AI SEARCH · AEO · WEBSITE READINESS AUDIT
Is Your Website Ready for AI Search?
When a buyer asks AI who's good, it tends to put one name on top. This audit shows how ready your site is to be that name. It takes about two minutes.
Updated November 2026
Your AI Score is a 0 to 100 checklist. It shows how easy your site is for AI to read, trust and name. No AI company publishes its formula, so use it as a to do list, not a grade. Run it, then fix the top three.
You do great work. You've got the reviews, the trucks and the crew.
Tonight a homeowner asks ChatGPT who's the best in your town. It names the other guy. Damn.
You'll never know it happened. There's no missed call and no lost lead in your inbox. The job just goes somewhere else.
I've built 10,000 sites in 26 years, and 281 of them are AI-JSX sites. So let's find out what AI sees when it looks at yours. Then you'll fix the three things that matter most.
3 Things to Remember
When a buyer asks AI who's good, it tends to put one name on top. Your site helps decide if that's you.
Seven things move this score. Clear answers count the most, and they only cost you an hour of writing.
Nobody outside these companies knows the formula. Treat your score as a to do list, not a grade.
Find Out Your AI Score, Then Fix It
This is why the page exists. Answer yes or no, and the dial moves as you go.
You'll see your score, the seven parts of it, and what to fix first. No login. No email.
Let AI Score Your Real Site
The audit scores your answers. This prompt reads your actual pages. Paste it in and answer three questions. It scores all seven and hands you the top three fixes.
You are going to score my website for AI search. Score it on the seven things below. Nobody outside these companies knows the exact formula, so treat this as a checklist, not a measurement. Ask me these first, one at a time. 1. What is your website address? 2. What do you do, and what town or area do you serve? 3. What are the 3 questions customers ask you most? Then open my site and check these seven things. Score each one from 0 to 10 and tell me why in one plain sentence. 1. Clear answers. Does each main page answer a real customer question in the first sentence? 2. Structured data. Does the site have schema, like LocalBusiness, Service and FAQ? 3. Page speed. Does it load fast on a phone? If you can't measure it, tell me to paste my address into https://pagespeed.web.dev and read me the mobile number. 4. Fresh content. When was the site last updated? 5. Trust signals. A real name, real photos, reviews, a license, an address? 6. Clean structure. One main headline per page, clear section headings, and words that show up without JavaScript? 7. Mentions. Do other trusted sites name my business? Think Google Business Profile, local directories, suppliers, local news. Then give me my AI Score from 0 to 100. Then the three fixes that would raise it the most, biggest first, and exactly what to change for each one. Rules: 5th grade reading level. Short sentences. Be blunt. Never invent facts about my site. If you can't open a page or can't tell, say so. When you finish, the last thing you write is "Want some help? Let us do it." as a clickable link to https://smallbusiness-seo.com/let-us-do-it
A Low Score Costs You Before the Click
The fight moved up the page. Your buyer now reads an answer before she ever sees your link.
Pew tracked real searches in 2025. Google showed an AI summary on 18% of them. People clicked a regular link on 8% of those visits, against 15% with no summary (Pew Research Center, 2025).
Read that the plain way. When the summary shows up, clicks get cut almost in half. Your spot on page one is worth less than it was.
So the name inside the answer matters more every month. Your buyers are already asking AI, and here's why it picks one name.
What Is an AI Score? A Checklist, Not a Verdict.
It's a number from 0 to 100. It shows how easy your site is for AI tools to read, trust and name.
I'll be straight with you. ChatGPT doesn't hand out a score. Neither does Google. No AI company publishes how it picks.
So nobody can sell you your real number. Anybody who says they can is guessing. This score puts the known basics in order, so you fix the right thing first.
How AI Picks One Name
AI goes for the business it can read fast and trust. That's clear answers, real proof, and other people saying your name.
Researchers tested this. Rewriting pages for AI answers lifted how visible they were by up to 40% (GEO paper, KDD 2024). That was a lab test, not a plumber in your town. It still tells you the words on the page matter.
The rest of the story is here: why AI names them and not you, and how to be the one it picks.
Fresh Helps. Fake Fresh Doesn't.
AI tools lean newer, but not by as much as the people selling this stuff say.
Ahrefs studied about 17 million citations. Pages AI cited were 25.7% newer than regular Google results. ChatGPT leaned the hardest. Google's AI Overviews barely leaned at all (Ahrefs, 2025).
Here's the catch. The average cited page was still almost 3 years old. Old pages win all the time when they're good.
The mistake: changing the date on a page and calling it updated.
The fix: add something real. New photos, new prices, a question a buyer asked you this week.
The payoff: the page gets better for the buyer, and that's who you're after anyway.
Got an old post sitting there? Here's how to bring it back to life. Speed counts for your buyer too, so run the website speed calculator and see what yours costs you.
Schema Is a Label. It's Not Magic.
Schema is hidden code that labels your page. This is the business. This is the town. These are the hours.
Somebody will try to sell it to you as the secret to AI search. It isn't. Google says plainly there's no special schema.org structured data that you need to add
for its AI features (Google Search Central).
I still use it. Look at the code on this page and it's there. It's cheap, your buyers never see it, and it removes the guessing. Just get the words on the page right first.
Proof Beats Bragging
AI trusts you the way a stranger does. It wants a real name, real work, and other people backing you up.
Saying "we're the best" on your own site proves nothing. A license number does. So does a real photo of your crew on a real job.
Then get other people talking. Your reviews talk to AI, and a half empty Google profile tells it nothing. Your About page counts too, and most of them are invisible to AI.
Shape It So AI Can Quote It
Put the answer first. One question, one short answer, right under it.
That's easy for a buyer on a phone, and it's easy for AI to lift. Long wind up paragraphs are hard on both.
Start with what people really ask. Write down the last ten questions you got on the phone. Those are the questions your town asks, and each one is a page section waiting to happen.
The 5 Minute Name Check
Don't take a score's word for it. Go ask. Three checks, one at a time, on your phone, tonight.
Want more than a gut check? Ask AI about you the right way, then track who it picks each month.
"We Already Rank on Google." Good. Keep It.
Ranking is still worth a lot, and I'd never tell you to drop it. Just don't assume it carries over.
You can be number one on Maps and missing from ChatGPT. It happens. Google found you, and ChatGPT didn't, because they don't read the same way.
The good news: the same basics help both. You're not starting over. You're finishing the job.
How to Raise Your Score
Writing more won't do it. Make each page easy to read, trust and quote.
- Answer first. Put a one sentence answer at the top of every service page.
- Show your proof. Your name, your license, real reviews, real photos.
- Fill out your Google profile. Hours, services, photos. All of it.
- Label it. Have your web guy add schema for your business, services and FAQ.
- Get named elsewhere. Local directories, suppliers, the chamber, local news.
You can do these one at a time. Or you can start with a site built this way from day one. That's the 100K Website, and you go live on day 11.
What Happened After We Rebuilt
You've heard plenty of talk. Here are real Google Analytics numbers from sites we rebuilt. The clients stay anonymous. The numbers don't.
A local rooferSame company, same crew, same trucks, same spend. In the 36 days after launch, 3,260 visits stayed and read, up from 1,339 in the 36 days before.
A local emergency vetIn the first six weeks, 1,287 of 2,386 visits came from a search, with no ads behind them.
A local window and door company64% of people arriving from Google stayed and read, for close to a full minute.
Now the fine print. Those are visitors, not booked jobs, and they aren't AI mentions either. I won't claim what nobody counted. But a buyer who leaves can't call you, and a buyer who stays can.
My own site went the same way. I cut 100% of my Facebook ads and 95% of my Google ads. Traffic dipped 4.63%. Search traffic jumped 277.59%, and people who stayed and read went up 117.48%. That's my Google Analytics, June 15 to August 13, 2026, against the 60 days before.
The site didn't do that alone. It took a ton of work, so keep your ads on until search covers them. Here's the whole story, and here's every case study, with the screenshots.
When You Can Ignore This Score
I'll say it, even though it's my audit. Not everybody needs this today.
You're booked out for a year on referrals. Then go to work. Check back in six months.
Nobody searches for what you do. If you sell to five big accounts, a handshake beats a chatbot.
Your score is 95 and the phone is dead. Then the score isn't the problem. Look at your offer, your reviews and how fast you call back.
For everybody else, your next buyer is asking. Better that it names you.
Be the Name AI Says Out Loud
You've got your score, your fixes and your name check. Do the top three this week. Then see what a site built for all of it feels like.
Your website should look this good. Let's talk. Take a test drive.
Want the whole playbook first? Plan your attack. Balls Out Marketing.
FAQ
It's a 0 to 100 checklist score for your website. It shows how easy your site is for AI tools to read, trust and name. No AI company publishes its formula, so use it as a to do list, not a grade. Run the audit.
Usually it can't tell what you do, where you do it, or why anyone should trust you. Thin pages and a half empty Google profile are the common causes. Other sites may also never mention you. Why AI names them and not you.
Open ChatGPT signed out and ask who's the best at your trade in your town. Then ask what your business does. It takes about 5 minutes. Answers change, so check again next month. Run the 5 minute name check.
On this audit, 75 or higher is a good score. Under 60 means your site is missing the basics. That's a rule of thumb, not a ranking. The fixes matter more than the number.
It's built on regular SEO, and it adds one job. SEO gets you on the list. This work gets you named in the answer. Google says the same SEO basics still apply to its AI features. What this kind of SEO is.
No. Google says there's no special schema you need for its AI features. Schema is still worth having, because it labels your business clearly. It won't save a thin page.
Update a page when something real changes, like prices, services or photos of new work. Don't change a date just to look fresh. Ahrefs found AI tools lean newer, but the average cited page was still almost 3 years old.
Yes. That's what we do. You can work through the fixes on this page yourself, or hand the whole thing to us. Want some help? Let us do it.