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Free AEO Audit: Six Free Routes, And A Weekly Check Your Agent OS Runs For You
A free AEO audit is a no-cost check of whether AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews name your brand, cite your pages and get your facts right.
You can get one free through a strategy session, a free grader, free webmaster tools or a DIY prompt panel, and your Agent OS can re-run the DIY part every week.
This quick start covers the six free routes I checked today and the six-step setup I'd use to automate it.
If you want an expert view first, book a free SEO strategy session and get a custom visibility plan.
The free routes to an AEO audit, and how each fits your Agent OS
AEO stands for answer engine optimisation, which is the work of getting your brand named and cited in AI-written answers.
There are six free routes worth knowing, and I checked every one on its own page on 17 October 2026.
| Free route | What its own page says | How it fits an Agent OS |
|---|---|---|
| My free strategy session | A free AI brand visibility session with a custom visibility plan, an AI visibility roadmap and a competitor gap analysis. | Your agents' prompt log becomes the evidence you bring to the call. |
| A DIY prompt panel | You ask real buyer questions in each AI tool and log the answers yourself. | This is the part your agents automate every week. |
| Google Search Console | Google calls it a free service, and its Performance report counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic in the "Web" search type. | An agent can read the queries and turn the question-shaped ones into new prompts. |
| Bing Webmaster Tools | It offers free reports, including an AI Performance report for citations in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. | You copy the citation numbers into shared memory each month. |
| HubSpot AI Search Grader | A free one-time check of what ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini say about you based on their training data. | A one-off snapshot to compare against your agents' live answers. |
| Go Fish Digital AI Visibility Audit | A free, expert-led AI visibility audit with a live 30-minute strategy session. | A second expert view you can check against your own log. |
I'm biased towards the strategy session because it's my own team, so weigh that.
The session is a conversation with a strategist, so it isn't an automated tool or a written report.
HubSpot's page says you complete a form to see the full results, and its "based on their training data" wording means it may differ from live search answers.
I haven't used Go Fish Digital's audit myself, so I'm only describing its page.
Quick start: a free weekly AEO audit in six steps
This is the setup I'd give any member on day one, and it costs nothing beyond the AI tools you already use.
- First, write ten to twenty buyer prompts across best-of, comparison, problem, brand and alternatives questions.
- Second, write a one-page fact file with your brand name, services, locations and the proof you can back up.
- Third, pick the AI tools to test, and note that Claude's pricing page lists a free plan if you need one.
- Fourth, give one agent the job of asking every prompt in a fresh chat each week and saving the dated answers to shared memory.
- Fifth, give another agent the jobs of counting cited domains, checking facts and reading your robots.txt file.
- Sixth, have the agents write a short weekly note on what changed, and read it every Monday.
Run each prompt at least twice per check, because AI answers change from one chat to the next.
Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode can use different models and techniques, so log them as two separate tools.
📞 Want an expert to read your first weekly log?
Book a free SEO strategy session and my team will go through your competitor gap analysis and give you a clear AI visibility roadmap.
🔥 Want the exact AI SEO setup I run inside my Agent OS?
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The agent jobs that make the audit free every week
My Agent OS is a dashboard that runs a crew of AI agents under one shared memory, and it's the same system I teach.
The shared memory is what makes a free audit useful, because every week's answers sit next to last week's.
| Agent job | What it does every week | What you still do |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt runner | It asks your ten to twenty buyer prompts in each AI tool you choose and saves the dated answers. | You choose and approve the prompts. |
| Citation counter | It pulls every cited URL out of the answers and counts how often each domain appears. | You decide which sources are worth earning a place on. |
| Fact checker | It compares each answer with your one-page fact file and flags anything wrong. | You keep the fact file true. |
| Crawler watcher | It reads your robots.txt file and flags any rule that blocks OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Googlebot. | You approve any change to the live site. |
| Change reporter | It compares this week with last week and writes a short note on what moved. | You judge it against enquiries and sales. |
People still own the prompts, the facts and every change to the live site.
I'd never let an agent edit a live page without a person reviewing it first.
The crawler check your agents run first
An AI search tool can't cite a page its crawler isn't allowed to read, so this check runs before anything else.
| Crawler | Owner | What the official docs say |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | It surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features, and OpenAI recommends allowing it in robots.txt. |
| GPTBot | OpenAI | It crawls content that may be used for model training, and it is a separate setting from OAI-SearchBot. |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | It surfaces and links websites in Perplexity's search results, and Perplexity recommends allowing it. |
| Googlebot | Google says crawling must be allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting setup. |
I read OpenAI's crawler page, Perplexity's crawler page and Google's guide to AI features on 17 October 2026.
OpenAI and Perplexity both say a robots.txt change can take around 24 hours to take effect.
Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
A weekly agent check catches the day a CDN or security change quietly blocks a crawler.
The free data your agents should store each month
Two free webmaster tools add numbers your prompt log can't give you.
Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the "Web" search type of the Search Console Performance report.
Microsoft introduced the AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools in public preview on 10 February 2026.
Microsoft says it shows total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries and page-level citation activity across Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and select partner integrations.
I'd store both sets of numbers in the same shared memory as the prompt log, so one agent can compare the whole picture month to month.
🔥 Want the exact AI SEO setup I run inside my Agent OS?
Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get the installable Agent OS, step-by-step video tutorials, four coaching calls a week and 3,400+ members building real automations.
What the free audit can and can't tell you
A free audit is a strong start, but it has limits you should know before you act.
| A free AEO audit can tell you | A free AEO audit can't tell you |
|---|---|
| Whether AI tools name you for your best buyer questions. | What every buyer sees, because answers change from one chat to the next. |
| Which competitors get named instead of you. | Exactly why a model picked one source, because the AI companies don't publish that formula. |
| Which websites the AI cites. | How every possible phrasing of a question would be answered. |
| Whether a crawler is blocked. | Whether a fix will definitely change an answer. |
| Whether your facts are wrong in AI answers. | Anything guaranteed, because nobody can guarantee what a model says. |
Google also says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org markup to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
That means you shouldn't pay for those as the fix after a free audit.
What your agents should do with the findings
The audit only matters if the fixes follow.
- Fix any crawler block first, because nothing else works until the AI can read your pages.
- Fix any wrong fact next, because it's cheap and it hurts every answer it appears in.
- Have an agent draft answer-first rewrites of your key pages, with the answer in the first sentence and under fifty words.
- Have an agent draft a short FAQ section with FAQPage schema that matches the visible text, and review it before it goes live.
- List the most-cited third-party sources where you're missing, because those are the places to earn coverage.
My strategy session page says AI platforms don't recommend brands simply because those brands publish more on their own websites.
It says they look for consistent signals across the wider web, such as trusted publications, expert articles, independent reviews, comparisons and credible third-party references.
Your agents can find those gaps, but earning a byline or a review still takes a person.
📞 Want help earning the coverage your agents can't?
Grab a free SEO strategy session with Goldie Agency and we will map the bylines, reviews, comparisons and research that fit your market.
How my own setup uses free data
My own AI SEO pipeline already runs on free inputs, and I document it in my live guides on this site.
My keyword skill scores my real Search Console queries in one pass, and on one live run it scored 184 queries at once.
The question-shaped queries become prompts, and the gaps become the next batch of answer-first pages.
Every week I also check pages sitting in positions 8 to 15, because Google already likes them.
My Claude AI SEO rank one guide shows the full system, and my King of AEO guide explains how I approach answer engines.
Where to go next
My sibling guide to the full AEO audit has the complete scorecard and the order I'd fix things in.
My guide to the free AEO report shows how to turn your weekly notes into something a client or a boss can read.
If you're also checking generative engine optimisation, my free GEO audit guide covers the GEO-specific checks.
Also On Our Network
FAQ
How do I get a free AEO audit?
You can book a free SEO strategy session with Julian Goldie's team, which works like a free AEO audit conversation, or run a DIY prompt panel. Free tools such as Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and HubSpot's AI Search Grader add more data at no cost.
Can an Agent OS run a free AEO audit for me?
Yes. Agents can ask your buyer prompts every week, save dated answers to shared memory, count cited domains, check facts and watch your robots.txt file. People still approve the prompts, keep the facts true and review every change.
Is the free strategy session a written report?
No. The page describes a free AI brand visibility session with a strategist, and it says you leave with a custom visibility plan, an AI visibility roadmap and a competitor gap analysis.
Which free data shows AI citations?
Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report, introduced in public preview on 10 February 2026, that shows citations in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. Google Search Console counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the Web search type.
What can't a free AEO audit tell me?
It can't tell you what every buyer sees, why a model chose a source or whether a fix will definitely change an answer. Nobody can guarantee what a model says.
Final word on the free AEO audit
Set up the weekly agent check, store the free data next to it and fix the cheap blocks first.
If you'd like my team to look at your log, book a free SEO strategy session and leave with a plan for traffic, mentions and leads.
That is how I'd run a free AEO audit.
About Julian
I'm Julian Goldie, an AI entrepreneur, SEO expert and the founder of the AI Profit Boardroom, which has 3,400+ members.
I help business owners scale with AI agents, automation and SEO.
My YouTube channel has 400,000+ subscribers, and I run Goldie Agency, a seven-figure SEO agency.
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