The latest articles on DEV Community by yizheng (@yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700). https://dev.to/yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3004769%2F8914e9e7-e81d-4882-8c27-de7bb9851953.png https://dev.to/yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700 en yizheng Wed, 15 Jul 2026 03:08:56 +0000 https://dev.to/yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700/i-built-an-ai-search-visibility-checker-and-found-out-my-own-site-was-invisible-di0 https://dev.to/yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700/i-built-an-ai-search-visibility-checker-and-found-out-my-own-site-was-invisible-di0 <h1> I Built an AI Search Visibility Checker — and Found Out My Own Site Was Invisible </h1> <p>I launched my first Apify Actor a few weeks ago. Spent time on SEO, structured data, the whole checklist.</p> <p>Then I asked ChatGPT: "What's the best tool for X in my space?"</p> <p>My product wasn't mentioned. Claude didn't know I existed. Gemini had the wrong description.</p> <p>Not because my site was bad. Because I had no idea what AI "sees" when it looks at a page.</p> <p>So I built something to find out.</p> <h2> The Problem Nobody's Talking About Yet </h2> <p>Most SEO tools measure Google rankings. Keyword positions, backlinks, domain authority. The usual stuff.</p> <p>But more people are asking ChatGPT directly instead of typing keywords into Google. And LLMs don't evaluate your site the same way search engines do.</p> <p>A site can have perfect Google rankings, great Core Web Vitals, strong backlinks — and still be invisible to AI. Broken structured data, a misconfigured robots.txt, or the LLM simply never heard of you.</p> <p>I found this out the hard way. My own site scored 45/100 on the first audit I ever ran.</p> <h2> What I Built </h2> <p>GEO Auditor runs two things in one pass:</p> <p><strong>Technical audit</strong> — crawlability, robots.txt, sitemap, structured data, social meta, performance. Standard stuff, automated.</p> <p><strong>LLM probes</strong> — sends targeted queries to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini (via OpenRouter) and checks if each one knows your site exists, and whether it gets the facts right.</p> <p>The output is a report with scores. JSON, Markdown, or a self-contained HTML page with radar charts if you want the visual version.</p> <p>Honestly, the hardest part wasn't building the crawler or hooking up the APIs. It was deciding what a "good" score even means when nobody has defined what AI visibility looks like yet.</p> <h2> Things I Learned </h2> <p><strong>robots.txt is the silent killer.</strong> The first site I tested was my own blog. The culprit? An old robots.txt I'd copied from a template years ago that blocked <code>/api/</code>. I'd forgotten it was even there. AI crawlers treated the whole site as lower priority because of it.</p> <p><strong>Structured data parsers are stricter than you think.</strong> One beta tester ran the audit and found their JSON-LD had a syntax error that Google's validator didn't catch, but Claude silently failed on. Their products were invisible to AI because the data was technically there but unparseable for some models.</p> <p><strong>LLM responses vary wildly.</strong> I ran the same URL through the tool 10 times over 3 days. ChatGPT found it 8/10 times. Claude 6/10. Gemini 3/10. A single manual check is essentially meaningless. You need a sample size.</p> <p><strong>Most people don't know they're invisible.</strong> I shared the tool with a few indie hacker friends. Everyone thought their site was fine. Most weren't. Nobody checks for this.</p> <h2> What I'd Do Differently </h2> <p>If I were starting this over:</p> <ul> <li>Test with real users earlier. I spent too long polishing the HTML report before validating that anyone actually wanted LLM probes</li> <li>Ship a simpler MVP first. Could have launched with just the technical audit and added LLM probes in v2</li> <li>Price it properly. Every LLM probe costs OpenRouter credits. At what I'm charging, it barely breaks even. I'm eating the cost for now to see if people actually use it</li> </ul> <h2> How to Check Your Own Site </h2> <p>If you're curious where your site stands, it's on the <a href="https://apify.com/yizheng/geo-auditor" rel="noopener noreferrer">Apify Store</a>. You paste your URL and your OpenRouter API key, wait about 8 minutes (the LLM probes take time), and get a report.</p> <p>A few honest limitations:</p> <ul> <li>You need your own OpenRouter key — I didn't want shared rate limits to mess with results</li> <li>~8 minute runtime, not real-time</li> <li>Single page per run right now</li> <li>One run is a snapshot, not a definitive verdict</li> <li>Only works on public pages</li> </ul> <h2> What's Next </h2> <p>I'm still figuring out what "AI visibility" should look like as a metric. A few ideas I'm playing with:</p> <ul> <li>Tracking visibility over time with weekly scans</li> <li>Adding Perplexity and Grok probes</li> <li>A simple checklist for non-technical founders who don't want to run a tool</li> </ul> <p>If you've built something similar or have thoughts on how AI citation should work — I'd genuinely like to hear.</p> <p><em>Built in public. I'm also on <a href="https://blog.fork.work/" rel="noopener noreferrer">fork.work</a> where I write about building things with Apify.</em></p> apify seo ai indiehackers yizheng Tue, 07 Oct 2025 01:03:35 +0000 https://dev.to/yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700/neumorphism-profile-card-ui-design-41l4 https://dev.to/yizheng_f9ce51e8416445700/neumorphism-profile-card-ui-design-41l4