Ten checks you can run in the next ninety days to see whether AI engines and Google can find, trust and cite your product
If you only have one quarter, run SEO and GEO as one checklist with two scorecards. Fix the technical and authority basics that every AI citation depends on, then rewrite your key pages to match the prompts buyers type, and finally measure AI mentions per engine separately from rankings. The checks below take that from theory to a list you can work through, and every number in them comes from published 2026 research, so you can check the sources yourself.
This article was created with the help of AI and was researched, fact checked and edited by a human before publishing.
Two definitions keep the checklist clear. SEO is earning rankings in classic search results. GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is getting your product named and cited inside answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
Why run GEO and SEO as one checklist?
Because they depend on each other but are measured differently, and running them separately usually means one gets ignored. Google rankings and AI citations overlap far less than most founders expect.
In a June 2026 panel of 100 commercial B2B software queries, DerivateX found that 67.4% of the sources cited in Google AI Overviews did not appear in the organic results for the same query. Citera analysed roughly 350,000 B2B SaaS articles across 52 categories and found only 14% of AI cited URLs also ranked in Google's top 20. Ranking still helps, since 30% of top 20 articles were cited, but it does not cover most of what AI engines quote.
At the same time, a large arXiv study this year covering about two million citations across ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI and Gemini found that domain level authority outweighed the strongest non alignment page feature by roughly six times. So you cannot skip SEO either. One checklist, two scorecards.
What should you check in the first two weeks?
Start by measuring where you stand in both channels, because without a baseline nothing later can be judged.
Check 1. Record your search baseline. Export current rankings, organic traffic and referring domains from whatever tool you already use. Save it with a date.
Check 2. Record your AI baseline. Write down 20 to 30 prompts your buyers actually ask, such as "best accounts receivable software for a 50 person finance team". Run each through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Log whether you are named, whether you are cited with a link, and which competitors and pages appear instead.
Check 3. Ask each engine what your product does. If the answer is vague or wrong, your homepage and product pages are probably not stating it plainly. Note the exact wording each engine uses.
Treat these three checks as one spreadsheet. Citera found citation overlap between engines of only 8% to 17%, so give each engine its own column.
What technical checks matter for AI visibility?
The technical checks that matter are the ones that decide whether engines can read and trust your site at all. They are standard SEO, and they remain the foundation.
Check 4. Confirm indexation. Make sure your product, comparison, use case and docs pages are indexable, have correct canonicals and appear in your sitemap. Pages that only render after heavy client side JavaScript are a common gap on SaaS marketing sites.
Check 5. Clean up duplicate feature pages. If the same capability is described on several URLs, consolidate. Engines and buyers both get a clearer picture from one strong page.
Check 6. Ship accurate schema. Describe your organisation and product with structured data that matches the homepage sentence from Check 3. Be realistic about what it does. The arXiv study found that FAQ blocks, structured data and Core Web Vitals showed effects that collapsed to roughly zero once domain differences were controlled for. Schema helps you be described correctly. It will not earn citations on its own.
How do you make pages worth citing?
Make them match real prompts and give engines something specific to quote. This is where GEO goes beyond classic SEO.
Check 7. Align money pages with prompts. The arXiv study found the strongest page level predictor of citation was how closely a page's language matched the prompts buyers type. Take the prompt list from Check 2 and make sure each high value prompt has a page that answers it directly in the first sentence or two.
Check 8. Add real numbers and named sources. Citera found AI cited B2B SaaS articles averaged 4.2 statistics and 1.6 expert quotes, against 1.2 and 0.2 for articles that were never cited. Go through your top comparison and use case pages and add sourced figures, customer results you can verify and quotes from people with real expertise. Remove anything you cannot back up.
Where do AI engines find B2B SaaS recommendations?
Mostly on third party pages, which is why off site work belongs on the checklist. In the DerivateX panel, 63.4% of AI Overview citations were third party "best X" style list pages, and only 12.2% went to the recommended product's own site.
Citera found brand owned content held 29% of AI citations in B2B SaaS, largely because feature specific questions are best answered by vendor docs. That is a good reason to keep your docs sharp, but the majority of citations still live elsewhere.
Check 9. Map the third party pages engines cite. From your Check 2 log, list every non brand URL that appears for your prompts. These are usually list articles, review platforms, community threads and industry publications. Work out which ones you could credibly appear in, and approach them with something useful such as accurate product details, a real customer result or an expert comment. This is slower than link building, and it targets the exact pages that answer buyer prompts.
How do you know if the quarter worked?
Rerun the baseline and compare each channel on its own terms. Rankings and AI visibility move on different schedules, so blending them hides what happened.
Check 10. Rerun and report separately. At the end of the quarter, repeat Check 1 and Check 2 with the same prompt list. Report AI mention rate and citation rate per engine alongside rankings and traffic. Expect direction in the first quarter rather than a finished result.
For a sense of timescale, consider a published 2026 case of a finance automation platform that had zero AI citations across seven answer engines and a thin link profile at its December 2025 baseline. The work ran in the same order as this checklist, starting with schema and indexation, then a content standard, then authority. Over eight months its referring domains grew from 469 to 1,326 and it is now cited in five of those seven engines. That project took most of a year, which is worth remembering when anyone promises fast AI visibility.
What mistakes should founders avoid?
The biggest mistake is skipping the baseline, and the second is believing either "SEO is dead" or "GEO is just SEO". Both camps are loud on social media, and both lead to wasted budget.
A few others come up often, and each one is cheap to avoid once you know to look for it. Most of them come from copying a tactic that worked for one engine or one company without checking whether it fits your own baseline, category and stage.
- Treating schema or FAQ blocks as a shortcut into AI answers.
- Checking only ChatGPT and assuming the other engines agree.
- Writing for keywords alone instead of the full questions buyers ask.
- Ignoring the third party list pages that already shape your category.
- Trusting anyone who guarantees a ranking or a citation. Engines change their sources constantly, so nobody can.
Frequently asked questions
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. AI engines rely heavily on domain authority, and classic SEO builds that authority. GEO extends the work into AI answers.
What is the difference between GEO and AEO?
GEO is the broader goal of being named and cited in AI answers. AEO is a narrower set of techniques for structuring a page so an engine can extract a direct answer. AEO usually sits inside a GEO programme.
How many prompts should a founder track?
Twenty to thirty is a practical start for most early stage SaaS companies. Pick prompts that reflect real buying questions, and keep the list fixed so quarter to quarter comparisons are fair.
Can a small team run this checklist without an agency?
Yes. Every check here can be run in house with a spreadsheet and the tools you already have. An outside team mainly helps with capacity and with earning third party presence.
If you try this checklist, share in the comments which check surprised you most.
Top comments (0)