AI-Readability Audit for Your Website
Yellow House Digital audits whether your website can be read and cited by AI answer engines. The VISIBLE-7 audit checks the seven things that decide whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity can quote your site - and reports exactly what to fix, in priority order.
Why a site can be invisible to AI
A website can look perfect in your browser and be nearly empty to the machines that increasingly decide who gets found. Crawlers and AI assistants do not see the rendered page - they see the raw response your server sends. On many modern sites that raw response is a near-blank shell that says, in effect, "run some code to find out what is here." Some machines run it. Many do not.
The cost is quiet. A readable competitor gets recommended instead of you, not because they are better, but because their site could be read.
The seven checks
VISIBLE-7 runs seven checks, ordered by how much damage failing each one causes:
1. Rendering - are your actual sentences in the raw HTML, or only assembled by JavaScript. 2. Titles and descriptions - does every page say what it is. 3. Link previews - does a shared link show a branded card. 4. Crawl permissions - does robots.txt allow the right crawlers, including a conscious decision on AI crawlers. 5. Sitemap and canonicals - can machines find every page, once. 6. Structured data - does the site introduce itself formally with schema. 7. The AI layer - llms.txt, and pages that state what you do in plain sentences rather than implying it through images.
What you get
A scored report - pass, partial, or fail on each of the seven areas - with the specific fixes for your site, ordered so the highest-value change comes first. Most fixes are small; the rendering fix, when needed, is usually a configuration change rather than a rebuild.
The full method is published as a playbook you can read before hiring anyone: Is Your Website Invisible to AI? The VISIBLE-7 Audit, at /writing/visible-7-website-ai-audit. The audit applies it to your site.
Questions
- What is an AI-readability audit?
- A check of whether AI answer engines and search crawlers can actually read and cite your website, followed by a prioritised list of what to fix.
- What is VISIBLE-7?
- The seven-area method behind the audit: rendering, titles and descriptions, link previews, crawl permissions, sitemap and canonicals, structured data, and the AI layer. The full method is published openly.
- What do I get at the end?
- A scored report on all seven areas and the specific fixes for your site, ordered by impact.
- How long does it take?
- The audit itself is quick. Most fixes are an afternoon of work; the one that can take longer, page rendering, is usually a configuration change rather than a rebuild.
- Do I need a developer to act on it?
- For a few of the fixes, yes - but the report is written so a developer can act on it directly. Several fixes you can make yourself.
Last updated: 10 July 2026
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