Can the ChatGPT bots even read your site?
Before an AI engine can recommend you, it has to reach your content and understand it. This page explains what GEO is and which technical signals — robots.txt, llms.txt, Schema and semantic structure — decide the answer.
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What is AI accessibility (GEO)?
GEO — short for Generative Engine Optimization — is the work of preparing your site so AI engines can read it, understand it and quote it in their answers. It is SEO for the AI era: instead of fighting for the top Google result, you are fighting for a place inside the bot's answer.
Reachability
Whether the OpenAI, Google and Anthropic bots can access and crawl your content at all.
Understanding
Schema, heading structure and clear content help the AI grasp who you are and what you offer.
Authority
E-E-A-T signals and links decide whether the AI picks you as the trustworthy source to recommend.
The technical checks that decide whether AI reads you
These are exactly the signals the AI agent accessibility category of our website scan grades.
robots.txt & AI crawler access
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and Applebot-Extended are separate crawlers from Googlebot. Blocking them in robots.txt (or a blanket Disallow) removes you from the AI engines — however well you rank on Google.
llms.txt & WebMCP
An llms.txt at the site root and a manifest at /.well-known/mcp.json are the emerging standards that tell AI agents who you are, what matters on the site and where to go. Not required yet — which is exactly why adopting early pays off.
Schema.org (JSON-LD)
Organization, LocalBusiness, FAQPage and Article turn a page from free text into facts a model can cite with confidence: name, field, city, opening hours and answers.
Semantic HTML & landmarks
main, nav, header, footer, a single H1 and an unbroken heading hierarchy. Without clear structure an agent reads a pile of divs and cannot tell what the page is actually about.
A valid accessibility tree (ARIA)
Valid aria-* attributes and roles, labelled form controls, image alt text and descriptive link text. The same groundwork that serves screen readers serves the AI agents browsing your site.
meta robots & rendering
noindex blocks everything, and content that only appears after JavaScript runs may never reach the crawler. What is not in the initial HTML usually is not read.
Why this matters now
- AI search is growing fast — ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are becoming the first place people ask for a recommendation.
- An AI answer usually names 3–5 businesses. If you are not among them, you are invisible to that customer.
- Most businesses have done no GEO work at all — an early advantage for those who do.
- The same fixes that improve GEO also improve your classic Google SEO.
Want to check your business's AI visibility?
This page explains the technical groundwork. To see the outcome — whether Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini name your business when a customer asks for a recommendation, and which competitors do come up — run the GEO check.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI accessibility (GEO)?+
AI accessibility, or GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), is how well AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity can read, understand and cite your website. It is SEO for a different audience: the bots that recommend you to your customers.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?+
SEO positions you in Google search results. GEO positions you inside the answers AI engines generate. They complement each other — a well-built site does well at both, which is why our technical scan covers both worlds together.
Does blocking GPTBot in robots.txt hurt me?+
It depends on your goal. Blocking prevents your content being used for model training, but it also removes you from the answers the model generates live. For most small and mid-sized businesses the visibility is worth more than the content protection — and you can block a training crawler while leaving a search crawler such as OAI-SearchBot open.
Is llms.txt mandatory?+
No. It is an emerging standard no engine requires yet. It is cheap to implement — one text file at the site root — and it tells agents what matters on the site, so it is worth adopting. But robots.txt and Schema come first.
How do I check the technical side of AI accessibility?+
Enter your URL in the free scanner on the home page. The AI agent accessibility category checks robots.txt and crawler access, llms.txt and WebMCP, structured data, semantic structure, form labels and alt text — and returns a score with practical recommendations.
What if I want to know whether AI recommends my business?+
That is a different check, and it lives on the GEO Check page. There we actually ask Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini the questions a customer would ask, and see whether your name comes up and which competitors did. This page explains the technical groundwork; that page measures the outcome.
See how AI reads you — free
One scan shows you exactly which technical issues keep the AI engines from reading you, and how to fix them.