Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know about Generative Engine Optimization, AI-readiness audits, brand monitoring, and how Knownwise helps your content get discovered and cited across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
About GEO & AI visibility
The concepts behind Generative Engine Optimization and how AI engines surface your brand.
What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) helps websites and brand information become easier for AI assistants to discover, understand, cite, and represent accurately. It complements SEO by focusing on generated answers as an additional discovery and evaluation channel.
Can an agency audit any client or prospect website?
Yes. Paste a public website URL to receive a free AI-readiness score across seven technical categories with prioritized recommendations. The audit requires no account or site installation.
Which AI providers can monitoring track?
Monitoring supports OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Perplexity when the corresponding provider credentials are configured. Results can track brand mentions, answer position, sentiment, visibility, competitors, and changes over time.
Can we compare a client with competitors?
Yes. Monitoring records competitors found in AI answers and supports comparison across providers and historical runs, helping agencies see where another brand is earning visibility.
Can we share results with a client?
Yes. Audit result pages are shareable, and monitoring scorecards can be published through a public link. Scorecard links can be copied, rotated, or revoked when access needs to change.
How does Google Search grounding work?
When monitoring uses a direct Gemini configuration with Google Search grounding, the result can retain cited sources, issued search queries, and whether the monitored brand domain was cited. Grounding is specific to that Gemini path and is not claimed for every provider.
Does a client need to install anything?
No installation is required to run a public-site audit or begin measuring provider answers. Agencies can start with a URL, then use the findings to prioritize website and content improvements.
Are polished client reports, client portfolios, and scheduled reports available now?
Not yet for those three. Polished client reports, client portfolios, and scheduled client reports are roadmap items marked 'Coming next' and are not included in current plans. Agency branding and team access are available now — branding is managed in Admin → Branding, and team access via Members with owner/member/client roles.
Plans & using the platform
Pricing, billing, and how the audit and brand-monitoring features work.
Can I try before I buy?
Yes. The Free plan includes 3 AI-readiness audits per month at no cost, with no credit card required.
What is brand monitoring?
Brand monitoring checks how often your brand is mentioned by AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. It tracks mentions, positioning, sentiment, and visibility over time.
Can I change plans later?
Absolutely. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time. Changes take effect at the start of your next billing cycle.
What payment methods do you accept?
We accept all major credit cards via Stripe. Payments are processed securely.
Technical & AI-readiness
llms.txt, AI crawlers, audit mechanics, and the technical signals engines read.
What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of structuring content so answer engines — AI assistants and featured-answer surfaces — can extract a direct, accurate answer to a user's question. AEO overlaps heavily with GEO: clear headings, question-and-answer formatting, FAQ schema, and concise, factual statements all make your content easier for an engine to quote verbatim.
What is an llms.txt file and do I need one?
llms.txt is a plain-text file placed at the root of your domain (like robots.txt) that gives AI models a concise, curated map of your most important pages and what they contain. It helps large language models find and prioritize your best content. Our free llms.txt generator creates one for any site in seconds.
Which AI crawlers should I allow in robots.txt?
To be visible in AI answers, allow the major AI crawlers: GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot and anthropic-ai (Anthropic), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), Google-Extended (Gemini/Google AI), and CCBot (Common Crawl, which trains many models). Blocking these removes your site from the data those engines rely on.
How long does an audit take?
An AI-readiness audit completes in under 60 seconds. We scrape your page, analyze seven readiness categories, and return a 0-100 score with prioritized, actionable recommendations — no signup required.
Will optimizing for AI hurt my traditional SEO?
No. The fundamentals of GEO — semantic HTML, complete metadata, structured data, fast and accessible pages — are the same signals that strengthen traditional SEO. Optimizing for AI engines improves both surfaces at once.
Glossary
Key terms used across GEO, AEO, and AI brand visibility.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- Optimizing content and structure so generative AI engines can discover, understand, and recommend a brand in their answers.
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
- Structuring content so answer engines can extract a direct, accurate answer to a question — closely related to GEO.
- llms.txt
- A root-level plain-text file that gives AI models a curated map of a site's key pages and their purpose, similar in spirit to robots.txt.
- Structured data (JSON-LD)
- Machine-readable schema.org markup that describes a page's meaning (organization, product, FAQ, article) so engines can parse it unambiguously.
- Semantic HTML
- Using meaningful elements (header, nav, main, article, section, footer) so crawlers and models understand the role of each part of a page.
- AI crawler
- An automated bot (e.g. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended) that reads web pages to power or train AI answer engines.
- Brand visibility
- How often and how prominently a brand is mentioned in AI-generated answers across engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Want the deep dive? Read the complete GEO guide or compare GEO vs SEO.
Still have questions?
The fastest way to understand your AI visibility is to measure it. Run a free audit or generate an llms.txt in under a minute.