The AI SEO Tool
for What AI Search Can Read and Say
AI SEO is mostly SEO you already know. Google's AI answers use pages that are indexed and snippet-eligible, and ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can only use pages their crawlers reach. 99Visibility checks both sides: whether AI crawlers can read your site, and what ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude say about you once they do. Then it tells you what to fix.
The first audit is free and covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
What Each AI Engine Needs Before It Can Use Your Page
None of the operators publish a ranking formula. They do publish the conditions for being used at all, and every one of them is an SEO condition.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
Indexed, and eligible to show with a snippet. Nothing extra.
“A page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet … There are no additional technical requirements.”
ChatGPT search
OAI-SearchBot allowed in robots.txt, and let through by your host or CDN.
“To make a website eligible for inclusion, allow OAI-Searchbot to crawl the site and confirm that the website host or content delivery network allows traffic from OpenAI’s published searchbot IP addresses.”
ChatGPT and Claude crawlers
Your content in the HTML the server sends. They do not run JavaScript.
“While ChatGPT and Claude crawlers do fetch JavaScript files … they don’t execute them. They can’t read client-side rendered content.”
Fixing these does not make an engine more likely to pick you. Failing them means it cannot pick you at all. That is why every audit starts with access. Check the robots.txt half yourself with the free AI crawler robots.txt checker.
What Carries Over From SEO, and What Doesn't
Most "AI SEO" advice adds something to your pages. The evidence points the other way: remove what blocks the engines, and skip the tactics nobody has shown to work.
Still decides AI visibility
| Getting indexed | Google’s AI features only use pages in its index. |
| Snippet eligibility | nosnippet and max-snippet:0 remove a page from AI answers as well as results. |
| robots.txt, per bot | Each AI search crawler has its own user-agent; a blanket block removes you. |
| Server-rendered content | OpenAI and Anthropic crawlers read the HTML as sent and never render it. |
| Firewall and CDN rules | A 403 to an AI crawler cancels whatever robots.txt allows. |
Sold as AI SEO, not supported
| Schema markup for citationsNo evidence | Ahrefs’ matched test of 1,885 pages found no citation uplift on any platform; AI Overview citations fell 4.6% relative to matched control pages. |
| llms.txt and AI text filesIgnored by Google | Google says it doesn’t use them, and no other engine documents reading one. |
| Writing “for AI” or chunking pagesNot required | Google’s AI optimization guide says you don’t need to write in a specific way for generative AI search. |
| A page for every long-tail variantNot required | The same guide says you don’t have to capture every variation of how someone might search. |
Sources: Google's AI optimization guide and Ahrefs' schema test. Every source behind this page is on the research page.
What 99Visibility Checks
Five checks, each read from your own site or from the engines' answers. No estimated traffic and no guessed ranking factors.
Crawler access
Requests your site as each AI crawler, reads your robots.txt rules bot by bot, and flags noindex and nosnippet. Shows where robots.txt says yes but your firewall says no.
Site health
The SEO basics AI search inherits: status, redirects, HTTPS, title, description, canonical, H1, Open Graph, robots.txt, sitemap and indexing signals.
Presence
Whether ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude name your brand for the prompts you track, weighted by how much each engine is used.
Accuracy
Every answer checked against the facts you enter: pricing, founding date, location, and the features you do and do not have. Each wrong answer is flagged with its engine.
Citations
Which sources the engines cite for your prompts: your own pages, your other properties, or a competitor’s.
Then Agent V Helps You Fix It
Finding what blocks you is half the job. Agent V, the assistant beside your dashboard, reads your audit and your site and turns a finding into something you can paste.
Ask it to fix one recommendation and it drafts the page copy, the robots.txt lines or the JSON-LD to paste. Ask it to explain your score and it walks you through what moved it.
Anything that changes your account, like running an audit or adding a keyword, comes to you as a card to confirm. Nothing changes until you do, and V never edits your site. It is on every plan.
How Agent V worksWe Ran It on Ourselves First
Google indexed 52 of the 132 URLs in our sitemap, although every one returned a clean 200 with a self-referencing canonical. Our framework was also serving page titles to GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot outside the page head.
Neither problem shows up in a rank tracker. Both are the kind of thing an AI SEO audit should catch before you spend a cent on content.
AI SEO FAQ
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO is making sure AI search engines (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude) can reach your pages and describe your brand correctly. Most of it is SEO you already know: being indexed, eligible for snippets, crawlable and server-rendered. The new part is checking what the engines actually say.
Is AI SEO the same as GEO or AEO?
They are three names for the same goal. GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) came from the research and marketing world; AI SEO is the name most people search for. 99Visibility measures all three the same way: by asking the engines and checking what comes back.
Do I need a separate AI SEO strategy?
For Google, no: Google says there are no additional technical requirements for its AI features beyond being indexed and snippet-eligible. For ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, add two checks to your SEO routine: each AI crawler is allowed and not blocked by your firewall, and your key content is in the server-sent HTML.
What is LLM SEO?
Another name for the same thing, focused on large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude. When a model answers without web search, the answer comes from what it learned in training. Nobody has measured a way to change that directly; what you control is whether accurate information about you is published and reachable.
Does schema markup help AI SEO?
The evidence says no. Ahrefs tested 1,885 pages against matched controls and found no citation uplift on any AI platform, with AI Overview citations down 4.6% relative to matched control pages. Google says structured data is not required for generative AI search. Schema can still serve other purposes; AI citations are not one of them.
How much does an AI SEO tool cost?
99Visibility plans are $49/mo (Starter), $99/mo (Growth) and $149/mo (Pro). Paid plans cover all five engines. The first audit is free and covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
Keep Reading
See what AI search can read, and what it says
Crawler access, site health, and every answer that gets your facts wrong. Paid plans cover all five engines; the free audit covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.