GEO, AEO and SEO Checklist: 40 Items to Review Your Site

This checklist gathers 40 items in five blocks (access, content, entity, authority and measurement) to review your site for both Google and AI assistants. Each item comes with its reason. Checking everything off does not guarantee citation, but it removes the most common obstacles. If the terms GEO, AEO and SEO still confuse you, start with the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO or check the glossary.

Quick summary

• The foundation of GEO and AEO is the foundation of SEO: a crawlable, indexed page with useful content. Google says there is no special optimization to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• Each assistant has different bots for search and for training. Allowing the right one matters more than allowing all of them.
• Citable content has a direct answer, data with source and date, and something of its own.
• A clear entity (brand, author, contact details) matters for people and for systems.
• Without measurement, you cannot know whether anything worked. Google and Bing already offer AI reports.

How to read this. If you are short on time or have never touched SEO, go straight to the short 10-item version and then use the blocks as a reference. If you already work in SEO, the access and measurement blocks carry the 2026 news. For a deeper analysis of what the checklist reveals, use the GEO audit step by step.

How do you use this checklist?

Use it in four steps. Most items are solved in minutes; the authority items take weeks and become an ongoing plan.

1. Pick 5 to 10 pages that generate revenue or answer customers' questions. Do not review the whole site at once.
2. Mark each item as "ok", "partial" or "missing". Note the URL of each failure.
3. Fix in the order of the blocks. If the page is not read (block 1), improving the text (block 2) does not help.
4. Repeat every month with the same pages and record what changed and when.

In plain English: think of opening a store. First the door has to open (access), then the window display has to explain what you sell (content), then the customer has to know who the owner is (entity), then the neighbors have to speak well of you (authority) and, in the end, someone has to count who walked in (measurement).

Block 1: can AI and Google read your pages?

The answer comes from eight technical checks. According to Google, to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, with no other special requirements (AI features and your website).

#	Item	Why
1	Important pages return 200 and have no noindex	Outside the index, a page cannot be cited
2	robots.txt does not block Googlebot or Bingbot on the target pages	Google and Bing have AI features with their own reports
3	No restrictive nosnippet or max-snippet on pages you want cited	These controls limit the use of excerpts and reduce visibility
4	OAI-SearchBot allowed, and a conscious decision about GPTBot	According to OpenAI, the first serves ChatGPT search and the second serves training
5	PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot allowed, if you want to appear in them	Each company has its own search bot
6	Firewall, CDN and security plugins do not block these bots	Accidental blocking only shows up in the logs
7	The main content is in the HTML, without depending on a click or scroll	Content that depends on interaction may not be read
8	Sitemap up to date and submitted to Search Console and Bing; IndexNow enabled	IndexNow notifies Bing and Yandex of changes; Google does not take part

For SEO professionals: ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User are triggered by user requests and may ignore robots.txt, so do not count on it for those cases. Google-Extended, in turn, controls Gemini training and grounding and does not affect Search or AI Overviews. Details in robots.txt and AI crawlers and Bing Webmaster and IndexNow.

Block 2: does your content answer, prove and have something of its own?

Nine items decide whether the text is worth citing. The full pattern is in LLM-citable content, and the single-page basics in on-page SEO: checklist.

#	Item	Why
9	Direct answer in the first 40 to 70 words	Readers and extractors find the answer without scrolling
10	Headings written as questions, with the answer right below	Matches the way people ask
11	Technical terms defined the first time	Laypeople understand and the passage works out of context
12	Table where there is a comparison or criteria	Data in rows and columns is easy to check
13	Numbered step-by-step in processes	Explicit order avoids ambiguity
14	Numbers with a linked source and date	Data without a source cannot be verified
15	Specific examples, not generic ones	Gives a reason to cite your page and not an identical one
16	FAQ with real questions and self-contained answers	A complete answer works even when excerpted
17	Visible update date and periodic review	Facts change; Microsoft recommends keeping content up to date

For SEO professionals: Google stopped showing the FAQ rich result in May 2026, so write FAQs for the value of the text, not for the showcase. Also check what the GEO and AEO myths say: Google states there is no need to chop up content or rewrite it in a special way for AI.

Block 3: is it clear who the brand is and who signs the content?

Eight items make the entity verifiable. An entity is the identity of the brand or person on the internet: name, what it does, where it is and who answers for it.

#	Item	Why
18	Brand name spelled the same on the site, social networks and directories	Variations make the same company look like several
19	"About" page with who you are, where you are and how to contact you	Proves there are real people and a real address
20	Every article with an identified author and bio	Google encourages bylines where readers expect to find them
21	Only real, verifiable credentials	Invented credentials destroy trust
22	Organization with sameAs to official profiles	Links the site to the profiles of the same entity
23	Person and Article with the correct author	Connects text and author
24	Schema describes only what is visible and validates in Google's test	Google requires consistency with visible content and, in the guide for generative features, says there is no special schema for AI
25	Privacy policy, contact and terms accessible	These are basic signals of a trustworthy site

In plain English: schema is the name badge. It does not create trust by itself, it only makes it easier to read who you already are. See the step-by-step in Organization, Person and sameAs.

Block 4: do third parties confirm what you say?

Eight items cover authority and off-site presence, the slowest ones to resolve.

#	Item	Why
26	Links from relevant sites in your industry, inside useful text	Quality and context count more than volume
27	Varied anchor text, without repeating the exact keyword	A natural link profile is safer
28	Brand mentions on industry sites, even without a link	Readers trust those cited by third parties
29	Google Business Profile and professional profiles complete	Google lists Business Profile among what helps visibility in AI answers
30	Real reviews, with replies	A purchased review breaks the rules and counts against you
31	Presence where your audience asks (forums, videos), without spam	It is where your audience asks and compares options
32	At least one original data point or study per year	Original data gives a reason to be cited
33	No fabricated mentions or mass link packages	Google says inauthentic mentions do not help and treats links bought to manipulate ranking as a violation

For item 31, see Reddit, YouTube and Quora in AI citations. For links, Contentor offers permanent backlinks on Brazilian, Portuguese-language sites ($49 per link in the white niche), relevant if your audience speaks Portuguese; use them with judgment and read Google's rules first.

Block 5: do you know whether anything changed?

Seven items set up the measurement routine. AI answers vary from one query to the next, so measuring means recording a trend, not a single query.

#	Item	Why
34	Property verified in Google Search Console	It is the basis of any measurement
35	Generative AI performance report reviewed every month	Launched in June 2026, it shows impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates in Google's AI features, according to Google
36	Bing Webmaster Tools with the AI Performance report	In public preview since February 2026, it shows citations and cited pages, according to Microsoft
37	List of 20 to 30 target questions in the customer's vocabulary	Gives consistency to the measurements
38	Each question tested several times, with the appearance percentage noted	Answers change with every run
39	Server logs show visits from AI bots	Confirm that block 1 works in practice
40	Dated change log	Without it, you do not know what caused what

Contentor gathers Search Console data per project on the Results page, and AI Visibility tracks, for the questions you choose, whether ChatGPT cites the brand (only ChatGPT). See the methodology in AI visibility metrics.

What is the short 10-item version for people with little time?

These are the items most likely to unlock the rest. Do them in the order below, and use the numbers to find the detail in the blocks.

1. Item 1: confirm that the important pages are indexable.
2. Item 4: allow OAI-SearchBot (and decide about GPTBot).
3. Item 7: make sure the main text is in the HTML.
4. Item 9: write the direct answer at the top of each key page.
5. Item 14: put a source and date on every number.
6. Item 17: show the update date and review what is old.
7. Item 20: identify the author of each article.
8. Item 24: fix schema that does not match the page.
9. Item 29: complete the Google Business Profile.
10. Item 35: open the Search Console generative AI report and note the baseline.

Hypothetical example: a fictional custom furniture store reviews five category pages in one afternoon. It finds that the firewall blocks unknown bots (item 6), that the pages have no update date (17) or author (20), and that nobody looks at Search Console (34 and 35). Within a week, it allows the bot, adds date and author and records the baseline. This does not promise citation: it removes obstacles and creates a point of comparison.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to apply the checklist?

The short version fits in an afternoon for a small site. The 40 items usually take one to two weeks, and the authority ones (block 4) continue as an ongoing routine. Prioritize blocks 1 and 2, because without access and a clear answer nothing else changes the result.

Do I need to do anything different to appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google?

The foundation is the same: accessible, useful and trustworthy pages. What changes is each one's bot (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot) and the reports available. Google says there is no special optimization for its AI features, and OpenAI's and Perplexity's documentation is mostly about crawler access.

Does this checklist work for any type of site?

It works as a foundation for any site that wants to be found and cited. Stores, SaaS, local businesses and regulated fields (health, law) have extra items, with their own data and compliance requirements. See GEO for ecommerce, for SaaS and B2B and for clinics and law firms.

Is adding llms.txt part of the checklist?

No. Google states that no new files are needed for AI and that Search ignores llms.txt. For other assistants, we know of no evidence that it increases citations. If you want to create it for internal organization, that is fine, but do not prioritize it ahead of the items above. See is llms.txt worth it?.

Does checking all 40 items guarantee AI will cite me?

No. The checklist removes known barriers and improves the quality of the sources you offer. Citation depends on competition, reputation and criteria the assistants do not fully publish. Measure progress month by month and treat the result as a trend.

Next step

Check off what is missing in the checklist and, if you want to understand causes and priorities, run the GEO audit step by step. Before investing in any new tactic, read the 10 common GEO and AEO myths and mistakes.

Read also:

• On-page SEO: checklist
• LLM-citable content
• robots.txt and AI crawlers