How do I audit a prospect's AI visibility before a pitch?
Check whether the search bots can reach the prospect's site, ask the main engines the questions their buyers ask, note who appears and why, and find three fixes that would matter. Keep it short, factual and based on what you actually ran, with the date.
Free to read, no signup. Nova builds a prospect audit from their domain.
What a prospect audit can rely on
Straight from the companies' documentation. Only use what you can verify from public pages and your own runs.
Check the search bots are allowed
OpenAI says blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps a site out of ChatGPT search, and robots.txt changes take about 24 hours.
Overview of OpenAI crawlersCheck Perplexity's bot too
Perplexity says to allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt to appear in its search results, and to allow it in firewalls by user agent and IP ranges.
Perplexity crawlersCheck indexing and snippets
Google says a page must be indexed and snippet-eligible to appear in its AI features.
AI features and your websiteFive steps to do it yourself
Do it by hand with these steps, or hand the whole thing to Nova.
Set the scope
Agree the prospect's domain, category, rivals and the engines to check.
Nova: sets the scope from the prospect's domain.
Check access
Review robots.txt and public signs of firewall blocks for the search bots.
Nova: checks bot access from public pages.
Ask the engines
Ask a dozen buyer questions in each engine, and record who appears and which pages are cited.
Nova: runs the questions across engines.
Find three quick fixes
Pick three changes that would help most, such as allowing a bot or fixing wrong facts.
Nova: ranks three quick fixes.
Present it honestly
Share findings with dates and say what you couldn't check.
Nova: drafts the audit for your approval.
Short on time? Nova, your AI brand visibility expert, runs this Maneuver on your brand and tracks the result.
Take it to NovaA prospect audit in one page
| Area | Finding | Evidence | Quick fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bot access | OAI-SearchBot blocked | robots.txt line [N] | Allow in robots.txt |
| Answers | Rival named, prospect absent | [N] of [N] prompts | Comparison page |
| Facts | Old pricing cited | [SOURCE] | Update pricing page |
Nova then keeps the audit so you can show progress after the pitch.
Take this Maneuver into your own AI agent
Get prospect-audit.md, a ready-to-use skill file with an audit template, a bot access check and a quick-fix ranking. Drop it into Claude, Cursor or any agent that reads SKILL.md files.
Skill file for Claude, Cursor and other agents
- A prospect audit template
- A bot access check
- A quick-fix ranking guide
Questions, answered.
Relevant reads
All articlesLet Nova build your prospect audit
Nova opens with this Maneuver loaded. Nothing ships without your approval.