Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly important way of finding information online. Users rely on AI search and AI assistants to compare products and services, explore different options, and support their purchasing decisions. For a company’s website content to be included in these answers, AI services need to be able to discover and read the content on the site. If AI bots cannot access your website, your business will not appear in AI search, and your content may be excluded from AI services — and, as a result, remain out of reach of potential customers.

How Can You Tell If Your Website Is Visible in AI Search?

The easiest way to find out is to test different AI services and see how well they can find and retrieve information about your company in practice. Ask different AI services directly about your company, for example: “What do you know about Company X?”, “What services does Company X offer?” and “What should I know about Company X before making a purchase decision?” Check whether the AI services can find answers to these questions and whether the information they provide is up to date. It is also worth comparing the results across different AI services.

If your company cannot be found or the information is incomplete, you need to dig deeper by checking the website’s robots.txt file and determining whether access to the site’s content has been restricted for known AI bots. The accessibility of your website to AI services can also be checked using various tools.that analyze how AI services can access and retrieve content from your website.

If AI bots cannot access your website, it is worth checking the server and CDN settings in addition to the robots.txt file. For example, a firewall or bot protection system may block AI bots even if robots.txt allows them to access the site. The website’s server logs can also be used to monitor whether AI bots are visiting the site and how frequently they do so. This makes it possible to identify and resolve any potential access issues.