GEO Audit
Quick answer
A GEO audit is a structured check of whether, and how, AI chat engines mention a brand when asked a relevant buying question, usually run across a fixed set of prompts and engines so the result is a repeatable score rather than one person's memory of asking ChatGPT once.
Why it matters
Without a structured audit, a team's sense of its own AI visibility is usually just one person's memory of asking a chatbot about the brand once, on one day, with one wording. A GEO audit matters because it replaces that impression with a specific, repeatable check: which engines named the brand, which didn't, and which competitors got named instead, all recorded rather than left to memory. An audit also gives a team a shared starting point. Instead of debating whether AI visibility is a problem, the discussion moves to which specific prompts and engines need work and which pages are the likely fix.
How to measure it
Run a fixed set of prompts a real buyer would ask against a fixed set of AI engines, score the share of answers that actually name the brand, and read the full text of each answer rather than just the score, since which competitors get named instead is often the more useful finding. Repeating the same prompts on a schedule turns a one-time audit into a trend worth watching over months, not just a single data point. Save each audit's raw answers alongside the score, so that a later audit can be compared line by line. A score that rises because a competitor stopped being named is a different result from one that rises because the brand started being named, and only the saved text shows which happened.
Example
A founder runs a GEO audit on their own domain and gets a middling score. Reading the full answers shows two of the four responses named a specific competitor by name for the exact question the founder's own product answers directly, a detail the score alone wouldn't have surfaced but the full text does, pointing straight at which comparison page needs attention first.
Frequently asked questions
How is a GEO audit different from a regular SEO audit?
A GEO audit checks AI-specific factors, such as how AI engines currently describe the brand and which competitors get named instead, rather than the ranking-focused checks a classic SEO audit covers.
How often should a GEO audit run?
Quarterly is reasonable for most brands; a faster-moving market or a recent site change is a good reason to run one sooner.
Does MarketHQ offer a GEO audit tool?
Yes, a free one-off audit checks whether ChatGPT and DeepSeek name a domain across two fixed prompts; a paid plan runs the same kind of check weekly across more engines.
Is a single GEO audit enough, or does it need repeating?
A single audit is a useful starting snapshot, but AI answers change as engines update and as competitors publish new content, so repeating it on a schedule is what actually tracks whether a fix worked.
Related terms
Related
MarketHQ tracks brand mentions across communities, news, blogs, social and AI answers, and turns them into gap analysis and action plans.