How does an AEO or GEO audit differ from an SEO audit?
Inspect the retained answer as well as the site: an AEO or GEO audit can examine what the answer says before it names a supplier. Our study, The AI written RFP, coded 5 of 149 included construction-answer records for a pricing-basis and included-features criterion, using captures dated 22 September 2026.
What we measured
Measured. The study-specific method and data code criteria stated before the first vendor name. The construction category's pricing-basis criterion appears in five included answers from a base of 149, with a published interval of 1.4% to 7.6%. The source retains Team review: in progress. This is an answer-content observation, not a test of whether an audit or content change improves visibility.
Reported. Google's AI-features guidance, read on 29 October 2026, retains ordinary SEO practices for Overviews and AI Mode. A page needs indexing and Search-snippet eligibility to be a supporting link; the guide adds no separate AI-specific technical requirement.
Reasoned. A crawl check and this criterion check inspect different objects. The former concerns the site's access and eligibility; the latter asks whether a particular captured answer stated the software's pricing basis before its supplier list.
What this means for you
Read the price wording. The study's retained passages address charging by users, projects or construction volume, as well as required modules and external collaborators. An audit that records only whether the vendor appears would omit that buyer-criteria passage. If your report concerns pricing information, the passage and its location before the supplier list are the relevant evidence.
Keep the coding boundary with the example. The price criterion occurs in two ChatGPT returns and three Claude returns for the same construction question. One of those ChatGPT records contains two retained passages, so the number of quoted passages differs from the five-answer count. A report can preserve both the literal passages and the answer-level base without treating each passage as another answer.
The technical-site part still has concrete work. Google's guidance covers crawler access through robots.txt and hosting, internal links, textual content and structured data matching the visible page. Those checks describe the page that might supply an answer's supporting link; the pricing-criterion record describes the captured answer before the first vendor name.
Also asked as
When auditing a site for AEO/GEO/AISEO, what do you do differently? (if anything)
Related
- The AI written RFP study and method
- Google AI features and websites
- The Manual on valid measurement
- Checking a citation against its claim
Next step
Use the Free 10-question check (one engine) for a separate dated company-answer sample. No email is needed; runs are limited per network and per day, and by the site's daily allowance.
For one documented company-fact error, Fix one answer, $490. Keep the retained answer and its supporting public source with the correction.
Our answer-study method, v1.1.
Prepared by the Broadcastwell team.
Page owner: Vikram Patel, AI Architect. Corrections: hello@broadcastwell.com