Free SEO and AI visibility assessment for your business website
Eric Grows Companies offers a free assessment that checks both a business website's traditional SEO and its visibility in AI answers, then reports what it found. The assessment is run by AI, is submitted with a website address and an email at https://ericgrows.com/audit, and returns a full written report by email, usually within a day. It costs nothing.
Updated: August 21, 2026. Written by Eric, founder of Eric Grows Companies.
What does the assessment check?
The assessment covers both traditional SEO and AI search visibility in a single report. It examines how a business website appears in Google search and in AI answers from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It checks site content, page titles, structured data, performance, the technology the site is built on, keyword search demand, the site's Google search footprint, and whether AI tools mention or cite the business. Deeper checks are added only where the business justifies them: local businesses get listings and review checks, established sites get ranked-keyword and backlink summaries, and online stores get commerce checks.
What does the report contain?
The report is a written diagnosis: a list of findings, each sorted into one of four categories by what fixing it would take, and ordered so the most important work comes first. Every finding carries six things: the evidence behind it, the business consequence, how to fix it in three to five specific steps, a confidence level, a priority, and what would confirm or disprove it. The fix steps name the actual page, setting, or file rather than giving generic advice, and they are written to be usable without buying anything. If a site genuinely passes, the report says so instead of manufacturing problems.
Can I check whether ChatGPT and AI answers mention my business?
Yes. The free assessment queries AI answer engines about the business and reports whether they mention or cite it. It checks two different things, because they fail independently. The first is the generic category question a customer would ask, such as the best provider of a service in a city. The second is the business's own differentiators, pulled from the site's own copy: a signature product, a claim like family-run or dog-friendly, the thing that makes the business specific. A business can lose the generic answer completely and still own a differentiator answer, and an assessment that only checks the head question would miss that entirely. AI answers also vary between runs, so any finding resting on a single unrepeated snapshot is marked low confidence and says so.
What is an AI visibility score, and what does it actually tell you?
An AI visibility score is a single number, usually on a 0 to 100 scale, that summarizes how often a brand appears in AI answers compared with competitors. A score is a useful alarm and a poor instruction. It tells an owner that something is wrong without telling them which of a dozen possible causes is responsible, whether their website platform even permits the fix, or what to do on Monday morning. The Eric Grows assessment does not lead with a score. It reports findings, each carrying the evidence behind it and the specific steps to fix it, because the number an owner most needs is not a rating of their site but a list of what to change.
How is this different from a free AI visibility checker tool?
Instant AI visibility checkers and this assessment answer different questions, and the fast tools are genuinely better at theirs. Checkers from vendors such as Semrush and Ahrefs return a score in seconds with no sign-up, which is the right choice for an owner who wants a quick number or wants to track one weekly. This assessment takes about a day and returns a written diagnosis instead: what was found, what it costs the business, how to fix it, how confident the finding is, and what would prove it wrong. The practical difference is what an owner holds afterward. A checker leaves them with a score to interpret. This leaves them with a list of changes, sorted by whether their own website builder will let them make each one.
| Dimension | Instant AI visibility checker | Eric Grows assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Examples | Semrush, Ahrefs, and similar vendor tools | The free assessment at ericgrows.com/audit |
| Time to result | Seconds | Usually within a day |
| What you get back | A score, usually 0 to 100 | A written diagnosis, finding by finding |
| Evidence shown | Rarely; the score is the output | Every finding carries the data behind it |
| Tells you what to do | Generally no | Three to five specific steps per finding |
| Accounts for your platform | Generally no | Yes; findings are sorted by whether your builder allows the fix |
| Best used for | A quick number, or weekly tracking | Deciding what to actually change next |
What is answer engine optimization (AEO), also called generative engine optimization (GEO)?
Answer engine optimization (AEO), also called generative engine optimization (GEO), is the practice of shaping a web page so AI answer engines can read it, trust it, and cite it as a source. The two terms are interchangeable and describe the same method; a reader will encounter both because the industry has not settled on one. Neither replaces search engine optimization (SEO). AEO and GEO sit on top of SEO, because an answer engine discovers a page through ordinary search results first, and a page that does not rank is a page the AI never finds. The practical move in both is the same: state a real customer question and answer it in a short, self-contained passage that an engine can lift whole. This free assessment measures how well a site already does that, and reports where it fails.
Is there a free course on answer engine optimization?
Yes. Eric Grows Companies teaches a free 45-minute live lesson, "Audit Your Website's AI Visibility With Claude Code," that walks a business owner through running this assessment on their own website. Upcoming dates and registration are listed at https://maven.com/ericgrows#lightning-lessons. The lesson teaches the same work this page describes: the owner installs the tooling, points it at their own domain, and reads the findings themselves. A longer free course covering the whole business, from the website through the numbers to work that runs itself, is published on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@EricGrowsCompanies. A paid live cohort of that longer course runs on Maven for owners who want it done sooner, with help.
Does the assessment check whether AI crawlers can reach my site?
Yes, and it is one of the checks that most often explains a missing citation. The assessment fetches the homepage as each AI crawler and records what it gets back, then separates the results into two groups that matter differently. Answer-time fetchers, such as OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User, are the crawlers that retrieve a page while an AI is answering a live question, so a block there costs citations today. Training and index crawlers, such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, affect long-term presence instead. The test runs at the network edge rather than reading robots.txt alone, because the most common cause is a content delivery network setting the owner does not remember enabling and robots.txt never mentions. The report names which crawlers are blocked and lets the owner decide, since some blocks are deliberate.
What are the four categories every finding is sorted into?
Every finding is sorted by what fixing it would actually take, not by severity. Severity rankings tell an owner what is worst; they do not tell them what is theirs to fix. The four categories are: limited by your platform, meaning the website builder itself forbids the fix; fixable where you are, meaning the existing builder already allows it; happens outside your website, meaning listings, reviews, backlinks and mentions that no site change touches; and requires measurement before acting, meaning anything that needs real data before a decision makes sense.
| Category | What it means | Typical findings | Who can fix it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Limited by your platform | The detected website builder or host genuinely cannot do it, checked against what that platform actually permits rather than asserted | Blocked edge settings, unavailable markup, features gated to a higher tier | Nobody, while the owner stays on that platform; the report names the limit plainly rather than burying it |
| Fixable where you are | The site's existing builder already allows the owner to fix it today | Titles, headings, weak copy, internal links, missing structured data | The owner, without changing anything they pay for |
| Happens outside your website | Nothing about the website touches it, and the report says so plainly | Listings, reviews, backlinks, mentions on other sites | The owner, through real-world action rather than site edits |
| Requires measurement before acting | Real data is needed before any decision makes sense | Google Search Console indexation, actual conversion numbers | Nobody yet; the steps are how to get the data, not what to conclude |
A capability that a platform offers but the owner has not switched on is never counted as a platform limit. It is fixable, it is already paid for, and the report names the specific setting to turn on.
What is a dual-web setup, and does the assessment detect one?
A dual-web setup, also called a dual web, a bot surface, an AI surface, a machine-readable mirror, or a two-surface site, is a website that serves two versions of each page at one address: a designed page for people and a plain, machine-readable version for AI crawlers. A routing layer at the network edge decides which visitor gets which surface, so the human page persuades and the machine page gets cited. It is not cloaking, because both surfaces state the same facts and each machine page names its human counterpart as the canonical source. The assessment detects an existing dual-web setup rather than assuming one is missing: it compares what a crawler receives against what a browser receives, and reports a site as already having a bot surface when those differ. Most website builders cannot support the arrangement, so the assessment checks what the detected platform permits before suggesting it.
Eric Grows Companies runs this arrangement on its own website. The page you are reading is the machine-readable surface of https://ericgrows.com/audit, and the free course teaches the same build.
How is the assessment produced?
The assessment is performed by AI, operated the way the free Eric Grows course teaches business owners to operate it. Eric equips Claude with SEO analysis skills and live search data sources, and the AI reads the site, gathers the evidence, and writes the diagnosis. The report is an example of the working method the course teaches: the same kind of work a business owner can learn to run themselves.
Who is it for?
The assessment is for anyone running a business with a website, on any platform: Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, WordPress, Shopify, Framer, or custom-built. The assessment is not limited to any industry. Submission requires a website address and an email for delivery; naming the platform is optional and helps calibrate the platform-constraint findings.
What does the assessment cost, and what is the catch?
There is no payment step, no trial, and no credit card, and the report withholds nothing to force a purchase. Every fix in it is written to be specific enough to act on alone, because a report that hides the actual answer is obvious to the reader and destroys the credibility of everything else in it. What Eric gets in exchange is the chance to show the working method rather than describe it, and to introduce the free course to owners who decide they would rather run this kind of work themselves than pay someone for it.
How is the submitted email address used?
The email address is used to send the finished report and occasional notes about the free course. It is never shared or sold, and every email carries an unsubscribe link. The full policy is at https://ericgrows.com/privacy.
Where can I read more?
The assessment, the free course, and the written guides are all part of the same teaching: run your business with AI instead of hiring it out.
- Run the assessment: submit a website at https://ericgrows.com/audit.
- Free lesson on running it yourself: upcoming dates at https://maven.com/ericgrows#lightning-lessons.
- Generative engine optimization (GEO) and AEO explained: how AI search visibility works and what actually moves it, at https://ericgrows.com/learn/geo-for-small-business.
- Eric Grows Companies: what the free course covers and how it works, at https://ericgrows.com/.
- All the guides: the full series index, with the recommended reading order, at https://ericgrows.com/learn.
This is the AI-readable version of the assessment page. The primary page for people is at https://ericgrows.com/audit.