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GEO Specialist Groundwork: Run The Audit, Schema And Brief Prompts In Your Agent OS

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Before you pay a GEO specialist, your Agent OS can do the groundwork: crawler checks, snippet sweeps, schema drafts and content briefs.

This guide gives you a quick start, five copy-paste prompts and a clear line for when to hand over to a professional.

If you'd rather skip straight to an expert view, book a free strategy session with Julian's team.

What the groundwork covers, and why it's worth doing first

GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is about being found and cited in AI answers.

Google's guide to optimising for generative AI features frames it as ordinary SEO aimed at AI results, so the groundwork is familiar.

Your agent can gather the facts in an afternoon.

That means any GEO specialist you hire later starts from evidence rather than guesswork, and you can judge their plan against it.

Quick start: set your agent up in four moves

1. Create a project folder called geo-groundwork and drop in your sitemap URL and a list of your ten most important pages.
2. Give the agent web fetch access, read-only. No CMS login, no publishing rights.
3. Add a rule to its instructions: "Draft only. Never change the live site. Ask before any action outside this folder."
4. Ask it to save every finding as a dated markdown file, so you have a paper trail.

Prompt 1: audit AI crawler access

Each AI platform names its own search bot, and blocking it can keep you out of that platform's answers.

OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic all document theirs.

Fetch https://[yourdomain]/robots.txt.
For each user agent below, tell me whether it is allowed,
blocked, or not mentioned, and quote the exact line:
Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, ChatGPT-User,
PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot, ClaudeBot,
Claude-User, Google-Extended.
Then fetch three of my key pages with a plain request and
report any 403 or challenge page, which may mean a firewall
or CDN rule is blocking bots.
Save the result as crawler-audit.md. Do not edit anything.

Read the output carefully.

Google says Google-Extended doesn't affect inclusion in Search, per its crawler documentation, so don't panic if it's blocked.

Googlebot is the one that matters for AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Reading the crawler audit: what each result means

Note that user-triggered fetchers such as ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User may not follow robots.txt in the same way, according to their own documentation.

So the search bots are the lines to focus on.

Prompt 2: sweep for snippet rules that hide pages from AI

Crawl the URLs in pages.txt. For each one, report:
- the robots meta tag and X-Robots-Tag header, if any
- whether nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex appears
- any elements carrying the data-nosnippet attribute
Flag any money page where these rules would stop Google
using the text in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Save as snippet-sweep.md. Draft only.

Google's robots meta tag spec explains that nosnippet also keeps a page out of AI Overviews and AI Mode as direct input.

One stray tag on a template can undo a lot of good content.

📞 Want an expert to read your crawler audit?

Julian's team can go through your agent's findings with you and turn them into a GEO plan. Book a free SEO strategy session to get started.

→ Get a free strategy session

Prompt 3: draft your Organisation schema

Read my About page and Contact page.
Draft JSON-LD using schema.org Organization (or LocalBusiness
if we serve customers at a location or in a service area).
Include name, url, logo, address, telephone and sameAs links
to our official profiles only.
Every value must match text visible on my site; list any
value you could not confirm instead of guessing.
Save as schema-draft.json. Do not publish.

Google's Organisation markup docs describe how this helps it tell your business apart from others with similar names.

Google also says there's no special schema needed for AI features, so treat this as clarity, not a shortcut.

Prompt 4: build a content brief AI can't copy from elsewhere

For the page [URL], list the 8 questions a buyer would ask
an AI assistant before choosing a business like mine.
For each question, mark whether my page answers it, partly
answers it, or misses it.
Then suggest first-hand material only I can provide: our
process, real examples, photos, numbers we publish.
Do not write the page. Save as brief-[slug].md.

The reason this prompt asks for first-hand material is Google's push for "non-commodity" content.

A brief like this is exactly what a good GEO specialist should produce in week one.

Prompt 5: research who might genuinely mention you

Find 20 websites relevant to [industry] in [area] that
already feature businesses like mine: trade bodies, local
news, supplier blogs, partner directories.
For each, note why it fits and how they accept submissions.
Draft a short, fair outreach note for the top five.
Draft only. Do not send any email.

Keep it accurate.

Google's spam policies cover links made to manipulate rankings, and paid placements need rel="sponsored", per its link qualification guidance.

A small-business run-through: an independent bike shop

1. Prompt 1 finds the shop's host returns a challenge page to unknown bots. The owner asks the host to allow OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
2. Prompt 2 shows the repairs page carries nosnippet from an old theme setting. It's removed.
3. Prompt 3 drafts LocalBusiness markup; the owner corrects the opening hours before it goes live.
4. Prompt 4 reveals nobody explains e-bike servicing; the owner writes a page from their own workshop notes.
5. Prompt 5 lists local cycling clubs and event pages; the owner sends three personal notes.

Safety rules worth pinning in your agent's instructions

• Read-only by default: fetching pages is fine, changing them is not.
• Draft only for anything that leaves your machine, especially emails.
• No guessing: if a fact for schema or a brief can't be found on your site, the agent lists it as missing.
• No mass page creation. Google's scaled content abuse policy targets pages made mainly to manipulate rankings.
• Date-stamp every file so you can show a specialist exactly what changed and when.

Turn it into a monthly routine

Once the first pass is done, rerun Prompts 1 and 2 at the start of every month.

Hosting changes, theme updates and new plugins can quietly re-block bots or add snippet rules.

Run Prompt 4 on one new page each fortnight, and Prompt 5 once a quarter.

Ten minutes of reading a fresh report each month is enough to catch most problems before they cost you visibility.

How to measure what the groundwork changed

Note your starting numbers before anything goes live.

Google's Search Console generative AI reports show impressions and pages in AI features.

Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report shows citations in Copilot.

In our experience, ChatGPT referrals appear in analytics with chatgpt.com as the source.

Review after four to six weeks, not the next morning.

When to hand it to a professional

Hand over when the findings outgrow your hours.

That usually means firewall changes you can't make yourself, more than a handful of pages to rewrite, or outreach you'll never get round to.

Take your agent's files to the call, and ask any GEO specialist the questions on Google's hiring an SEO page, including whether their GEO advice matches Google's own guidance.

Walk away from anyone who guarantees a ChatGPT mention or a #1 ranking.

Want the companion piece? Read what an AEO specialist does on this site.

To learn AI SEO yourself in depth, the AI Profit Boardroom teaches the full Agent OS workflow.

🔥 Turn these prompts into a weekly routine

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get step-by-step trainings, the installable Agent OS, four coaching calls a week and daily Q&A to learn AI SEO yourself.

→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

📞 Ready for a GEO plan built on your groundwork?

Book a free SEO strategy session and Goldie Agency will review your audit files and map the next steps.

→ Book your free strategy session

📘 Two free resources to go with your prompts

Grab 200+ AI SEO Prompts for more audits and briefs, plus the free link building book for the outreach side.

→ Book a free SEO strategy session

FAQ

Can an Agent OS replace a GEO specialist?

It can do the fact-finding: crawler checks, snippet sweeps, schema drafts and briefs. Judgement, firewall changes and outreach still need a person.

Is it safe to let an agent touch my website?

Keep it read-only and draft-only. Give it fetch access, no CMS login, and a rule to ask before any action outside its project folder.

Which bots should my robots.txt allow for AI search?

The search bots: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and Claude-SearchBot for Claude, plus Googlebot and Bingbot. Training bots are a separate choice.

How soon will I see results from the groundwork?

OpenAI says robots.txt changes take about a day to register, but content and mentions take weeks, so review after four to six weeks.

Final word on GEO Specialist Groundwork

Run the five prompts, keep everything as drafts, then book a free strategy session or learn the full workflow in the AI Profit Boardroom before you brief a geo specialist.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ AEO Specialist Groundwork: Run It In Your Agent OS

→ GEO Agency UK Groundwork: 5 Agent OS Prompts To Run First

→ Rank In Google AI Overviews: 5 Agent OS Prompts To Start

→ AI Search Optimisation Agency Groundwork In Your Agent OS

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