Can ChatGPT cite your website? 50 checks to find out, in 30 seconds

SEO checks 18

They count toward the SEO score: they say how ready the page is for Google.

• Page titleSEO

  That the page has a title of the right length to show in full in Google's results.

  Presence of a non-empty title between 10 and 60 characters: above 60 Google truncates the title in the results, below 10 it is considered too short.

• Google summarySEO

  That there is a description sentence under the title, neither too short nor too long.

  Presence of meta name="description" between 70 and 160 characters, within which the sentence is not truncated in the snippet; its absence is the most serious flag.

• Main visible headingSEO

  That the page has a visible main heading, without repeats and without too many of them.

  A single non-empty h1 (the text may come from an image's alt or from aria-label). Zero h1, duplicate h1, more than five, or several distinct h1 on a well-structured page are flagged.

• Heading structureSEO

  That the text is divided into sections with subheadings, so you can see how it is organised.

  At least two h2 on pages of 400 words or more (nav, header and footer excluded); below 400 it is not judged. Subheadings marked as h1 instead of h2 fail with low severity.

• The site can be indexedSEO

  That the page does not tell Google not to show it in the results.

  No noindex in either the meta robots or the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header; its presence in one of the two makes the check fail with high severity.

• How much text there isSEO

  That the page has enough text to say something useful, at least 300 words, except pages that are short by nature such as contacts or privacy.

  At least 300 body words, excluding nav, header and footer; URLs whose path points to contact, privacy, cookie, terms, login, checkout or thank-you pages are exempt.

• Image descriptionsSEO

  That almost all images have a written description, useful for people who cannot see them and for search engines.

  Share of img without an alt attribute equal to or below 20%. alt="" counts as a decorative image and is not penalized; img with src, data-src or srcset are counted.

• Canonical addressSEO

  That the page declares which address is its main one, so it is not mistaken for a duplicate.

  Presence of link rel="canonical" with a filled-in href; the check only verifies that the tag exists, not that the URL it points to matches the page's own.

• Readable on mobileSEO

  That the page adapts to a smartphone screen.

  Presence of meta name="viewport" with a non-empty content; the check only reads the tag and does not measure the actual responsive layout.

• Internal linksSEO

  That the page links to the other pages of the site, with at least three internal links.

  At least 3 unique internal links (same origin, deduplicated by URL), with menu and footer included; # anchors, mailto:, tel: and javascript: are excluded.

• Secure connectionSEO

  That the site opens over a secure connection, that is, HTTPS.

  The page's final URL, after redirects, uses the https:// scheme. The check does not assess the validity or expiry of the certificate.

• Declared languageSEO

  That the page declares which language it is written in.

  Presence of a non-empty lang attribute on the html element; the language code is not compared with the actual language of the text.

• Social previewSEO

  That the WhatsApp and social preview has a title, a description and an image that really exists.

  Presence of og:title, og:description and og:image; if og:image is declared, a HEAD request must not return 404 or 410. Other network errors are not counted.

• Structured data for GoogleSEO

  That the page carries schema.org structured data written without errors, the kind Google and AI assistants read.

  At least one JSON-LD block, all valid: correct syntax and required properties present for Organization, LocalBusiness, Article, FAQPage, Product and BreadcrumbList. A single invalid node is enough to fail.

• Site iconSEO

  That the site has its small icon, the one shown in the browser tab.

  Presence in the head of a link with rel icon, shortcut icon or apple-touch-icon and a filled-in href; the file is not downloaded and its format is not verified.

• Response speedSEO

  That the server responds in under two and a half seconds.

  Response time to the HTML request equal to or below 2500 ms; it does not measure LCP, CLS or page weight.

• Colour contrastSEO

  That the text can be read against the background, with enough contrast between the colours written in the CSS.

  WCAG contrast ratio between text color and background, read from inline styles and from the body rule in style. The worst pair is used: below 4.5:1 is a warning, below 3:1 is serious.

  Not always possible: the page does not declare text and background colours

• Colours written by nameSEO

  That the CSS colours are written in hexadecimal and not with a name such as “navy”.

  Use of CSS color names (black, white, navy and the like) instead of hexadecimal values in inline styles or in the body rule; only the names on an internal list are recognized.

  Not always possible: the page does not declare colours in its CSS

GEO checks 15

They count toward the GEO score: they say how readable the page is for AI assistants.

• Who you are, statedGEO

  That the site says who it is in its structured data: an organisation or a person, with its name.

  Presence in JSON-LD of a node with @type Organization, Person or a LocalBusiness subtype (Attorney, Physician, Restaurant and the like), read at the top level or inside @graph.

• Business type declared in the dataGEO

  That the structured data declares your type of business (practice, shop, professional), even with little data: the type counts, not how complete the profile is.

  Presence in JSON-LD of a business @type: ProfessionalService, LocalBusiness, Service, Person or a subtype such as Attorney, Physician, Dentist, Restaurant. The type counts, not how complete the fields are.

• Questions and answersGEO

  That the frequently asked questions and answers are on the page and also declared in the structured data.

  Presence in JSON-LD of a FAQPage, HowTo or QAPage node; if it is missing, the message tells apart FAQs already visible on the page (details, faq classes, headings with "?") from absent ones.

• Readable contact detailsGEO

  That phone, email and address are written so that a machine can read and verify them.

  Presence of a phone number (tel: link or a number next to words like phone) or of an address starting with a street word (via, piazza, street, calle, rue); the footer is included.

• About us pageGEO

  That the site has a page or a section that says who is behind it.

  Presence in the text or in CSS classes of signals of an about page (the wordings in Italian, English, Spanish and French; classes about, bio) or of a link to an about page.

• Publication or modification date presentGEO

  That somewhere, on the page or in the data, there is a publication or modification date, even an old one: what counts is that there is one.

  Presence of a date: time datetime, itemprop datePublished or dateModified, the same properties in JSON-LD, or text such as "aggiornato il" or a date with the month in Italian. Outside articles, a missing date is not judged.

• Recognisable authorGEO

  That there is at least one clue about who writes: a byline, a professional title or an author in the data. One clue is enough.

  Presence of rel="author", author, class .author or .byline, of a professional title (Dott., Avv., Dr., Prof.) with a surname in the first 500 words, or of a JSON-LD Person node or one with author.

• Navigation pathGEO

  That the navigation path, the “breadcrumbs”, is declared in the structured data without errors.

  Presence of a valid JSON-LD BreadcrumbList: schema.org @context, non-empty itemListElement, entries with a sequential numeric position from 1 and with item or name. On a home page without breadcrumbs it is not judged.

• Where you are, for AIGEO

  That the page gives a phone number, an address or a VAT number, the details that say where and who you are.

  Presence of a tel: link, of telephone or address in JSON-LD, or in the text of a phone number, an address (via, rue, street + number) or a VAT number. Not judged on software; not run on e-commerce.

• Page structureGEO

  That the page separates the real content from the surroundings using the elements made for it.

  Presence of main or article, or of at least two section, on pages of at least 150 words; below 150 words the check passes. Heuristic signal.

• Conversational languageGEO

  That the text uses the words people use when they ask an assistant, not only technical terms.

  Density of interrogative words (who, how, when and the like, depending on lang) of at least 3 per 500 body words; heuristic signal, not judged for unsupported languages.

• Words from your tradeGEO

  That the page contains the phrases a client would use to look for your trade.

  Presence in the text of at least two typical question phrases for the sector (how much does it cost, how it works), of one phrase plus a question heading or an FAQ, or of three question headings; heuristic signal.

• No AI bot blocked, training includedGEO

  That the robots.txt file does not bar any of the AI bots we know, including those that train the models: a single ban is enough to trigger the warning.

  In robots.txt none of the nine AI user agents (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-Web, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, anthropic-ai, cohere-ai) has Disallow: /, either by name or through User-agent: *.

  Not always possible: the robots.txt file could not be read

• llms.txt fileGEO

  That the llms.txt file exists, which briefly explains to AI assistants what the site does.

  Positive response to the request for /llms.txt at the domain root, with content that is not an HTML page; the content of the file is not evaluated.

  Not always possible: the llms.txt file could not be read

• Paragraphs that open with a statementGEO

  That the paragraphs of the text start with a statement and not with a preamble: it looks at how every paragraph opens, not only at the opening of the page.

  Over the first twelve paragraphs of 8 words or more (at least three are needed), at least 50% open without an Italian subordinating conjunction, without a question and with a first sentence of 30 words or fewer. Heuristic.

  Not always possible: the page has no paragraphs long enough to assess

Citability signals 17

They are GEO signals: they weigh 30% of the GEO score and feed the A+ to F band. If the page has too little text or is in a language we cannot read, they are not judged and do not enter the score.

Text that is easy to extract

• Headings phrased as questionsGEO · citability

  That some headings are written like a client's question, with the answer right below.

  h2-h4, summary or dt headings that end with "?" or start with "¿": at least 2 are needed under 400 body words, at least 3 above. Not judged under 150 words.

• Short sectionsGEO · citability

  That the text is in short sections, each short enough to be cited on its own.

  Sections delimited by h1-h3: passes if less than 40% of the words sit in sections over 300 words and the median is 220 or less. Not judged under 200 words. Heuristic signal.

• Lists and tablesGEO · citability

  That where needed there are bullet lists or tables, which an assistant extracts whole.

  Presence in the body of ul or ol with at least three li (menus made only of links excluded) or of a table with at least three tr: 1 is needed under 600 words, 2 above. Not judged under 250 words.

• Direct answer at the top of the pageGEO · citability

  That the first sentence under the page heading says right away what it is about: it looks only at that one, the opening of the whole page.

  First sentence of the first paragraph after the h1: 8 to 30 words, neither a question nor a greeting, with a word of at least 4 letters in common with the h1 or title. Under 5 or over 45 words it counts as absent.

• Sentence lengthGEO · citability

  That the sentences are short enough to be cited whole.

  Average sentence length in paragraphs of 24 words or fewer, with no more than 15% of sentences over 35 words; up to 30 on average is only improvable. Not judged under 5 sentences or 80 words.

Evidence and sources

• Figures and concrete dataGEO · citability

  That the text contains figures and concrete data: years in business, prices, percentages.

  Distinct figures in the body: percentages, amounts in € or $ and numbers with units (years, clients, projects, hours, sq m). At least 2 are needed under 500 words, at least 4 above. Not judged under 200 words.

• Sources citedGEO · citability

  That the text links to the sources of what it states: a body, a law, a study.

  Links to different external sites inside paragraphs, lists or quotes, excluding social networks, maps, marketplaces and rel sponsored or ugc: 2 or more passes, 1 is improvable. Not judged under 300 words.

• Named testimonialsGEO · citability

  That there are testimonials or quotes with the name of the person speaking.

  Presence of a blockquote or q with cite, signature or figcaption, of a JSON-LD Review or AggregateRating node, or of an element with class testimonial. Not judged under 200 words.

• Trust pages linkedGEO · citability

  That the pages that build trust can be reached from the page: about, contact, privacy and terms.

  Links, recognized from the text or the path, to at least two of the three trust pages: about, contact, privacy or terms. Only one is improvable.

Data for machines

• Page described in structured dataGEO · citability

  That the page is described in the structured data and linked to the organisation.

  A page-type JSON-LD node (WebPage, Article, Service, Product, FAQPage and the like) with name or headline and with description, image or url, linked to the organization through isPartOf, publisher, author or an @id.

• Complete organisation profileGEO · citability

  That the organisation profile has all its details: name, website, logo, contact and official profiles. Declaring the type of business is not enough.

  A JSON-LD Organization node or subtype with sameAs of at least two https profiles and at least three other data points among name, url, logo or image, contact (telephone, email, address, contactPoint).

• Consistent name everywhereGEO · citability

  That the business name is the same in the title, the structured data and the footer.

  The JSON-LD name (or og:site_name) matches, ignoring accents and company forms, title, og:site_name and the © line of the footer; at least two possible comparisons are needed, otherwise it is not judged.

Crawler access

• AI search and citation crawlers allowedGEO · citability

  That the crawlers assistants use to search and cite, such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, can read the site, even if you ban the ones that train models. It reads the whole robots.txt and tells blocked, partial and undeclared apart.

  None of the five search and citation crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot) has Disallow: / in robots.txt, by name or through *; three blocked zero the signal.

• Text readable without JavaScriptGEO · citability

  That the main text is already in the page a crawler receives, without needing to run JavaScript.

  Body words already present in the HTML downloaded without running scripts: passes with at least 120 words, or 60 if there is no empty root (#root, #app, #__next) or "enable JavaScript" notice.

• Snippets allowedGEO · citability

  That the page does not forbid quoting excerpts from it, with nosnippet or max-snippet.

  No nosnippet or max-snippet:0 in meta robots, meta googlebot and the X-Robots-Tag header; a max-snippet between 1 and 49 characters is only improvable.

Freshness

• Recent update visible on the pageGEO · citability

  That the update date is visible on the page and recent, within a year: a date two years old does not pass.

  Date read from time datetime, itemprop or text near words like "updated" or "published": the most recent must be at most 12 months old, between 13 and 24 is improvable. Without dates, outside articles, it is not judged.

• Modification date in the structured dataGEO · citability

  That the modification date is written in the data for machines (dateModified) and matches the one shown on the page.

  dateModified in JSON-LD (or article:modified_time, og:updated_time), within at most 31 days of the date visible on the page; datePublished alone is improvable.