My verdict on the free GEO audit is that it's worth running, as long as you weight each check by the evidence behind it rather than by how clever it sounds.
GEO stands for generative engine optimisation, and a free GEO audit checks whether AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode and Microsoft Copilot can read, trust and cite your content.
Plenty of GEO advice online has no evidence behind it at all, so this review rates ten audit checks by where their support comes from.
Some checks were tested in the 2023 research paper that named GEO, some come from official documentation, and some rest on experience, which is weaker evidence.
The evidence scores are my own judgement, and I'll show you the source behind each one so you can disagree with me properly.
If you want a strategist to apply these checks to your brand, book a free strategy session and get a custom AI visibility plan.
The Free GEO Audit Verdict At A Glance
- 🥇 A do-it-yourself ten-check audit is my top pick, because it covers your site, your pages and your brand's third-party footprint for free.
- 🥈 Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance is my top free tool, because it shows real citation counts for your pages in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries.
- 🥉 Goldie Agency's free strategy session is third, and it's my own agency, so weigh that bias, but it works like a free GEO audit conversation with a competitor gap analysis.
I checked every source and tool on this page on 17 October 2026.
GEO, AEO And SEO In One Table
| Term | What it aims for | Where the term comes from |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | It aims to rank your pages in search results. | It is the long-standing name for search engine optimisation. |
| AEO | It aims to get your brand named and quoted as the answer in AI tools. | It is an industry term for answer engine optimisation. |
| GEO | It aims to get your content used and cited inside AI-generated answers. | It was introduced in the 2023 paper "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization". |
The three overlap heavily, and Google says the best practices for SEO remain relevant for its AI features.
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The Research Behind GEO, Reviewed
The paper "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" was written by Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan and Ameet Deshpande.
It was submitted to arXiv on 16 November 2023, and the listing notes it was accepted to KDD 2024.
| What the paper did | What it found |
|---|---|
| It built GEO-bench, a benchmark of 10,000 queries across many domains. | It gave researchers a shared way to test content changes. |
| It tested nine methods of rewriting source content. | Cite Sources, Quotation Addition and Statistics Addition performed best. |
| It measured visibility with a position-adjusted word count and a subjective impression score. | The best methods improved the first measure by 30 to 40 percent in relative terms. |
| It tested keyword stuffing. | Keyword stuffing gave little to no improvement. |
| It repeated the tests on Perplexity. | It reported visibility improvements of up to 37 percent there. |
| It compared sites by their search ranking. | The cite-sources method helped lower-ranked sites far more than top-ranked ones. |
My verdict on the paper is that it's the best public evidence we have for page-level GEO, but it isn't a law of nature.
Its main experiments used a GPT-3.5-turbo engine, and today's engines retrieve and rank sources differently, so I treat its findings as direction rather than a guarantee.
How I Rated Each GEO Check
| Evidence level | What it means | Score range |
|---|---|---|
| Official documentation | The engine's own maker says it in its docs. | 9 to 10 |
| Tested in research | The GEO paper tested it under controlled conditions. | 7 to 8 |
| Platform guidance | A platform's blog or a credible agency page recommends it without a controlled test. | 5 to 6 |
| Experience | Practitioners like me see it work, but there's no public test. | 3 to 4 |
The 10 Checks, Rated One By One
Check 1: AI crawler access (evidence 10 out of 10)
OpenAI's documentation says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and it recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot.
Perplexity's documentation recommends allowing PerplexityBot if you want to appear in its search results.
Google says crawling should be allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure.
My verdict is that this is the first check, because the makers say it directly.
Check 2: Index and snippet eligibility (evidence 10 out of 10)
Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
My verdict is that this is non-negotiable for Google's AI features.
Check 3: Current AI citations (evidence 9 out of 10)
Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance shows total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries and page-level citation activity.
Microsoft calls it an early step toward GEO tooling, and in October 2026 it added a Topics Portfolio beta that lists queries where other sites appear and yours doesn't.
My verdict is that this is the only first-party citation log I'd trust for free, but it only covers Microsoft's surfaces.
Check 4: Citation-worthy answers (evidence 6 out of 10)
This check asks whether each section answers a real question directly and still makes sense if an AI lifts it out alone.
Bing's guidance mentions clarity, structure and completeness for pages that are indexed but cited less often, but nobody has published a controlled test of the exact format.
My verdict is to do it anyway, because it also helps human readers.
Check 5: Statistics with sources (evidence 8 out of 10)
Statistics Addition was one of the paper's three best methods.
Bing's guidance also says examples, data and cited sources help build trust when content is reused in AI-generated answers.
My verdict is that this is the strongest page-level check you can run.
Check 6: Quotations from credible sources (evidence 7 out of 10)
Quotation Addition was another of the paper's three best methods.
My verdict is to use only real, attributed quotes, because an invented quote destroys the trust it's supposed to build.
Check 7: Citations to credible sources (evidence 8 out of 10)
Cite Sources was one of the paper's best methods and gave the biggest gains to lower-ranked sites.
My verdict is to link out to primary sources for every important claim.
Check 8: No keyword stuffing (evidence 7 out of 10)
The paper found keyword stuffing gave little to no improvement in generative engines.
My verdict is to remove it, because it has no upside and it reads badly.
Check 9: Brand consensus across third-party sites (evidence 5 out of 10)
Goldie Agency's strategy session page says AI platforms look for consistent signals across the wider web and don't recommend brands just because they publish more on their own sites.
It names trusted publications, expert articles, independent reviews, comparisons and credible third-party references as the signals that build consensus.
The evidence score is lower only because that's an agency's guidance rather than a controlled test, and it's my own agency.
My verdict is that it's still the check I'd weight most in practice, because it's where competitors usually beat you.
Check 10: Freshness and accuracy (evidence 6 out of 10)
Bing's guidance says accurate and up-to-date content is important for inclusion and citation in AI-generated answers.
Google tells site owners to keep their Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date.
My verdict is to date your key pages and review their facts every quarter.
📞 Want these ten checks applied to your brand and your competitors? Book a free strategy session with Goldie Agency and leave with a custom visibility plan, a clear AI visibility roadmap and a competitor gap analysis. → Claim your free strategy session
The Full Scorecard
| # | Check | Evidence source | Evidence score | Effort | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI crawler access | OpenAI, Perplexity and Google docs | 10 | Low | Run it first. |
| 2 | Index and snippet eligibility | Google docs | 10 | Low | Run it second. |
| 3 | Current AI citations | Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance | 9 | Low | Set it up once and review it monthly. |
| 4 | Citation-worthy answers | Bing guidance and practice | 6 | Medium | Do it on your top pages. |
| 5 | Statistics with sources | GEO paper and Bing guidance | 8 | Medium | Prioritise it on key pages. |
| 6 | Quotations from credible sources | GEO paper | 7 | Medium | Use real, attributed quotes only. |
| 7 | Citations to credible sources | GEO paper | 8 | Low | Link out on every key claim. |
| 8 | No keyword stuffing | GEO paper | 7 | Low | Remove it wherever you find it. |
| 9 | Brand consensus | Goldie Agency guidance and practice | 5 | High | Weight it heavily in practice. |
| 10 | Freshness and accuracy | Bing and Google guidance | 6 | Medium | Review key facts every quarter. |
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Four Free GEO Audit Routes Compared
| Route | What you get | What it doesn't cover | My score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do-it-yourself ten-check audit | All ten checks across your site, pages and brand | It depends on your discipline and your time | 9 |
| Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance | Real citation counts, cited pages and grounding queries for Microsoft's AI surfaces | It doesn't cover ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google | 8 |
| Goldie Agency's free strategy session (my agency) | A live call with a custom visibility plan, an AI visibility roadmap and a competitor gap analysis | It isn't a written report or an automated tool | 8 |
| Go Fish Digital free GEO audit | Its homepage offers a free GEO audit from an agency that describes itself as a GEO and full-service agency | I haven't used it, so I can't describe what's inside | Not scored |
I left Go Fish Digital unscored because I won't rate something I haven't seen.
The Prompt I Use For The Page Checks
Checks 4 to 8 are the slowest by hand, so this prompt does the first pass.
GEO evidence check:
Read the page text below.
For each section, quote the first sentence and say whether it directly answers a question.
List every statistic and whether its source is named and linked.
List every quotation and whether the speaker or source is named.
List every outbound link and whether it points to a primary source such as official documentation or original research.
List any phrase repeated in an unnatural way.
Do not rewrite anything and do not invent sources.
Treat its output as a draft, and check anything it flags against the page yourself.
📞 Want a second opinion on your scorecard? Grab a free strategy session and get a strategy built around your brand, including the bylines, reviews, comparisons and research placements that fit your market. → Book your free session
GEO Advice I'd Ignore
I'd ignore anyone selling a special GEO file or secret schema, because Google says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org markup to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
I'd ignore keyword-stuffing advice dressed up as GEO, because the paper found it gave little to no improvement.
I'd ignore any guarantee of AI citations, because nobody controls what a generative engine says.
Final Verdict On The Free GEO Audit
Run checks 1 and 2 first, because the engines' makers spell them out in their own docs.
Spend most of your page-level effort on sourced statistics, real quotations and citations to credible sources, because that's what the research supports best.
Then put real time into brand consensus, because in practice that's where most brands lose to their competitors.
Related Reading On This Site
- My free AEO report verdict rates the sections of an AI visibility report one by one.
- The free SEO and GEO audit compares classic SEO checks with GEO checks side by side.
- Eight AI SEO agencies compared helps if you'd rather hire out the fixes.
Also On Our Network
- 🌐 The 90-minute operator walkthrough with a 20-point scorecard
- 🌐 Whether a free GEO audit is worth it for your business
- 🌐 A monthly free GEO audit run from your Agent OS
- 🌐 The engines behind GEO and how their models score
FAQ: Free GEO Audit Verdict
Which free GEO audit checks have the strongest evidence?
AI crawler access and index eligibility are backed by official documentation from OpenAI, Perplexity and Google.
Adding sourced statistics, quotations and citations to credible sources was tested in the 2023 GEO paper and produced the best results there.
What did the GEO research paper find?
The paper tested nine content methods on a 10,000-query benchmark.
Cite Sources, Quotation Addition and Statistics Addition performed best, while keyword stuffing gave little to no improvement.
Who wrote the GEO paper?
Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan and Ameet Deshpande wrote it.
It was submitted to arXiv on 16 November 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024.
What is the best free GEO audit tool?
In my view, the Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance report is the most useful free tool, because it shows real citation counts for your pages.
It works best alongside a manual audit of your pages and your third-party coverage.
Does a free GEO audit guarantee AI citations?
No, because the audit only tells you what to improve.
Even the GEO paper measured visibility improvements rather than guaranteed placements.
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About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an SEO entrepreneur, author and founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
- I started Goldie Agency on my own, and it is now a 7-figure SEO and link-building agency with 70+ people.
- I've grown my YouTube channel to 400,000+ subscribers.
- I wrote "Link Building Mastery".
- My Udemy courses have taught 29,000+ students.
→ Get my best AI training inside the AI Profit Boardroom
Weight every check by its evidence, book a free strategy session if you want a plan for traffic, mentions and leads, and that's my final verdict on the free GEO audit.
