The 403 Nobody
Could See
This service exists because of an audit we ran for a client who asked a simple question: “Why doesn’t ChatGPT know about my business?”
Their site was good, and its robots.txt welcomed AI crawlers. Our live requests using OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity crawler identifiers received 403 Forbidden responses. A firewall setting was blocking those requests even though the robots.txt policy allowed them.
We widened the test to more than a hundred live business sites and found over half returning blocked responses to AI-crawler test requests. The audit led us to review Cloudflare settings, hosting firewalls, and bot protection. We also tested the client sites we serve and verified access after applying fixes where needed. We documented the method in a step-by-step guide you can run yourself.
That experience shaped this service: compare the published access policy with live responses, investigate differences, and document the result. Crawler-identifier tests help find blocks; they do not by themselves prove that an AI provider has indexed a page.
A New Way Customers
Find Businesses
Search remains an important way to find businesses, and we’ve studied it since 1996. AI assistants add another route: people can ask a question and receive a summary that draws on several sources. Being included in those answers can create another path for customers to find you.
We focus on what a service can read, the business details it can identify, and the information other sources can corroborate. Accessible pages, accurate structured data, useful content, and consistent profiles give us specific areas to review and improve.
We cannot guarantee that an assistant will cite or recommend your business. What we can provide is a documented program of access checks, content improvements, profile reviews, and measurement against relevant questions.
Live Checks and
Clear Findings
Our GEO playbook describes the approach we use on our own site and for clients. We check live responses, compare structured data with visible content, and record the results. The work covers three areas:
Access. We test requests using major AI-crawler identifiers against the homepage and deeper pages, on apex and www. We compare responses with browser requests, then review robots.txt, firewall, and hosting settings when access differs.
Understanding. We connect accurate business, people, service, and location information in structured data. Each fact is checked against the visible page so the markup and the content describe the same business.
Credibility. We review useful answers, business profiles, reviews, and citations for clarity and consistency. We can also prepare llms.txt as a directory of key pages, while keeping its role separate from observed indexing or recommendations.
"When it comes to digital strategy, he is truly one of the best in the world at what he does. I don't say that lightly."
The Work,
Named Plainly
You receive the findings, the changes made, and the evidence available for each part of the work.
AI Visibility Audit
Live requests using GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and relevant Google crawler identifiers, with browser-request comparisons. You receive the HTTP responses and findings about access and page content.
Entity Schema Build
Connected structured data for your business, people, services, hours, location, and profiles. We check every fact against the visible page and verify that the markup parses.
GEO Content Strategy
Pages and articles that answer relevant customer questions directly, with useful detail and visible FAQs supported by matching markup.
Technical Plumbing
llms.txt preparation, sitemap and canonical checks, crawlable navigation, and page performance reviews. We explain the purpose and limits of each change.
Citation & Consistency Sweep
A review of your name, address, hours, and business details across relevant directories, profiles, and listings, with discrepancies identified for correction.
Honest Measurement
Monthly checks of assistant answers to your customers’ questions, AI-referral traffic, and search positions from real SERP checks, with the query, date, location, and measurement method shown.
Search and AI Visibility
Share a Foundation
AI visibility and search visibility share technical foundations: accessible pages, clear content, and consistent business information. We coordinate that work with the design and performance of your website.
SEO & Performance
Search research, technical improvements, and content planning informed by experience since 1996. We measure search visibility alongside the AI checks relevant to your business.
Explore → YOUR WEBSITEBespoke Web Design
Custom sites with semantic structure, responsive layouts, and clear content make your information easier to navigate and read.
Explore →Ask an AI About Your Business.
Then Ask Us
Start with an AI visibility audit. We’ll check access, review the information on your site, and sample answers to relevant questions, then explain what we found and what is worth improving.