Question 1

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Accepted Answer

GEO is the practice of making a website easy for AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews to find, understand, trust and cite. It complements SEO by focusing on whether your content can become part of a generated answer.

Question 2

How is GEO different from SEO?

Accepted Answer

SEO helps pages rank in search results. GEO helps individual passages become reliable sources for AI-generated answers. The two overlap, but GEO places extra emphasis on crawl access, clear entities, direct answers, structured data, evidence, authorship and citation-ready writing.

Question 3

How does the audit work?

Accepted Answer

The audit reads your public website in a way similar to an AI crawler, checks its pages and supporting files, and evaluates each finding against a weighted rulebook. It then calculates a score and grade and turns failed checks into a prioritized action plan.

Question 4

Which AI platforms does the audit help with?

Accepted Answer

The checks are designed around broadly useful signals for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. No audit can guarantee inclusion because every platform uses its own changing systems.

Question 5

Is the audit generated by AI?

Accepted Answer

No. The core audit uses deterministic checks and a defined scoring rulebook rather than asking a language model to guess. The same site content and configuration produce consistent findings.

Question 6

Does GEO replace traditional SEO?

Accepted Answer

No. Strong technical SEO, useful content and genuine authority remain important. GEO builds on those foundations and makes your information easier for answer engines to retrieve and cite.

Question 7

How many pages are evaluated?

Accepted Answer

The free report evaluates up to 10 public pages. Diagnose Only and Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track each evaluate up to 30 public pages. If you need more, choose Custom: Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track — there is no hard upper limit; you pay $99 for the first 30 pages plus $5 for every extra 10 pages. The actual count is always subject to how many suitable pages the audit can discover and access.

Question 8

How does the audit choose pages?

Accepted Answer

It starts with the URL you submit, then discovers suitable same-site pages through internal links and the sitemap. It avoids common account, checkout, admin and other unsuitable areas.

Question 9

Can I audit a single page?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enter that page's full URL. The audit begins there, although it may also discover other public pages on the same website up to your report limit.

Question 10

Can I audit a subdomain?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enter the subdomain as the starting address. The audit treats it as the site being evaluated and stays within that host.

Question 11

Can the audit scan password-protected or private pages?

Accepted Answer

No. The audit can only evaluate pages that are publicly reachable without signing in. Private portals, staging passwords and pages blocked from crawlers cannot be inspected.

Question 12

Does the audit execute JavaScript?

Accepted Answer

No. It evaluates the server-delivered HTML that crawlers can reliably receive. If important content appears only after JavaScript runs, the report may identify that as a visibility risk.

Question 13

Does it check robots.txt, llms.txt and sitemaps?

Accepted Answer

Yes. When available, the audit examines crawler directives, llms.txt and sitemap information alongside page content and metadata.

Question 14

Why were fewer pages audited than my plan allows?

Accepted Answer

The limit is a maximum, not a guaranteed count. A site may have fewer public pages, hide links from the initial page, block crawling, time out, redirect away, or omit pages from its sitemap and navigation.

Question 15

Will the audit harm my website or change anything?

Accepted Answer

No. It only reads publicly available pages and files. It does not log in, publish content or modify your website.

Question 16

How is the GEO score calculated?

Accepted Answer

Each enabled best-practice rule has a maximum point value. Your measured level earns a proportional share of those points. The total earned points are divided by all available points to produce a score out of 100.

Question 17

How is the letter grade calculated?

Accepted Answer

The final score is matched to the published grade bands from F through A+. The report shows the complete scale, your highlighted grade, its score range and a plain-language explanation.

Question 18

What is a critical score cap?

Accepted Answer

Some failures can make an otherwise strong site inaccessible or unreadable to AI crawlers. When a critical rule scores zero, it can cap the total score so less important strengths do not hide that fundamental problem.

Question 19

Why did my score change after another audit?

Accepted Answer

Your pages, crawler access, discovered page set or scoring rulebook may have changed. A larger paid audit can also reveal issues on pages that were outside the free report's 10-page limit.

Question 20

Can I see the scoring rules?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The public scoring rulebook lists every active best-practice rule, its points, pass level, source and any critical cap so the result can be understood and checked.

Question 21

Does a high score guarantee that AI platforms will mention my brand?

Accepted Answer

No. A high score means your website follows more of the measured practices that support discovery, understanding and trust. AI platforms make their own decisions and may use signals beyond your website.

Question 22

What is included in the free report?

Accepted Answer

You receive the overall score and grade, coverage details, the full grade scale, a prioritized action plan and five fully unlocked parameter findings. Remaining findings are shown as locked previews. You can also see every audited page with its own score and grade, but the detailed page-level fixes stay locked.

Question 23

What is included in the $49 Diagnose Only report?

Accepted Answer

Diagnose Only evaluates up to 30 pages, unlocks every parameter with its finding, impact level, rule score, priority and plain-English advice, and includes the full per-page score and grade breakdown. It does not include the copy-paste code blocks.

Question 24

What is included in the $99 Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track report?

Accepted Answer

It evaluates up to 30 pages and unlocks every parameter, finding, impact level, rule score, recommendation, placement instruction and applicable code block. It also adds a per-page score and grade, an interactive page inspector on the report, a PDF page inventory table and copy-paste code fixes customized for the 10 weakest pages.

Question 25

What if my website has more than 30 pages?

Accepted Answer

Choose the fourth option, ‘Custom: Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track’. Enter how many pages you need and the exact price appears straight away: $99 for the first 30 pages plus $5 for every extra 10 pages.

Question 26

What do ‘Do this today,’ ‘Do this this week’ and ‘Do this this month’ mean?

Accepted Answer

They turn the findings into a manageable order. ‘Today’ contains the most urgent blockers and high-impact fixes, ‘this week’ contains important improvements, and ‘this month’ contains longer-term refinements.

Question 27

Are the fixes specific to my website?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Findings come from what the audit detected on your pages. Where a standard technical fix applies, the report provides exact placement guidance and a copy-paste template. Page-level fixes go further and are pre-filled for the exact URL you expand in the page inspector.

Question 28

What should I do with words written in CAPITALS inside code blocks?

Accepted Answer

Replace every CAPITALIZED placeholder with accurate information about your business before publishing the code. Keep the surrounding code structure unchanged unless your developer knows it must be adapted.

Question 29

Can a non-technical person use the report?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Each action explains what is wrong, why it matters, what to do next and where a code block belongs. Technical changes can be copied into a task for a website developer when needed.

Question 30

Can I share the PDF with my team, client or developer?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The PDF is designed to be shared and includes the score, priorities, findings, exact fixes, audited-page summary and page inventory needed to assign the work.

Question 31

How soon should I run another audit after making changes?

Accepted Answer

Run it again after your updates are live and publicly accessible. For larger sites, allow enough time for publishing and caching systems to serve the new HTML consistently.

Question 32

Does the report grade each audited page separately?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Every audited page gets its own GEO score and letter grade, calculated from the same rulebook as the overall score. This lets you spot weak pages even when the site average looks healthy.

Question 33

How do I see fixes for a specific page?

Accepted Answer

On the report, open the ‘Pages audited’ section. Use the search box and the All / Needs fixes / Passing chips to find the page, then click its row. It expands in place to show that page’s metrics and its exact fixes.

Question 34

Are page-level fixes different from site-wide fixes?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Site-wide fixes address domain-level items such as robots.txt, sitemaps and root structured data. Page-level fixes are pre-filled for the URL you clicked, so meta tags, JSON-LD, headings, canonical and OpenGraph blocks are already customised to that page.

Question 35

What does the PDF include for page-level fixes?

Accepted Answer

Full reports add a Page Inventory table showing every audited page, its HTTP status, load time, score, grade and weakest area. Then there are detailed code fixes for the 10 most critical pages, and a prompt to sign in to your client dashboard to inspect every remaining page interactively.

Question 36

Do Diagnose Only reports show per-page code blocks?

Accepted Answer

Diagnose Only shows per-page scores, grades and the full PDF inventory table, but it does not include copy-paste code blocks. Those are only included in Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track and Custom: Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track.

Question 37

Can I download the page inventory without buying code fixes?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The inventory table is part of both Diagnose Only and Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track PDFs. Only the page-specific code blocks require Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track or higher.

Question 38

How much do the reports cost?

Accepted Answer

The free report costs nothing. Diagnose Only is $49 for up to 30 pages, Diagnose + Code Fixes + Track is $99 for up to 30 pages, and extra pages beyond 30 cost $5 per 10 pages. These are one-time purchases with no subscription.

Question 39

Is there a monthly membership or an agency plan?

Accepted Answer

Yes. On the pricing section you can switch from ‘One-time audit’ to ‘Membership & agency’. Site Owner is $49 a month ($39 a month billed yearly) for 3 sites, 50 pages per audit and 4 citation checks per site each month. Agency is $199 a month ($165 billed yearly) for 15 sites, 100 pages per audit, 10 citation checks per site each month, white-label PDFs, shareable client links and bulk audits. Agency Scale is $499 a month for 50 sites, weekly automated citation tracking, priority queue and extra team seats.

Question 40

How soon should I run a citation check after applying fixes?

Accepted Answer

Wait 5–7 days. AI assistants need time to re-read your pages, so an immediate check usually shows the same result. We diagnose your site and give you exact on-page fixes, but being cited is never guaranteed — it also depends on off-site factors like your brand’s authority and mentions elsewhere, and on each AI provider’s own systems.

Question 41

Do I need an account to run a free audit?

Accepted Answer

No. You can submit a public website and see the free result without creating an account.

Question 42

Do I need a credit card for the free report?

Accepted Answer

No. A payment method is only needed when purchasing the full report.

Question 43

Can I use one purchase for multiple websites?

Accepted Answer

A purchase applies to the full report for the website audit selected at checkout. A different website requires a separate audit and purchase.

Question 44

Can I download my report again?

Accepted Answer

Use the report and download flow available after your audit. Save the PDF securely when it is generated so you retain your own copy.

Question 45

What information do you collect?

Accepted Answer

The service processes the website address and publicly available content needed for the audit. If you request a report or contact us, it also processes the details you submit. See the privacy policy for the full explanation.

Question 46

Do you store my website password or private content?

Accepted Answer

No. The audit does not request website credentials and does not enter private areas. Only publicly reachable material is evaluated.

Question 47

Why can’t my website be audited?

Accepted Answer

Check that the address is correct and publicly accessible. Firewalls, bot protection, crawler blocks, repeated redirects, invalid security certificates, very slow responses or temporary hosting failures can prevent a scan.

Question 48

Why does the report say important content is missing when I can see it in my browser?

Accepted Answer

The content may be inserted only after JavaScript runs, hidden behind consent or login screens, or delivered differently to automated visitors. Put essential text and metadata in the initial server-delivered HTML.

Question 49

Can the report contain false positives?

Accepted Answer

Automated checks can occasionally miss an unusual implementation. Review the affected page and evidence shown in the report. If your setup is valid but unconventional, a developer can confirm it before you make changes.

Question 50

Is TQMU affiliated with an AI provider?

Accepted Answer

No. TQMU is independent and is not affiliated with OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Perplexity or another AI platform.

Question 51

How can I get help with a result?

Accepted Answer

Use the contact page and include the website address, the affected finding and what you expected to see. Do not send passwords or private access credentials.

Frequently asked questions

About GEO and the audit

Pages, crawling and coverage

Scores and grades

Reports and fixes

Per-page grading and the page inspector

Pricing and access

Accuracy, privacy and troubleshooting

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