Can an AI cite you?
Enter your URL. We read the live page the way an AI crawler does and audit it across twenty-seven checks, scoring how ready you are to be cited in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
- Entity & trust
- Structured data
- Answerability
- Machine readability
- AI access & discovery
thecraneconsultancy.com/ai-search-readiness
Scoring engine v1.6 · updated 29 June 2026 · aligned with current Google, OpenAI, Perplexity & Anthropic guidance
Reading the live page…
The mind behind the diagnostic.
A public sample of a private standard.
This scanner reads a site the way I do on a first pass: the entity a model can trust, the structured data it can parse, the answers it can lift, the access it is granted. I built it because most businesses have no honest read on whether AI can see them at all. What it surfaces in seconds, a forensic audit takes apart in full.
Architect of the LUSH Cosmetics global digital transformation across sixteen markets, former Head of Paid Media and Paid Media Enablement lead at senior agencies, most recently Digital Data & Analytics lead through the Everywhen brand launch across Towergate Insurance and forty other brands. A power user of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and structured data, working the machine-readability layer directly rather than briefing it out.
The brands that win 2027 are legible to the machine, not just the reader. My work makes you legible.
A scanner finds the obvious. The audit finds the rest.
This reads what is visible in your HTML. A forensic AI search audit goes deeper: the entity graph a model actually trusts, the queries you should own, and the schema and authority work that makes a model more likely to read, trust and cite you.
Speak with NicSee how AI search optimisation works, or read the forensic method.
What AI search readiness means.
AI answer engines no longer return a page of blue links. They read the live web, synthesise a reply, and cite a short, curated set of sources. Whether you are in that set depends on something most sites have never measured: how legible your page is to a machine.
This scanner reads your live HTML the way an AI crawler does and scores it across twenty-seven checks in five dimensions. It reads what is in the page source, not what renders after JavaScript, because that is what most AI crawlers read too. It is a readiness proxy, not a guarantee: it measures the on-page signals you control, while the rest of citation rests on off-page authority no scan can see.
Twenty-seven checks, five dimensions.
Entity & Trust
Can a model confirm who you are? Organisation and person schema, sameAs links to known profiles, logo and contact, and named, credentialed authorship.
Structured Data Depth
Is your meaning machine-readable? Valid, linked JSON-LD that describes what you actually offer, not merely that a website exists.
Answerability
Can a model lift a clean answer? Concise, self-contained passages, question-led sections, and a clear heading structure it can quote.
Machine Readability
Is the page easy to parse? Substantive text, honest titles and descriptions, image alt coverage and semantic structure.
AI Access & Discovery
Are the right crawlers allowed in? Indexable, snippet-eligible, and open to the crawlers that surface you in AI answers.
Legible to the machine is the new front page.
AI answers reach buyers at the point of decision, and the cited sources capture demand a tenth-place link never sees. The brands a model can already read and trust are the ones it surfaces as these answers take more of the journey. The work that makes you legible to the machine is becoming the work that wins.
AI search readiness questions.
Does AI really cite just one source?
No. Answer engines synthesise a reply and cite a curated set, usually a handful of sources. The goal is to be in that set; a page a model cannot read or trust is not.
Is this the same as SEO?
It overlaps. Sound technical SEO, crawlability, structured data and clear content, is the foundation, and Google says its generative features reward the same fundamentals. AI search adds emphasis on entity clarity and extractable answers.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
Not for AI search. Google has confirmed llms.txt has no effect on Search, and the major AI search crawlers rarely fetch it. It is useful for coding and agent tools, so the scanner scores it lightly and never penalises its absence.
Why does blocking GPTBot not hurt my score?
Because GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler. The crawlers that surface you in ChatGPT are OAI-SearchBot, which builds its search index, and ChatGPT-User, which fetches a page live when a user's prompt needs it. Blocking training is a separate, legitimate choice, so the scanner only flags blocking the crawlers that actually read and cite you.
Does a high score guarantee citation?
No. It measures on-page readiness, which you control. Whether you are cited also depends on off-page authority and brand presence no on-page scan can see. A strong score removes the on-page reasons not to cite you.
What does the scanner not see?
It reads static HTML and does not run JavaScript, so content built entirely in the browser is invisible to it, as it often is to AI crawlers. It also does not measure backlinks or brand authority.