Learn

AEO, GEO and AI search guides

The AuditLamp team · grounded in the docs

AuditLamp's learn section is 136 plain-English guides and fix articles on why search and AI pass your site by, and what to change first. Every article is grounded in official platform documentation from Google, Bing, and AI engine policies, not SEO folklore. Topics: AEO, GEO, crawl access, structured data, Core Web Vitals, and local search.

Two companions to these guides: our study of AI-crawler blocking across the live web (original 2026 data), and the 15 free tools that check one thing each in seconds: crawler access, schema, llms.txt, answer readiness, and more.

Get cited by the AI engines

The engines do not read your site live. They send a crawler, then quote what it can read. These guides cover the exact steps for each major answer engine.

How to get cited by ChatGPT Allow OAI-SearchBot, serve plain HTML, lead with a quotable passage.
How to get cited by Perplexity Allow PerplexityBot and be the freshest, most specific source.
How to show up in Google AI Overviews Be eligible for Search first; the same fundamentals apply.
How to get cited by Google Gemini Grounded answers draw on Google Search; indexation comes first.
How to get cited by Claude Allow the right Anthropic crawlers and be the checkable source.

Crawler access and the files that control it

Most sites that never get cited blocked the wrong bot, or chased a file that does nothing. Get this layer right and stop wasting effort on folklore. Our AI crawler study measured how common accidental blocks are across live sites.

GPTBot and robots.txt: allow or block the AI crawlers The full token reference, and the training-versus-retrieval split.
What is llms.txt, and do you need it? An honest read: optional, and not a Google ranking factor.

Diagnose and fix

Why isn't my site showing up in AI search? The five most common reasons, and how to check each one.
Why isn't my site cited by ChatGPT? The diagnostic ladder, from crawler access to being quotable.
Why am I not showing in AI Overviews? Work the layers in order; most sites fail before the AI part.
Does my website show up in ChatGPT? How to check what the engines say about you today.
How to check your AI search visibility A repeatable protocol, not a one-off vibe check.
How to check the SEO of a website The seven checks that matter, by hand or in one minute.
Website rank finder: see where you really rank Search Console is the only exact free source. The rest estimate.
Will one sentence get you cited by ChatGPT? Debunked overpromise, with the honest kernel worth keeping.
The AuditLamp Fix Library Step-by-step fixes for every problem our audit finds.

The Fix Library, step by step

All 35 fixes our audit prescribes, written out in plain English. Each one names the problem, the documentation behind it, and the exact change to make. One of the most common: a canonical error that quietly splits ranking power between duplicate pages.

Local search, minus the folklore

Local SEO is where the worst advice lives. These guides separate what Google's Business Profile rules actually say from the tricks that end in suspension.

Local SEO: the whole picture, minus the folklore Start here. The pillar guide: Google's three documented factors, mapped to every lever.
The fake address trick: what TikTok skips Debunked. Guideline violation with a suspension price tag.
Keywords in review replies do not rank you Debunked. No documented mechanism; the reviews themselves count.
Geotagging photos for SEO is a myth Debunked. Not in Google's image docs; practitioners score it zero.
Business Profile categories, chosen right Legit and documented. The relevance input most owners fumble.
Service and city pages without the doorway spam Legit, with the policy line drawn clearly.
NAP consistency: hygiene, not a subscription Right-sized. What matters, what the resellers oversell.
What happens when you cancel Yext The lock-in mechanics, and how to leave without losing your listings.
How to tell if your SEO company is doing anything Three checkable tests any owner can run in ten minutes.
Adding keywords to your Business Profile name Debunked. A documented suspension trigger, not a shortcut.
Why your Business Profile got suspended The accidental triggers, in plain English, with the fix-first appeal.
UTM tracking and Business Profile suspensions What the edit actually risks, and the safe way to add one.
Does posting weekly on your profile rank you? Right-sized. A conversion surface, not a ranking lever.

SEO myths, checked against the docs

Old rules that outlived their evidence. We take each one back to what Google actually documents, so you stop spending on folklore.

The keyword density myth Debunked. No such metric in Google's docs; stuffing reads as spam.
The meta description length rule is a myth Debunked. No fixed limit; Google rewrites most of them anyway.
Do exact match domains help SEO? Debunked. The keyword in the domain barely moves anything now.
Checking Google PageRank for keywords? Debunked. Public PageRank died in 2016; every checker invents its number.

Priced out? Compare honestly

The big tools price for agencies and meter everything. If you are an owner who just wants to know what is broken, read these before renewing.

Semrush feels too expensive: your real options What you actually use, and what that should cost.
How to cancel Semrush The exact steps, plus what to export before you go.
Ahrefs raised prices and added credits. Now what? What the credit system changes for small teams.
Ahrefs Brand Radar: the cost and the alternative AI visibility tracking without the enterprise invoice.
SEO tools with flat pricing and no credits Who still sells a price that stays a price.
BrightLocal vs AuditLamp Different jobs. We state our bias and draw the line honestly.
Is Ahrefs worth it? What the reviews say The credit-system complaints, and who should still buy it.
The Semrush AI Toolkit: cost vs what it does A paid add-on that tracks. Tracking is a thermometer, not medicine.
Is the Ubersuggest lifetime deal worth it? What buyers report after the deal, and the no-rug-pull test.
Local Falcon credits: the honest alternative We do not do geo-grids. We cover the layer that they do not.
Why SEO tool traffic estimates are wrong Modeled, not measured. Your Search Console is the real number.
Is Moz data accurate? The stale-snapshot problem A fair look at what every pre-crawl tool cannot avoid.

Notes from the team

Short reads on what just changed in search and AI, with the source linked in every note.

One in eight scanned sites blocks AI at the edge without knowing We pulled the latest scan for each of the 105 business sites that have run our engine and compared two...
We scanned 105 business sites. Three had an answer AI could quote. The short answer: we pulled the latest scan for each of the 105 domains that have run our engine and looked...
How to do an SEO audit step by step (2026) An SEO audit is seven checks run in a fixed order: reachability, indexation, JavaScript dependence, AI...
How much does an SEO audit cost (and what you actually get) An SEO audit costs anywhere from nothing to five figures, and both ends of that range can be legitimate.
Questions to ask before renewing your SEO retainer A renewal decision needs four answers, all checkable: what moved in your own Google Search Console over the...
Answer blocks: the paragraph AI engines quote An answer block is the first paragraph after a page's headline, written to answer the page's core question so...
Before/after proof: what real SEO work looks like Real SEO work leaves physical evidence on your website: rewritten titles, restructured headings, corrected...
What GPTBot actually fetches from your site GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler, and it is only one of four bots OpenAI documents.
Read an SEO report in 10 minutes without being fooled You do not need to understand SEO to check an SEO report.
Why AI assistants cannot see half your website AI assistants read the raw HTML your server sends, not the finished page your visitors see.
Your robots say yes. Your CDN may still block AI. We scanned 60 real small-business sites in our corpus.
GPTBot is blocked a lot. Here is what our scan checks on your site. You will see headlines that GPTBot is among the most blocked crawlers on the web.
Google says that Cloudflare robots directive does nothing. What should you check? Trade press covered Google saying a Cloudflare "content signals" robots.txt directive has no effect on Google.
Agency accountability scorecard (print this, free scan beside it) You are paying someone for SEO or "AI visibility." The monthly report looks busy.
We scanned 60 small-business sites. Almost none had decided what AI can see. The short answer: we pulled the most recent audit of every real business site our engine has scanned, 60...
Will AI recommend your business? Here is how it actually decides Ask ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode for a recommendation and the machine does not run one search.
AI's answer about your business changed twice since Tuesday Google's AI answers do not sit still.
AI sends people to pages that don't exist 2.87x more often than Google An AI assistant recommends you, a customer clicks, and they land on a page that is not there.
How to read your SEO agency's monthly report without being fooled The short answer: most SEO reports are built to look like progress whether or not progress happened.
10 questions your SEO agency should be able to answer this month The short answer: if you are paying for SEO and your traffic has not moved, you do not need to become an SEO...
Is the SEO work real? Run this free 90-second check on your own site The short answer: you do not have to trust a report.
What compounding SEO work looks like, and what busywork looks like The short answer: compounding work builds an asset that keeps paying after you stop paying for it.
Who actually blocks the AI crawlers? We checked the 1,000 biggest sites on the web. The short answer: the most-blocked crawler on the web's front page is not OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google.
Mentions beat backlinks now. Here is the data, and what to do without an SEO budget. The short answer: for showing up in AI answers, how often your brand is *mentioned* across the web matters...
One AI can cite your business while another is blindfolded. Here is the split. The short answer: the big publishers now run two different doors for AI.
AI sends people to pages that do not exist 3 times more than Google does. The short answer: AI assistants invent URLs.
"You have no reviews yet." Google's second reviews bug in a week, and the one thing an owner can actually do about it. If you opened your Google Business Profile this week and were told you have no reviews, you are not alone...
"The web is eating itself and your metrics look fine." The scariest SEO headline of the week deserves a plain-language translation. Duane Forrester published a piece in Search Engine Journal this week with a headline we have not been able to...
The "agentic web" is splitting into two bets. Site owners only need to make one of them. There is a genuinely interesting argument in Search Engine Journal this week: the agentic web, the coming...
Two small signals from the wire: a Show HN launch and a new wrinkle in AI Overviews A short note from the AuditLamp team.
Writing "we're the best" listicles for AI answers works, until it backfires. Ahrefs just tested it. There is a tactic quietly spreading through AI SEO circles: publish your own "best tools in [your category]"...
Search Console will now show you how your Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube content performs on Google. Turn it on. Once in a while the news is simply good, and the right response is to go press the button.
Search just set an all-time usage record. Ranking #1 pays less than it used to. Both are true. Two stories crossed the wire this week that sound like they contradict each other.
Big publishers are threatening to walk away from Google. Here is what that means for a small site. Two stories landed this week that would have sounded absurd five years ago.
The new AI SEO rituals: markdown mirrors, llms-author.txt, and what Google actually said about them Every few months the AI SEO world produces a new ritual.
Google's spam rules now reach into AI answers. The shortcut era is closing early this time. Every new visibility channel attracts the same crowd: people selling shortcuts.
Google is handing out an AI opt-out dial. Before you turn it, know which way it points. For the first time, ordinary site owners are getting a real control panel for how Google's generative...
Google will now show you how your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube profiles perform in Search. Set it up today, it is free. Most owners have no idea how often their social profiles show up in Google.
Google published the manual for ranking in AI. Here is what it says to stop paying for. On July 10, 2026, Google updated its official guide to showing up in the AI features on Search.
Google says Cloudflare's Content Signals lines in robots.txt do nothing. Here is what that means for your site. If you added Cloudflare's "content signals" lines to your robots.txt file hoping to control how Google and AI...
Google just gave product sellers two new schema fields. Small shops should care before their competitors do. If you sell products online, Google quietly handed you something this week: two new ways to describe your...
Free AI citations won't last. Get cited while the field is still open. There is a short window in every new channel where showing up costs nothing but effort.
You fixed your canonical tag and nothing happened. Google says give it two weeks. Here is a frustration we hear from owners constantly: you find a duplicate-content problem, you fix the...
A stranger's copyright complaint can pull your page from Google before you ever hear about it Here is a failure mode most owners have never considered: your page is live, your site is healthy, and the...
When your Google reviews vanish: reading the July 3 search forum recap A short note from the AuditLamp team.
The setting that blocks AI training bots can now catch Googlebot in the same net We wrote earlier this week about GPTBot becoming the most blocked crawler on the web, and how most of that...
A study says AI Overviews recommend competitors 69% of the time. Here is the version without the panic. A stat is making the rounds that is engineered to scare business owners: according to a study reported by ALM...
GPTBot is now the most blocked crawler on the web. Your site might be blocking it without you knowing. If you want to show up in AI answers, there is a quiet way to lose before you start: block the crawlers that...
AI recommended your brand. Then a follow-up question made it disappear. There is a comforting story going around: get mentioned once by an AI assistant and you have won a new front...

The basics, defined

Clear definitions, no jargon for its own sake. Start here if the acronyms are new.

What is answer engine optimization (AEO)? Earning the answer, not just the link.
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)? Being the source an AI quotes, backed by the research.
AEO vs SEO: what's the difference? Same foundation, different finish line.
Lighthouse vs CrUX: lab data vs field data Why your speed-test score and your real score disagree.
How to read PageSpeed Insights Which number Google actually uses, without being a developer.
The full AEO and GEO glossary 30 plain-English definitions, from RAG to the great decoupling.

The glossary, term by term

All 30 definitions, one page each. Every acronym the industry throws at you, in plain English.