Check the site signals that make you easier — or harder — to cite.
Run a free AI SEO audit in about 60 seconds. Reffed checks crawler access, entity clarity, structured data, content and extraction signals, then shows the evidence and the first changes worth making.
yourwebsite.com
AI-search readiness diagnostic
Six areas that affect AI-search readiness.
The free audit focuses on website evidence Reffed can actually inspect. It does not turn a website heuristic into a fake live ranking.
Can AI-search crawlers reach the site?
Reffed checks robots.txt behavior for major search-oriented AI crawlers and flags blocks that can keep content out of retrieval systems.
Is it obvious who you are?
Business identity, product language and page purpose are checked for ambiguity that makes machine interpretation harder.
Does schema support the page?
Reffed looks for useful structured data and whether it reinforces facts that are actually visible to visitors.
Is there enough substance to extract?
Thin pages, weak answer structure and missing supporting context can reduce how useful a page is for retrieval.
Is an llms.txt present?
Reffed detects the file and treats it as one technical signal—not as a guarantee of indexing or citation.
Can the page be fetched and understood?
Core page structure, metadata, canonical signals and performance context help separate content problems from access problems.
Overlap where it matters. Different questions where it doesn't.
| Area | Traditional SEO audit | Reffed AI-search audit |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlability | Search engine access and indexability | Search engines plus major AI-search crawler access |
| Structured data | Eligibility and semantic clarity | Machine-readable entity and fact support |
| Content | Search intent, quality and rankings | Extractability, entity clarity and citation-friendly evidence |
| Score meaning | Varies by tool | Readiness signals are labeled separately from live evidence |
| AI recommendations | Usually not measured | Never inferred from a readiness score alone |
What actually makes a page easier to retrieve and cite.
There is no universal AI-citation checklist or guaranteed ranking factor. These are practical prerequisites Reffed can inspect separately from live provider observations.
The crawler has to reach the page.
robots.txt permission and successful fetching are different measurements. A CDN, firewall or bot challenge can still return a 403 even when the crawler is allowed in robots.txt.
The entity and page purpose should be clear.
State who operates the site, what the business actually does, who it serves, and what the specific page answers. Do not make a referral service look like a contractor or invent credentials for schema.
Useful answers beat padded word counts.
Direct answers, specific facts, clear headings and focused supporting detail give retrieval systems more useful material than adding words solely to hit a target length.
Important claims should have support.
Where a factual claim depends on regulations, official guidance, research or product behavior, link to the relevant primary source and keep the page current.
Readiness is not the same as being cited.
The only way to establish a provider citation for a specific prompt is to record the actual provider response and cited URLs. Reffed keeps that evidence class separate from readiness scores.
Verify access against the provider's own rules.
OpenAI search crawler guidance →
Anthropic crawler guidance →
From URL to prioritized report in three steps.
Enter a public website.
Reffed normalizes the URL and checks whether the site can be fetched safely.
Inspect the evidence.
Crawler rules, page structure, entity and content signals are analyzed and labeled by evidence type.
Start with the first three fixes.
The report prioritizes the changes with the clearest expected impact instead of dumping an unranked checklist on you.
Use the report once—or turn it into an operating loop.
Run the website-readiness diagnostic, keep the report link and implement the recommendations yourself.
Repeat the readiness audit weekly, keep history and get an email showing what changed and what matters next.
See Watch →Add approval-based supported WordPress fixes, deployment history and rollback for Reffed-applied changes.
See Watch+Fix →What a free AI SEO audit can—and cannot—tell you.
What does a free AI SEO audit check?
Reffed checks website-readiness signals such as AI crawler access, entity clarity, structured data, content depth, page structure, llms.txt presence and related technical signals. It prioritizes the first changes worth making.
Is Reffed's AI SEO audit really free?
Yes. The website-readiness audit is free and does not require a credit card.
Does the free audit prove ChatGPT recommends my business?
No. Website-readiness signals are not live rankings. Reffed labels observed site evidence, estimates and live-provider observations separately.
How is an AI SEO audit different from a traditional SEO audit?
They overlap on crawlability, structure, content and structured data. An AI-search readiness audit also focuses on machine access, entity clarity, answer extraction and citation-friendly evidence.
What happens after the free audit?
You can implement the findings yourself, add Watch for weekly monitoring, or use Watch+Fix on WordPress for supported approval-based changes with rollback.
What makes a page easier for AI search systems to cite?
There is no single citation switch. Useful prerequisites include crawlable public content, a clear entity and page purpose, specific answerable information, consistent structured facts, and authoritative supporting sources where claims need evidence. Live citation still depends on the provider, query and competing sources.
Does allowing an AI search crawler in robots.txt guarantee it can fetch my page?
No. CDN, firewall or bot-protection rules can still block the actual request. Reffed separates robots.txt permission from successful page retrieval and keeps blocked or unavailable measurements unknown.
See what AI-search systems can actually read.
No credit card. About 60 seconds. Evidence stays separate from estimates.