How do I run an SEO audit specifically for AI-powered search engines?
A step-by-step SEO audit for AI-powered search engines: bot access, indexing, content, citations and measurement, plus the tools that make each check faster.
A normal SEO audit asks whether Google can crawl, index and rank your pages. An audit for AI-powered search engines asks a longer chain of questions: can the AI crawlers fetch your pages, are the pages eligible to be shown, do the engines cite you for the prompts that matter, and when they do, does anyone click? You can run most of it by hand. The parts you cannot do by hand are the crawler logs and the repeated prompt checks, which is where a platform earns its keep.
Google's guidance on AI features in Search points site owners to the same foundations as classic SEO: crawlable, indexable pages with helpful content. So your existing audit is the base. This checklist adds the AI-specific layer.
Step 1: bot access
List the bots that matter and check each against robots.txt, CDN rules, firewall and bot-protection settings: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User from OpenAI; ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot from Anthropic; PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User; Google-Agent and GoogleOther; Meta-WebIndexer, Meta-ExternalAgent and Meta-ExternalFetcher; and MistralAI-User. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot as the crawler for ChatGPT search results, so blocking it removes you from that surface. Training and search access are separate policy decisions. Make them on purpose.
Then verify with real logs. Promptwatch Agent Analytics shows IP-verified bot hits, filters spoofed user agents, reports errors with failure explanations and lists a crawl-to-citation path with stackable path filters and CSV export. Crawler logs start on the Professional plan ($245 a month). Its free Agentic Readiness Check and the AI Bots directory are quick first looks.
Step 2: indexing and eligibility
Confirm key pages return 200, carry no accidental noindex, put their main text in the HTML, have clear titles and headings, and appear in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools coverage reports. Bing has been previewing AI performance reporting in Webmaster Tools, so check what is available for your account.
Step 3: site health
Broken links, redirect chains, thin duplicate pages and slow templates hurt both people and bots. Promptwatch runs weekly Site Health audits with 21 checks, a health score, changes since the last run and a weekly email, with Site Content and Site Linking reports and crawlability checks. seoClarity lists site audits and log file analysis in its Technical package, which starts at $3,200 a month, and Scrunch AI Core includes five site audits a month.
Step 4: content audit against real prompts
Write 30 prompts a buyer would ask. For each, check whether you have a page that answers it in the first lines, with specifics. Promptwatch's content gap analysis scores coverage against tracked prompts, and its Topic Insights show where pages underdeliver for their topic.
Step 5: citation audit
Run the prompts across engines and record who is cited. Note domains, page types and positions. Promptwatch's citation analytics covers pages, domains, URL positions, Page Tracker for specific URLs, offsite mentions, and Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn reports. AthenaHQ and Scrunch AI track visibility across models too, from $295 and $250 a month respectively, though their entries do not document citation analytics at that depth.
Step 6: traffic and conversion audit
Check AI referrals in analytics and, if possible, conversions. Promptwatch's visitor analytics counts AI-referred visits and conversions through a lightweight script, a GTM template or the WordPress plugin.
Step 7: prioritize
Rank fixes by revenue impact and effort: first blocked bots, then missing answers on money pages, then off-site gaps. Promptwatch's Action Board produces a prioritized list from the data.
Comparison of audit coverage
| Check | Manual | Promptwatch | AthenaHQ | Scrunch AI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bot access in logs | Only with raw logs | Agent Analytics | Not published | Bot traffic reporting |
| Site health checks | Crawler tools | 21-check weekly audit | Not documented | Site audits |
| Prompt and citation checks | Slow, one at a time | Daily panels, citation analytics | Daily tracking | Tracking on four LLMs |
| AI traffic and conversions | Analytics setup | Visitor analytics | GA4 connection | Not published |
Common findings worth looking for
Three patterns come up often in this kind of audit. The first is a CDN or bot-protection rule that challenges or blocks AI crawlers while robots.txt looks permissive. The second is a set of important pages that are indexed by Google but never fetched by any AI bot, which usually points to weak internal linking or a missing sitemap entry. The third is a page that is fetched often but never cited, which is a content problem and not a technical one: the page does not answer the prompt clearly enough, or another source answers it better.
Each pattern has a different owner. Engineering fixes the first, the SEO lead fixes the second and the content team fixes the third. Writing the findings up by owner makes the audit easier to act on.
A realistic cadence
Run the full audit once, then monthly for bot access and site health, and weekly for prompts on your top pages. No audit guarantees citations. It removes the blockers you can control and shows where to focus.