Question 1

How is an AI extractability audit different from a regular SEO audit?

Accepted Answer

A regular SEO audit focuses on ranking signals: crawlability, indexation, page speed, keyword targeting, backlink profile, and on-page optimisation for traditional organic rankings. An AI extractability audit adds a layer focused on how AI systems understand and use content: whether answers are directly extractable (answer-first structure), whether structured data helps machines identify content type and topic, whether entity signals are consistent and strong enough to establish domain authority in the AI's training or retrieval context, and whether the content covers questions comprehensively enough to be preferred as a primary source. Most of a regular SEO audit also applies to AI extractability — the two audits share 70% of their checklist, with the AI-specific checks adding the remaining 30%.

Question 2

Does page speed affect AI extractability?

Accepted Answer

For traditional organic rankings, yes — Core Web Vitals and page speed are ranking factors. For AI citation specifically, the effect is less direct. AI systems crawl pages to extract content; if a page loads slowly or requires JavaScript execution that the crawler doesn't complete, the content may not be fully extracted. Sites that serve content in server-rendered HTML (visible without JavaScript execution) are more reliably crawled than sites that depend on client-side rendering to display their main content. This is the same concern that affects traditional Googlebot crawling — JavaScript rendering has always been a crawlability risk — and it applies to AI crawlers as well.

Question 3

Do I need to block AI training crawlers from my site?

Accepted Answer

This is a strategic decision that depends on whether you see AI training as a benefit or a risk. Blocking AI training crawlers (OAI-SearchBot for OpenAI, GPTBot, and others via robots.txt) prevents your content from being used in AI model training data but doesn't affect live AI search citation (which uses the standard Googlebot crawl). If you want to appear in AI-generated answers but don't want your content used in AI training, you can block training-specific crawlers while keeping your content accessible to live search AI systems. Some publishers block training crawlers as a principle; others see training data inclusion as a source of brand exposure. Neither position is wrong — but it's a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default.

Question 4

How do I test whether AI systems can extract content from my pages?

Accepted Answer

Three practical tests: (1) Ask ChatGPT (with web search enabled) or Perplexity to answer a question that your page directly addresses, and check whether your page is cited. If it isn't, try the same question with your site name included ("what does 80AM Digital say about technical SEO for ecommerce?") — if it can answer with attribution to your page now but not without the brand name, your page isn't well-established as an authority on the topic. (2) Use Google's Rich Results Test to check structured data; errors or missing schema reduce extractability. (3) View your page source (Ctrl+U in Chrome) and check whether the main content is present in the HTML source — if it only appears after JavaScript runs, AI crawlers without JS execution may not see it.

Question 5

How often should this audit be repeated?

Accepted Answer

A full four-step audit across key pages once or twice a year is reasonable for most sites, with a lighter spot-check after any major site change: a redesign, a CMS or page-builder migration, a new templating system, or a significant content restructuring. Structured data in particular is fragile — it can break silently during a template change with no visible symptom on the rendered page, so re-validating schema after any development work touching templates is worth doing as a standing checklist item rather than waiting for the next scheduled audit.

Question 6

Should I audit every page on the site or just a subset?

Accepted Answer

Start with a prioritised subset — typically your top 20–50 pages by organic traffic or commercial value — rather than attempting a full-site audit on the first pass. This surfaces the patterns (a missing schema type, a structural habit like long preambles) that are likely repeated site-wide, which you can then fix at the template level rather than page by page. Reserve a full-site crawl-based audit for sites under 500 pages where it's practical, or for the highest-value sections of larger sites.