GEO audit checklist

A page that cannot be fetched cannot be cited. This is the floor AEO and GEO sit on.

• Googlebot and Bingbot can fetch the URL, and it returns HTTP 200.
• The sitemap lists the URL, and the canonical is that same trailing-slash URL.
• The answer text is in the HTML response, before any JavaScript runs.
• The title, meta description, and single H1 describe this page.

Answer engines lift a passage. Give each heading a passage that stands alone.

• Each important H2 is a question a buyer would actually ask.
• The next 40 to 60 words answer that question without the rest of the page.
• Three to five takeaway bullets follow. Procedures are numbered steps. Comparisons are HTML tables.
• The answer, the definition, and the table sit in the top 30% of the page, outside any accordion. In a small AI Overview sample, 55% of cited passages came from the top 30% of the page. The playbook cites the study.

On the GEO-bench paper (KDD 2024), credited quotations and added statistics raised visibility. Keyword stuffing scored below the unoptimized page. The playbook has the figures and the sources.

• A vague claim is replaced with a specific number.
• Any quotation names who said it.
• The number or quotation links to the primary source.
• Delete the target phrase and the sentences still say something specific.