Ranking without being cited
The site performs respectably in traditional search and is never named in an answer. The two are measured differently, and only one is now the first thing a buyer sees.
Growth · AI Visibility Audit · Free
Find out who
gets cited instead.
We ask the answer engines what they say about your category, record who they name, and score your site against the fourteen Growth rules. The report is yours whether or not you work with us.
competitor-a.com42%
directory-b.com28%
competitor-c.com19%
yoursite.com0%
not cited
48/100
Growth score · GRO-01 Critical · content not in raw HTML
Twelve real queries. Recorded, not estimated.
Quick answer
What is an AI visibility audit?
An AI visibility audit measures whether generative answer engines can find, trust and cite a website when answering questions in its category. It has two halves. The first is observational: a defined set of realistic buyer queries is put to the major answer engines, and the sources each one names are recorded, producing a citation share for the brand and its competitors. The second is technical: the site is assessed against the conditions required for citation — whether primary content appears in the raw HTML without JavaScript execution, whether structured data is valid, whether the organisation entity is consistent across the site and external profiles, and whether crawl directives permit AI user agents access.
The problem
You cannot fix
what nobody measured.
Most organisations suspect they are missing from AI answers. Almost none have checked, so effort goes to the wrong place.
Guessing at the cause
Somebody suspects the site is invisible to AI, so budget goes into writing more content — when the actual blocker is that no engine has ever received a page.
Auditing with the wrong tool
A conventional SEO crawler reports a healthy site while answer engines receive nothing, because the two request pages in fundamentally different ways.
What you receive
Four things, and no obligation.
The report is written for whoever implements it — your team, another agency, or us. There is no dependency created by receiving it.
01
Live citation measurement
A defined query set put to the major answer engines, with every named source recorded — producing your citation share against the competitors actually being named.
02
Score against 14 Growth rules
Rendering, canonical integrity, crawler access, structured data, entity consistency and answer structure — each with a severity and a stated verification method.
03
Ranked remediation list
Findings ordered by impact on citability, with the specific change required for each rather than a general recommendation you have to interpret.
04
The report, yours to keep
Usable by your own developers or handed to any agency. The Standard is public, so anyone can verify the work against the same rules we used.
How it works
Five steps. Nothing estimated.
Every figure in the report comes from an observation we made, not from an industry benchmark or a proprietary index.
- 01
Query
Put a defined set of realistic buyer questions to the major answer engines.
- 02
Record
Capture every source each engine names. This produces citation share as a measured figure.
- 03
Fetch
Request your pages without JavaScript execution, exactly as an answer engine's crawler does.
- 04
Score
Assess against all fourteen Growth rules, each with a severity and a verification method.
- 05
Rank
Order findings by impact on citability, with the specific change required for each.
14Growth rules assessed, each with a defined verification method
3Classified Critical: raw-HTML rendering, canonical integrity and crawler access
0Cost, and no account required to receive the report
Why conventional SEO tools report a healthy site that answer engines cannot read. Many site-auditing tools execute JavaScript before assessing a page, which means they see the fully assembled result a human visitor sees. Answer engine crawlers frequently do not, and receive only what the server returned. A site can therefore pass a conventional audit while being effectively empty to the systems that now answer buyer questions. Rule GRO-01 classifies content requiring client-side execution as absent rather than as a weakness, and verification requires fetching the page without JavaScript and confirming that headings, body content and structured data are present in the source.
Source: The Qawex Standard v1.0, rule GRO-01 · Read the Growth rulesQuestions
Answers, not brochures.
Is it really free?
Yes, at Tier 0, which is passive external observation requiring no credentials and no permission. The report is yours to keep and to act on with your own team or another agency. We offer it because the findings are usually persuasive on their own, and because the alternative is describing a problem rather than showing it.
How do you measure citation share?
A defined set of realistic buyer queries is put to the major answer engines and every source named is recorded. The result is a count of real observations rather than an estimate. It is a sample rather than a census, and answer engines vary their responses, so it should be read as a strong indicator rather than a precise constant.
Can you guarantee we will be cited after fixing everything?
No, and any agency guaranteeing it is selling something it does not control. Answer engines do not publish retrieval mechanics and change behaviour without notice. What is controllable is whether your content is readable, your entity unambiguous and your facts extractable — and those are the conditions for citation.
What if the audit says everything is fine?
Then you have a measured baseline and should spend your effort elsewhere, which is a useful outcome. We would rather report that than manufacture findings. In practice, most sites built in the last three years fail at least one Critical rule, and it is usually rendering.
Do we have to fix it with you?
No. The remediation list is written for whoever implements it, the Standard is public so anyone can verify the work, and many clients hand the report straight to their existing developers. GEO and technical SEO engagements exist for those who want us to do it, priced separately.
See what the engines say about you.
Paste your URL. We query the answer engines, score you against all fourteen Growth rules, and send the findings. Free, no account, yours to keep.