Library · Measuring AI visibility
Measuring AI visibility
In one sentence
Findings are short case studies written from real measurements — a robots.txt that answered 200 with a challenge page, a site whose GPTBot traffic came from one address wearing seven crawler names, a homepage that was two percent readable text, a contact email that bounced for one published character — each with the bytes that showed it; a business found with a defect is named only after its owner has been contacted.
What visibility scores and audit tools measure, compared, with CrawlCheck included.
2026-11-029 min
Web scraping APIs compared: the real cost per page
ScrapingBee, ZenRows, ScraperAPI, Bright Data, Firecrawl, Apify and Browse AI converted from credits into pages, plus Crawl4AI, Scrapy and Jina Reader for free, and the one question none of them answers about your own site.
ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%CRAWLER_SERVED_LESS0.6%CHALLENGE_SERVED_2000.4%+3
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2026-11-023 min
How to read a CrawlCheck report: grade, fixes, evidence
What each part of the report answers, which part to open first, and how to check a finding against the bytes behind it.
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2026-11-025 min
How to measure AI visibility yourself: three checks
Three measurements, in order, each one reproducible. Two are free, and the one people buy first only means something once the other two are clean.
ROBOTS_NOT_2005.6%STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%+2
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2026-11-025 min
YouTube SEO case study: 81 videos rewritten, measured
A dormant channel had 81 titles and descriptions rewritten in two dated batches, with the baseline published first. Search views rose 19% against a flat year-earlier control; the flat and falling rows are printed beside it.
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2026-11-027 min
AI visibility tools compared: what each one measures
Every tool in this category runs a similar loop and most comparisons sort on price. What decides whether a tool can help you is which half of the problem it can see: the answer, or the access before it.
STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%CRAWLER_SERVED_LESS0.6%+3
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2026-11-02 · Case studies5 min
Google's /goto redirect: why referrer data can't show it
Google confirmed the google.com/goto redirect, but no landing page can detect it. The check that works is the ratio of Search Console clicks to GA4 organic sessions.
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2026-11-02 · Research · Exclusive3 min
AI visibility vendors audited: 11 of 23 have llms.txt
The companies that grade machine readability, run through the same checks they would point at you. The reading is from a directory that re-scans itself, so today's figures are one click away.
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2026-11-029 min
Screaming Frog vs Sitebulb vs CrawlCheck: AI crawler audits
Screaming Frog, Sitebulb, Semrush, Ahrefs and Lighthouse compared on the question that decides what each can find: what request it sends, and as whom. With where CrawlCheck falls short.
ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%CRAWLER_SERVED_LESS0.6%CHALLENGE_SERVED_2000.4%+6
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2026-11-025 min
Free AI visibility checkers: how to tell if one is any good
Most free checkers grade the things almost every site passes. The useful question is whether the check is hard enough to fail, and what the tool does when it cannot measure at all.
NO_LLMS_TXT32.7%STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%+3
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2026-11-02 · Research3 min
Missing referrer is not direct traffic: 93% of our arrivals sent none
Across five sites and 1,104 recorded arrivals, 1,026 carried no referrer at all. Every claim about where AI traffic comes from is being made on the remaining seven per cent.
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2026-11-024 min
How to rank in ChatGPT: the part that is in your control
There is no position three. There is retrieval, and four conditions your site has to meet before anything you publish can be used at all.
ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%AI_OPTOUT_SET2.9%STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%+3
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2026-11-024 min
GEO vs AEO vs LLM SEO: the terms, and what is measurable
Three names for one shift, sold as three disciplines. The labels barely differ; the useful split is between work that produces a number you can check and work that does not.
ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%AI_OPTOUT_SET2.9%STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%+2
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2026-11-02 · Research3 min
AI text watermarks only work if the provider opted in
Watermarking is real and the mechanism is sound. But it covers one vendor's models, you cannot run the detector, and paraphrasing removes most of the signal.
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2026-11-02 · Research4 min
AI visibility scores measure an API, not ChatGPT
The answers these tools record are real. The label on top — “your visibility in AI search” — describes something that was never measured.
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2026-11-02 · Research3 min
Site audits go stale: why one clean scan proves little
Measuring the same sites every day produces a number a one-off audit cannot: how many were broken at least once. The gap between “broken now” and “ever broken” is the case for a series over a snapshot.
STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%MACHINE_FILE_CACHE_STALE0.5%CHALLENGE_SERVED_2000.4%+1
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2026-11-025 min
Did your SEO fix work? Compare fixed and untouched pages
A before-and-after chart cannot tell a fix from the season or an algorithm update. Comparing the pages you fixed with the pages you did not, over the same weeks, can — with data you already have.
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2026-11-02 · Research4 min
AI citations on two dates: seven matched questions
The same seven questions on Google AI Mode and Perplexity, asked on 5 and 29 October 2026: four pairs became cited, none were lost. A wider 27-question pass is alongside. Neither shows why.
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2026-10-034 min
AI crawler monitoring vs uptime monitors: what each one catches
UptimeRobot, Visualping and CrawlCheck Watch compared: what each watches, how often, and the AI crawler failures a green uptime check never shows.
ANSWER_ENGINE_REFUSED6.1%CHALLENGE_SERVED_2000.4%STALE_CACHE_SERVED15.4%+1
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