Generative engine optimisation
GEO tools: audit your site, then track what AI says
GEO is the work of getting AI assistants to name and recommend you in their answers. A GEO tool should do two jobs. First, check that an AI crawler can read your site and find something worth quoting. Then ask the assistants the questions your buyers ask, and record who they recommend.
Babel42 does both. The audit is free and needs no account. If you want the background first, start with where the term GEO came from and what it means.
A GEO framework in three questions
Each question only matters once the one before it is answered. A page an AI crawler cannot read has nothing to quote, and a page with nothing to quote does not get recommended.
1. Can AI read your site?
Access
Access is rarely the problem: only 5.6% of the 197 sites we measured had a fault that stopped a crawler reading them at all. The quieter failure is JavaScript. 13.2% of those sites returned no text until it ran, so an AI crawler saw a blank page while the site ranked normally on Google.
2. Is there anything worth quoting?
Content
An assistant quotes a section, not a page. Half of all the sections we measured were under 40 words, and 76.6% never named the brand whose site they were on. A section with no owner and no checkable fact gives an assistant no reason to name you.
3. Does AI recommend you?
Answers
This is the result the first two steps are for, and it moves. Asked the same buying question twice, the same assistant named the same winner only 22% of the time. Five assistants agreed on the same brand in only 1 of 61 decidable comparisons. One check tells you about one draw, not where you stand.
What to look for in a GEO tool
Six things decide whether a GEO tool tells you something true. Each one comes from what we measured.
It reads your pages the way a crawler does
Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. A tool that loads your site in a browser sees a page the crawler never gets.
It scores sections, not just pages
Assistants lift one section into an answer. A page-level score hides the thin sections that never get quoted.
It asks each question more than once
Answers change from one run to the next. A single snapshot can show you winning or losing by chance.
It covers more than one assistant
Your buyers do not all use the same one, and the assistants rarely agree with each other.
It tracks recommendations, not only mentions
Being named in a list is not the same as being the brand the assistant tells the buyer to pick.
It does not sell you fixes that make no difference
45.7% of the 197 sites we audited publish an llms.txt file, and it made no measurable difference to what assistants could quote from them.
Babel42's GEO tools
| Tool | What it answers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| GEO audit | Can AI crawlers read ten of your pages, and is there anything worth quoting? | Free, no account |
| Deep audit | The same checks on up to 1,000 pages, every affected URL listed, 3 competitors compared | $9.99 once |
| AI Visibility | Do seven AI assistants recommend you to buyers, and who do they pick instead? | Free plan, paid from Starter |
Start with the audit
The first two questions are measurable on your own site right now. The free audit fetches your pages the way an AI crawler does and reports what came back, in a few seconds and without an account.
Questions people actually ask
What is a GEO tool?
A GEO tool helps with generative engine optimisation: getting AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to name and recommend you in the answers they write. It does two jobs. It audits your site for what an AI crawler can read and quote, and it tracks what the assistants actually say when your buyers ask them questions.
What is a GEO audit?
A GEO audit fetches your pages the way an AI crawler does and reports what came back. Babel42's free audit checks your robots.txt against the crawlers that feed AI answers, requests your pages as an identified crawler, checks what is left without JavaScript, and measures whether each section can be understood on its own. It runs in a few seconds and needs no account.
Is GEO different from SEO?
Less than most articles suggest, because assistants lean heavily on ordinary search results. GEO adds two jobs on top: making sure an AI crawler can read the page at all, and making each section stand up alone when it is quoted without the rest of the page.
Is there a free GEO tool?
Yes. Babel42's GEO audit is free, samples ten pages and needs no account. AI Visibility tracking has a free plan too: one AI Buyer, any two of the seven AI assistants, checked weekly.
Which AI assistants does Babel42 track?
Seven: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. The free plan picks any two of them for each AI Buyer. Paid plans add more assistants and more frequent checks.
Do I need an llms.txt file for GEO?
No, on the current evidence. 45.7% of the 197 sites we audited publish one, and it made no measurable difference to what AI assistants could quote from them. Google states you do not need one. Babel42's audit reports whether you have one but never counts its absence against you.
Further reading
- The order we would work through it in from a cold start to a repeatable weekly check.
- What changes when the reader is an assistant and what stays exactly the same as classic search.
- If someone calls it AEO instead the one distinction between the two that holds up.
- How much AI answers change between runs the same assistant asked twice named the same winner 22% of the time.