Free agency resource

AI visibility audit checklist

A reusable 24-point worksheet for reviewing whether a brand can be retrieved, understood, supported, and measured across AI-generated answers.

By Kyle Kane, product maintainer and editorPublished Fact-checked Reviewed against the public methodology and downloadable worksheet.
Download the CSV worksheet Review the methodology

How to use it

Audit first, prioritize second

Complete the checklist against one brand and one defined market. Attach URLs or evidence in the worksheet notes rather than relying on a simple yes or no.

This is a readiness framework, not a ranking guarantee. Pair it with a frozen question set and preserve the answers, citations, provider details, and coverage behind the result.

24-point worksheet

Work from access to evidence, then measurement

01

Define the audit

Freeze the subject and test conditions before collecting answers.

  • Record the brand name, canonical domain, category, market, and locale.
  • List known aliases and the competitors you want to compare.
  • Save the audit date, providers, model identifiers, and question set.
  • Separate neutral discovery questions from brand-named diagnostic questions.
02

Check technical access

Confirm that the public pages you want retrieved are actually available.

  • Verify indexability, canonical URLs, XML sitemaps, and internal links.
  • Confirm important content is present in rendered HTML.
  • Review robots.txt and CDN bot controls for the crawlers you intend to allow.
  • Check that important pages are fast and reachable without authentication.
03

Clarify the brand entity

Make core facts consistent across owned and third-party pages.

  • Use one company name, canonical domain, and category description.
  • Keep product vocabulary, pricing facts, and audience descriptions consistent.
  • Align official profiles and important directory listings.
  • Correct outdated or conflicting company information.
04

Audit answers and evidence

Give answer systems clear, supportable material to retrieve and cite.

  • Map pages to discovery, comparison, implementation, risk, pricing, and alternative questions.
  • Lead answer-focused sections with a direct response before supporting detail.
  • Add relevant examples, methods, source links, dates, and limitations.
  • Identify generic pages that offer no original evidence or useful distinction.
05

Review off-site corroboration

Find the independent sources that confirm or contradict owned claims.

  • Audit important profiles, reviews, expert references, and category roundups.
  • Find unlinked brand mentions and confirm that linked mentions use the canonical URL.
  • Note recurring third-party domains cited in answers where the brand is absent.
  • Prioritize accurate, relevant listings with real editorial or user value.
06

Measure and plan the rerun

Keep visibility, citations, and execution coverage separate.

  • Record mentions, prominence, competitor share of voice, owned citations, and sentiment separately.
  • Track provider coverage and preserve the answers and sources behind each metric.
  • Document exclusions instead of counting failed or ungrounded answers as misses.
  • Rerun the same frozen questions after meaningful changes become retrievable.

See a completed example

Review the questions, provider differences, sources, and actions in a full sample report.

Open the sample report