. Prices last checked 2026-10-01.

Frequently asked questions

Short answers to the questions every owner asks first.

What does GEO stand for?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization — the practice of making a business visible in AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot. A GEO audit measures your current visibility: whether AI assistants mention your business, cite your website, and recommend you for buying-intent queries.

How is a GEO audit different from an SEO audit?

An SEO audit checks your website — crawlability, speed, content, links — to improve how you rank on Google. A GEO audit checks what AI assistants tell customers about your business: whether you're mentioned, whether the facts they state are correct, and whether competitors get cited instead of you. Searchlight Audits sells both: a $99 AI Visibility Audit and a $299 Full AI + SEO Audit covering both sides.

Will a GEO audit get my business into ChatGPT's answers?

No audit can guarantee placement — no honest vendor can promise ChatGPT or Gemini will recommend you. What the audit gives you is the full picture of where you stand today (mentioned? cited? facts correct?), where competitors beat you, and which fixes most improve your odds. Research shows 84% of AI citations point to third-party sources (Muck Rack, May 2026), so the fix list typically centers on earned mentions and content — not tricks.

Do I need to give you logins or access?

No. We never ask for logins or access to your systems. A GEO audit is run from the outside, exactly as a customer — or an AI assistant — would see your business: public web searches, AI-assistant prompts, and your public website.

What do I get, and how long does it take?

A branded PDF by email within 48 hours of payment. The $99 audit covers 15–25 real buying-intent prompts across GPT, Gemini, and live web search, with competitor comparison and a prioritized fix list. The $299 audit adds the 9-section Google Search audit. Both carry a 30-day money-back guarantee: fewer than three specific, actionable findings means a full refund.

How much does a GEO audit cost?

Searchlight Audits charges $99 one-time for the AI Visibility Audit, $299 one-time for the Full AI + SEO Audit, and $29/month for monitoring. Agency one-time audits typically cost $997–$1,997 and monitoring tools $19–$495/month — see the full dated table on our pricing page.

Is a one-time audit enough, or do I need monitoring?

Most small businesses start with the one-time audit, fix what it finds, then monitor. AI answers shift as models retrain and competitors publish, so the $29/month plan re-tests your visibility monthly and alerts you to changes or competitor overtakes. Audit once, fix, then watch — in that order.

Find out what AI says about your business

The $99 AI Visibility Audit: 15–25 real buying-intent prompts across GPT, Gemini, and live web search. Branded PDF in 48 hours. 30-day money-back guarantee.

Get my audit — $99