About the AI Visibility Checker
The checker is deliberately transparent. When you submit a domain we make four HTTP GET requests to it, identified as:
AnswerRankingsBot/1.0 (+https://answerrankings.com/about-our-checker)What we fetch
Section titled “What we fetch”| Request | Why |
|---|---|
/robots.txt | To evaluate whether six AI crawlers (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Bingbot) are allowed to read your site |
/llms.txt | To see whether you publish AI content guidance (what’s that?) |
/ (homepage) | To check JSON-LD structured data, title, meta description and headings |
/sitemap.xml | To check discoverability |
We read at most 512 KB per response, time out after 8 seconds, follow redirects, and store nothing about your site beyond the report shown to you in your browser.
How the score works
Section titled “How the score works”| Category | Points |
|---|---|
| AI crawler access | 40 |
| Structured data (JSON-LD, entity, FAQ/HowTo) | 25 |
| Content signals (title, description, H1) | 15 |
| AI content guidance (llms.txt) | 10 |
| Discoverability (sitemap) | 10 |
Grades: A = 85+, B = 70+, C = 55+, D = 40+, F below that.
What the checker does not do
Section titled “What the checker does not do”It does not (and cannot) query ChatGPT or Perplexity to see whether you are currently cited — no public API exposes that. What it measures is whether anything is stopping those engines from crawling and citing you, which is the part you control. The getting-cited playbook covers the content side.
Fair use
Section titled “Fair use”The tool is free, limited to 5 checks per visitor per day. Please only check domains you own or are authorised to audit.