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Technical SEO for AI
Technical SEO for AI, checked the way AI crawlers read your site
Technical SEO for AI covers the same ground as classic technical SEO: crawl access, rendering, speed, structured data and freshness. What changes is the reader. AI crawlers follow their own robots.txt groups, mostly skip JavaScript, fetch pages live and can be refused by a firewall that waves Googlebot through. WriteWorks checks each of those on every page, then checks whether AI engines cite the pages that earn your search traffic.
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See WriteWorks in Action
This is the working product, not a mockup: the same visibility scores, briefs and published content your team would be looking at. Start a free trial and point it at your own domain, or take the tour of what sits behind the screen.
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Search brands, prompts, competitors…⌘K
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The challenge
Where classic technical SEO stops short
The checks that change when the reader is an AI crawler.
Classic audits test for Googlebot
A site can pass every technical SEO check and still be unreadable to an AI crawler that doesn't run JavaScript or is blocked by name in robots.txt.
Firewalls treat AI bots differently
CDN and bot-management rules often challenge or refuse AI user agents while letting search engines in. The page works in every test you run by hand.
Accidental robots.txt policies
Blocking one training bot and not the others is usually an oversight, but it is easy to miss when the rules were written by different people over the years.
Readable is not the same as cited
A page can pass every check and still never appear in AI answers. Without joining crawl data to citations, nobody sees the gap.
The solution
How WriteWorks checks technical SEO for AI
One check per risk, including the ones most audits miss.
Each part of technical SEO maps to checks the crawl runs on every indexable page: robots.txt per AI bot, server response with an AI user agent, how much content is in the server HTML, schema by page type, answer-first structure, dateModified, sitemap lastmod and IndexNow.
Each page is also requested with an AI crawler's user agent. If it loads normally for the WriteWorks crawler but returns 401, 403, 429 or 503 to the AI user agent, the page is reported, with the agents and status codes, so you can check your CDN or firewall.
Training access is your choice and never costs score. But where some training bots are allowed and others blocked for the same page, it is reported as an inconsistent policy so you can settle on one rule for all of them.
Pages with meaningful Search Console clicks (about 10 or more in 28 days) that weren't cited once in your tracked AI answers over 90 days are listed. These are pages engines already trust that AI answers are passing over.
Success story
What real brands fixed with WriteWorks
What each brand fixed, measured before and after with the same audit, in their own words.
“Nobody had spotted that our market homepages carried no structured data at all. Now 100% of them tell AI exactly who GraftPal is, and every FAQ page in the audit carries a modified date.”
GP
Capabilities
The AI readiness checklist
Every area of technical SEO, checked for AI crawlers.
AI crawler checker
robots.txt evaluated per AI search, answer and training bot.
Refused AI user agents
Errors returned only to AI crawler user agents, with the status codes.
Rendering
The share of main content present before any JavaScript runs.
Speed and size
Server response time with an AI user agent, and HTML over 2 MB.
Structured data and structure
Schema by page type, validation, one H1 and answer-first openings.
Freshness
dateModified, sitemap lastmod and IndexNow for changed pages.
Not cited by AI
Pages with search traffic that tracked AI answers never cite.
Ranked by reach
Every issue with the share of pages it affects and its change.
Time savings
What changes
From hand checks to every page, every crawl.
TaskBeforeWith WriteWorksTime saved
Check AI crawler accessRead robots.txt bot by botPer-bot verdicts on every pageThe guesswork
Find firewall blocksWait for a vendor to complainRefused AI user agents reportedWeeks of silence
Tidy the training policyAudit the rules by handInconsistent policy flagged per pageAn afternoon
Find trusted pages AI ignoresJoin two exportsEarns clicks, never cited, listedThe analysis
Included
What's included
The technical checks across all four pillars.
Four pillars: bot access 35%, machine readability 30%, freshness 15%, AI search performance 20%
robots.txt evaluated per AI bot, following the RFC 9309 rules
AI user agent probe on every page
Pages refusing AI user agents reported with status codes
Inconsistent training bot policy reported, never scored
Content visible without JavaScript, per page
Server response time and 2 MB page size checks
Schema expected by page type, plus validation
One H1, heading order and answer-first openings
dateModified, sitemap lastmod and IndexNow checks
Pages earning search clicks but never cited by AI
Issues ranked by pages affected, with change since the last crawl
Built for
Who uses it
The people who own whether a site can be read.
Technical SEO
An AI readiness checker that extends the audit you already run for search.
Developers and DevOps
The firewall, rendering and server issues that only AI crawlers hit.
SEO leads
One view of how ready the site is for AI search, pillar by pillar.
Agencies
The same technical checks across every client organisation.
Featured story
GoTeachingJobs
“Honestly, the jobs board looked fine in a browser, so we never questioned it. The audit showed that only 5% of our job pages gave crawlers real content. We moved the listings into the server HTML, and the re-audit came back at 100%. The typical job page now carries 73% of its content before any JavaScript runs, and we're working through the rest.”
GoTeachingJobs team
Read the full story5% → 100%
Job pages AI crawlers can read
18% → 100%
Median share of page content in the HTML crawlers get
45% → 99%
Pages passing the answer-first check
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Everything teams typically ask before getting started.
What is technical SEO for AI?+
Technical SEO for AI is making sure AI search tools can reach, read and trust your pages: the right robots.txt rules for AI bots, servers and firewalls that answer AI crawlers, content in the server HTML rather than behind JavaScript, fast responses, valid structured data and accurate freshness signals. It builds on classic technical SEO; the difference is that the reader is an AI crawler as well as a search engine.
Is there an AI readiness checker for my whole site?+
Yes. WriteWorks crawls every indexable page and checks each one for AI readiness across four pillars: bot access, machine readability, freshness signals and AI search performance. The result is a 0 to 100 score and a ranked list of issues. The GEO score page explains how the score is worked out.
What does the AI crawler checker test?+
Whether each tracked AI bot is allowed to fetch each page under your robots.txt, and whether your server actually answers an AI crawler's user agent. The bot access page goes into the robots.txt side in detail; this page covers what the crawl adds around it.
How can a page load for me but be refused to AI crawlers?+
CDNs and firewalls often apply separate rules to AI user agents, for example a setting that blocks AI bots. WriteWorks requests each page as its own crawler and with an AI crawler's user agent. If the first succeeds and the second returns 401, 403, 429 or 503, the page is reported. The request doesn't come from the AI vendor's own network, so confirm in your firewall settings.
Does blocking AI training bots hurt my score?+
No. Only access for AI search and answer bots is scored. Training access is a policy choice, and the crawl only reports it when the policy is mixed, with some training bots allowed and others blocked for the same page.
What does 'earns search traffic but never cited' mean?+
It lists pages that get meaningful clicks from Google Search, about 10 or more in 28 days, but weren't cited once in your tracked AI answers over the last 90 days. It needs Search Console connected and prompts tracked in AI visibility, and it is reported rather than deducted from the page.
The technical SEO for AI checklist
Each area, and where it is checked
Crawl access
robots.txt per AI bot, and servers that refuse AI user agents.
AI bot accessRendering
How much of each page is in the server HTML before scripts run.
JavaScript SEOSpeed and size
Server response time with an AI user agent, and the 2 MB limit.
AI crawler speed testStructured data
The schema each page type should carry, validated.
Schema markup checkerContent structure
One H1, headings in order, and an opening that answers.
Answer-first contentFreshness
dateModified, sitemap lastmod and IndexNow for changed pages.
Sitemap checker Explore more
Keep exploring
Related solutions, adjacent use cases, and platform features.
Check your technical SEO for AI search
Every AI-specific technical check, on every page, ranked by how many pages each issue reaches.