Every agency now sells an AI audit.
Most are guessing.
We measure the gap.

A GEO audit (generative engine optimization audit) measures whether AI engines. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Claude: name and cite your business when buyers ask category-relevant questions. Where a traditional SEO audit checks whether you rank on a results page, a GEO audit checks whether you appear inside the answer itself. It baselines your visibility across every major engine, benchmarks it against your top three competitors, diagnoses why you're being left out, and hands you a prioritised list of fixes. The measurement may use Outrigger, a separate joint venture Joel co-founded with Andrew, so the diagnosis is based on measured data rather than a subjective read of the site.

Nothing meaningful: they're the same deliverable under two names. 'GEO audit' is the term used by people who already think in generative-engine-optimization language; 'AI visibility audit' is the plainer phrasing for the same question: when a buyer asks an AI assistant about my category, do I show up? Some people also call it an 'AI SEO audit.' We use the terms interchangeably. What matters is the method underneath: real queries run through real engines, competitor benchmarking, and a diagnosis tied to the specific layer that's failing: entity, technical, authority, or content.

Four categories. AI answer visibility: your priority queries run through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Claude, recording for each one whether you were named, cited with a link, or absent, plus your share of model against your top three competitors. Entity and authority: whether the engines can actually identify who you are, your knowledge-graph and sameAs footprint, and your third-party citation profile. Technical AI-readiness: schema @graph coverage, FAQ and Article markup, your llms.txt and ai.txt files, and whether you're accidentally blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or Google-Extended. Content extractability: whether your pages are written in the direct-answer, question-heading, citation-friendly patterns that LLMs actually pull from. Every finding is tagged with impact and effort.

An SEO audit asks 'do I rank on Google's results page.' A GEO audit asks 'does the AI answer name me at all.' The overlap is real because strong SEO foundations feed AI visibility, but the surfaces are different. AI engines choose sources through entity disambiguation, schema graphs, citation authority, and content extractability, not just links and rankings. A traditional audit won't tell you that ChatGPT names a competitor and never mentions you, or that PerplexityBot is blocked by your robots.txt. A standalone SEO audit can cover the ranking layer; this audit is purpose-built for the AI-answer layer.

The scope depends on the number of priority queries, engines, competitors, brands, and markets being assessed. A focused audit can cover a defined query set and competitor benchmark; a multi-brand or enterprise footprint requires broader analysis. The proposal states the scope, fee, delivery process, and handoff before work begins.

Through Outrigger, the separate AI-visibility joint venture Joel co-founded with Andrew. For each of your priority keywords we query ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews, then record five things per answer: were you mentioned, were you cited with a link, what was the citation context, what was the sentiment, and which competitor was named instead. We aggregate that into a share-of-model score, your percentage of AI answers in your category, and track it against your top three rivals. This is the same instrument behind Outrigger's Q1 2026 AI Visibility Index across 1,004 businesses, so the method is tied to published industry research rather than a one-off spreadsheet.

Timing is confirmed after the query, competitor, brand, and market scope is defined. A focused audit moves faster than a multi-brand or enterprise audit. The proposal states the delivery date and handoff format before work begins. The work includes data collection, interpretation, and a prioritised action plan rather than a raw spreadsheet alone.

Because we use dedicated instrumentation instead of guessing. Xpand uses Outrigger, a separate joint venture Joel co-founded with Andrew, to run the audit and benchmark visibility across the major engines. When the work calls for digital PR, Xpand may use PressForge to organize research, pitching, and follow-up. Joel also wrote AI for Revenue. The audit is diagnosis grounded in measurement and operating experience: not a template with your logo dropped in.