# GEO audit checklist

Episode 1. What Is AI Search? SEO vs AEO vs GEO Explained

Three passes on one page. First the page has to be crawlable. Then each section has to answer its heading on its own. Then the claims have to be specific enough to quote.

Playbook: [the AI search playbook](https://beket.ai/guides/ai-search-optimization-playbook/)

## SEO. Crawl baseline

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.

## AEO. Direct answer blocks

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.


## GEO. Citable sentences

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.

## Rest of the series

- Episode 2: [Technical AI bot checklist](https://beket.ai/resources/ai-bot-checklist/)
- Episode 3: [GEODATA audit template](https://beket.ai/resources/geodata-audit/)
- Episode 4: [AI search ROI template](https://beket.ai/resources/ai-search-roi/)