Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) Checklist

When people ask me where to start with generative engine optimisation (GEO), I hand them this checklist. It brings together 44 checks for getting your content found, understood, trusted and cited by AI search systems: Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. It’s a free Google Sheets template built on Beatrice Gamba’s AI search series here on MLforSEO, and every check links to the article that explains it.

The checks follow the order AI systems process your content. Can their crawlers reach the page? Is it indexed and eligible to be shown? Do they recognise who you are? Can they lift a clean, self-contained passage out of it? Do your facts hold up when they’re cross-checked against other sources? And can you see any of it in your data? Each check carries an evidence label (Google-documented, platform-documented, research-backed, MLforSEO practice or unconfirmed), so you can see which items the platforms confirm and which are our working practice.

Who it’s for

SEOs, content leads and marketing managers who need a structured starting point for AI search, and anyone who has been asked to “do GEO” without a clear brief. You don’t need to write any code.

How to use it

1. Make your own copy of the sheet and read the Start here tab.
2. Work through the Checklist tab area by area, setting a status, owner and notes for each check. Mark anything that doesn’t apply as N/A.
3. Filter by High priority and Not started to plan your first sprint. Crawl access and entity clarity usually come first.
4. Record your robots.txt decisions in the AI crawlers tab, which lists 15 user-agent tokens with what each one does and what blocking it does.
5. Add 10 to 50 real customer questions to the Prompt tracker, test them in each assistant, and rerun them every month.

What you get

• 44 checks across eight areas, each with why it matters, how to check it, a priority and links to the MLforSEO article and the official documentation
• An AI crawler reference covering OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, GPTBot and more, checked against each provider’s documentation in October 2026
• A prompt tracker for your AI citation baseline: whether you were mentioned, cited with a link and described accurately
• A progress dashboard with completion by area and priority, plus mention, citation and accuracy rates for each assistant
• A plain Markdown version of every check on GitHub

Limits and honest caveats

No checklist can guarantee citations. AI answers change with prompt wording, location, account and the day you ask, so look at the trend across monthly runs. Google says there are no extra technical requirements for its AI features beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet, so several checks are solid SEO foundations seen through a new lens. I’ve marked llms.txt as optional: it’s a proposed standard that no major AI provider has confirmed reading. Everything was checked in October 2026, and platforms change quickly, so recheck the linked documentation before big decisions.

Start with Beatrice’s article Indexed is not selected, then go deeper in the AI Search Optimisation & Agentic SEO course.