Oftheard
reference

The 100 site checks, explained

Every check Oftheard runs on a website, written out: what it tests, why it matters, and what to do. In five groups, from whether an AI engine can read you at all to the housekeeping that changes little.

Oftheardproduct documentation ·Updated 22 October 2026

What the site check is

Give it a website and it reads the pages and the files a search engine or an AI crawler looks for: robots.txt, the sitemap, llms.txt, the structured data, and each page as it reads without running JavaScript. It runs 100 checks in about half a minute and reports each one: what it found, why it matters, and what to do. This reference is those 100 checks, written out. The check is free, with no account needed to start it, and it is the first step of every Oftheard campaign.

The score is a ceiling, not a prediction. A site an engine cannot read cannot be recommended, so a failing check caps you. A clean score means nothing on your side is in the way. Whether Google ranks you and the AI assistants name you is measured separately, every week, in a campaign’s weekly report.

The five groups

Being found by AIWhether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI answers can read your site and quote it. The trade calls this answer engine optimisation (AEO) or generative engine optimisation (GEO). The "Your location" section further down is about geography, not this.19 checks Being found on GoogleOrdinary search. AI tools crawl the same pipes, so a break here breaks that too.48 checks Your locationWhether a machine can tell where your business is, and whether your Google listing agrees with your website. Scored only if you have a physical place.15 checks AI assistants doing thingsWhether an AI agent could find your tools and complete a task: book, buy, look something up. All optional; having none of it is normal.4 checks General housekeepingBranding, trust and plumbing. Worth tidying; almost none of it changes whether you get found.14 checks

How a check is weighted

Each check carries an impact from critical to low, and a note on how directly it reaches AI search: 18 of the 100 affect it directly, the rest are what AI search inherits from ordinary search, or barely touch it. 18 checks are critical: the ones that stop an engine reading the site at all, such as a robots rule that blocks the retrieval crawlers or a page with no text until a script runs. A check that does not apply to a site, such as opening hours for a business with no premises, is not scored against it.

Impact and reach are stated beside every check on the group pages, so a reader can see at a glance which failing item to fix first.

All 100 checks

Being found by AI

Being found on Google

Your location

AI assistants doing things

General housekeeping

Run it on your site

  1. Open the site check and enter the website. No card, and no account to start.
  2. The score by group appears in about half a minute, with the first problems and their fixes.
  3. Fix what fails and check again. In a campaign, each failing check is on the Site fixes page with the change to make, and your own AI assistant can read the same list through the MCP server while it works in your site’s code. See fixes and next steps.

100 checks, half a minute, free.

Check my site freeAll 100 checks