Does AI Recommend You or Your Competitors?
The way people discover businesses has fundamentally changed. AI platforms now answer questions like “What’s the best product for this need?” or “Best service near me?” with direct, synthesized recommendations. The businesses they name aren’t chosen by advertising. They’re chosen by technical signals on your website and across the web. Most small businesses have no idea whether they’re being recommended or skipped over. Traditional analytics don’t capture it, and your rankings report can’t tell you.
Why It Matters
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AI web referral traffic grew ~7X in 2025, with ChatGPT driving 75-80% globally.
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80% of AI citations do not rank in Google’s top 100, proving AI search optimization is a separate discipline from traditional SEO.
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Nearly half of consumers used AI while shopping in 2025, and 64% plan to use AI chatbots for shopping in 2026
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Google AI Overviews reduce user search clicks by 50%
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That traffic converts. ChatGPT visitors convert at ~7% (second only to paid search).
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Most small businesses haven’t invested in AI search. Now is the time to build visibility ahead of competitors.
What is an AIO Audit?
The AIO Audit is a proprietary diagnostic report developed by Evolve Creative. It evaluates your business’s AI search readiness across six dimensions and produces a scored summary with a sequenced implementation roadmap.
We test your visibility across the platforms your customers actually use:
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Claude.
The audit is the deliverable. Whether or not you engage us for further work, you leave with a clear picture of where you stand and exactly what to do next. Every audit is delivered as a professionally formatted report in both PDF and Word, so you can circulate it internally or to stakeholders.
The Six Audit Dimensions
Technical AI Accessibility
We evaluate your robots.txt configuration, page speed, JavaScript rendering, HTTPS, and mobile readiness. AI crawlers cannot index blocked or slow-loading sites regardless of how good your content is, so this is the foundation everything else depends on.
Structured Data and Schema
We evaluate your robots.txt configuration, page speed, JavaScript rendering, HTTPS, and mobile readiness. AI crawlers cannot index blocked or slow-loading sites regardless of how good your content is, so this is the foundation everything else depends on.
Content Structure for AI Readability
We examine your FAQ architecture, answer-first headings, service and product pages, and overall content depth. Pages with FAQ schema are 2.8 times more likely to earn AI citations, so how your content is organized often matters as much as what it says.
Third-Party Authority and Directory Presence
We evaluate your robots.txt configuration, page speed, JavaScript rendering, HTTPS, and mobile readiness. AI crawlers cannot index blocked or slow-loading sites regardless of how good your content is, so this is the foundation everything else depends on.
Local and Category Search Readiness
We analyze your local schema, proximity search signals, and category and service pages. This dimension is critical for capturing the high-intent “near me” and category queries that drive real business.
Brand Sentiment and Review Ecosystem
We evaluate your review volume, sentiment trends, response patterns, and social discoverability. AI platforms weight review sentiment when deciding which businesses to recommend, which makes your review ecosystem a direct input to your AI visibility.
What You Receive
Every audit concludes with a scored summary across all six dimensions and a two-phase implementation roadmap.
The scorecard gives you a rating for each dimension along with an overall AI visibility score, so you can see at a glance where your gaps are and how severe each one is.
The roadmap splits your recommendations into Quick Wins, covering the first 30 days, and Strategic Improvements, covering days 30 through 90. Recommendations are prioritized, so you know what to do first and why.
Reports are delivered in PDF and Word formats for internal use and stakeholder distribution.
A Real Example
Evolve Creative recently completed a full AIO Audit for a regional small-business client. Two real customer queries were tested across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews to ground the audit in actual search behavior.
The key finding: despite having a detailed, well-written product page on their website, the business was not cited by any AI platform for a common category query. Those citations went to competitors and third-party directory sites instead.
The cause was absent schema markup and content that wasn’t structured in an answer-first format. The content existed. AI simply could not surface it.
That’s a highly fixable problem, and it’s representative of the gap most small businesses face. A full sample report is available on request.
AIO Audit Packages
Three tiers are available, sized to match the scope and complexity of different businesses. All tiers deliver the same core audit format. They differ in the depth of query testing, competitive analysis, strategy session length, and price.
Each AIO Audit includes a FREE strategy session (not a sales pitch) to review findings, answer questions, and prioritize your roadmap based on your resources and timeline. Call lengths vary by tier and are valued at $160 to $480. This guidance prevents your audit from sitting idle and ensures a clear path forward.
TIER #1
Foundational Audit
Ideal for solo operators, local shops, and single-location businesses.
Includes:
- Full six-dimension AI visibility audit
- Scored summary scorecard
- Priority recommendations list
- Quick Wins roadmap for the first 30 days
- Strategic Improvements roadmap for days 30 through 90
- A formatted audit report
- FREE 30-minute strategy call
TIER #2
Comprehensive Audit
Ideal for established small and mid-sized businesses and multi-location operations.
Includes everything in Tier 1, PLUS:
- Live AI query testing across 5 real customer queries
- Competitive gap analysis against 2 comparable competitors
- FREE 60-minute strategy call
TIER #3
Enterprise Audit
Ideal for larger organizations, franchises, and multi-brand companies.
Includes everything in Tier 2, PLUS:
- Live AI query testing across 10 queries
- Competitive gap analysis against 4 comparable competitors
- A platform-by-platform citations breakdown covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini
- Seasonal content gap analysis
- FREE 60-minute strategy call
How long does an audit take?
Audits are typically delivered within two to three weeks of intake, with your strategy call scheduled within two weeks of delivery. All of our work is done in-house by our marketing team. We never outsource work overseas.
Audit FAQs
It’s a diagnostic report that evaluates how your business appears across AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Claude. It scores your readiness across six dimensions and delivers a prioritized roadmap to improve your visibility.
What You Receive
Every audit concludes with a scored summary across all six dimensions and a two-phase implementation roadmap.
The scorecard gives you a rating for each dimension along with an overall AI visibility score, so you can see at a glance where your gaps are and how severe each one is.
The roadmap splits your recommendations into Quick Wins, covering the first 30 days, and Strategic Improvements, covering days 30 through 90. Recommendations are prioritized, so you know what to do first and why.
Reports are delivered in PDF and Word formats for internal use and stakeholder distribution.