Don't Be Conned Into Paying For an AI Search Optimisation Audit FFS!

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Have you paid thousands for an AI search optimisation audit?

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Did it mention the 462 non-AI related errors on your site?

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No. And you've been fucking had.

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This is SEO Fucking What? I'm Nikki,

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and I've been doing SEO for over 30 years — before it was even called SEO.

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I help people like you make money from your website by actually getting found on search.

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And today I'm absolutely livid, because I saw something this week that made my blood boil —

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an AI search optimisation audit. It cost thousands of pounds.

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Massive document, proprietary tools, competitive analysis. The whole works.

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And you know what? It was complete and utter shit. So this is what happened.

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I got sent this audit to look at from an agency that's pivoted away from SEO and into GEO —

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you know the type — the ones who've decided that traditional SEO is dead and AI search is the future.

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So they've rebranded overnight and started charging premium prices for — well, let's find out, shall we?

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This audit was huge. Beautifully presented, lots of charts and graphs. Very impressive looking.

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Cost the client thousands of pounds. Thousands. And it was all about how their site was performing in ChatGPT

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and how to get more AI citations. Sounds great, right?

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Except for one tiny little problem. It was fucking useless.

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You want to know what wasn't in this thousands-of-pounds audit?

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462 hreflang errors. 462.

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631 redirect chains. That's right. 631.

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90 duplicate H1 tags. Nearly a thousand images missing alt text.

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Basic technical SEO — the stuff that affects how any search system, AI or otherwise, understands and trusts your website.

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Not mentioned. Not a peep.

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Do you know how I found this stuff out? One click of a button. Free audit.

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Using tools that anyone can access. But no — let's obsess over ChatGPT citations instead.

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Here's where it gets really infuriating. I checked the analytics for this site —

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Google Analytics. The free one that we all have access to.

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The Google organic traffic is 44 times higher than their ChatGPT referral traffic. 44 times.

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We're talking multiple tens of thousands of users per month from Google.

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Less than a thousand from ChatGPT. Was this mentioned in the audit? Was it fuck.

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Not a single word about the platform that's actually paying their bills.

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Not a single mention of the search engine that's driving 96% of their search traffic.

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Instead, all of the focus was on AI citations, AI visibility, AI this, AI that —

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while the platform that really matters, the one their customers are actually using, was completely ignored.

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It's like having a house with a massive hole in the roof, water pissing through the ceiling,

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and hiring someone who comes in and says, "Do you know what we need to do? Redecorate the garden shed."

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But it gets worse. I mean, of course it does.

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This audit recommended deleting hundreds of pages. Hundreds. Sweeping kill lists

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based on their proprietary AI visibility metrics — special tools that showed zero clicks on these pages

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from anywhere, including Google. So I did something a little bit off the wall —

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something that was apparently beyond the capabilities of this multi-thousand-pound audit.

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I checked Google Analytics again. And guess what? Those pages are getting clicks.

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Real traffic. Real people. Real Google searches. Pages they wanted to delete are actually performing.

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They're bringing in visitors. They're doing their job. Because some made-up AI visibility tool

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said they weren't appearing in ChatGPT, the recommendation was to bin them.

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No analysis of whether those pages convert. No check on what would happen to the site's topical authority

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if you just deleted them. No consideration of the technical shit storm underneath that's actually dragging everything down.

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these pages don't get cited by ChatGPT, so get rid of them.

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That's not an audit. That's a spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet was wrong.

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Now, before anyone accuses me of being anti-AI — I want to be really clear. AI search matters.

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I'm genuinely excited about where it's going. I think it's fascinating technology

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and I really do think it's going to change how people find information.

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But right now, today, Google is still paying the bills for most websites.

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It's still where the vast majority of search traffic comes from. It's still how most of your customers find you.

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And if your fancy AI search optimisation audit ignores every technical fundamental

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while recommending you set fire to content that's actively performing, you haven't bought an audit.

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You've bought a very expensive way to bollocks up your traffic on two platforms instead of just one.

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But why does this make me so angry? I talk about this stuff a lot.

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I rant about the GEO grifters and the AEO arseholes and all the hustle bros selling made-up services.

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But this one really got to me — because this isn't just some random person on LinkedIn flogging a course.

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This is an actual agency. A company that's taken thousands of pounds from a client

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and delivered something that could genuinely damage their business.

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If that client had followed this advice — deleted those pages, ignored those technical issues —

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they would've hurt their Google rankings and their AI visibility.

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Because guess what? Google and AI systems care about the same fundamentals:

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site structure, technical health, content quality, user experience.

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You can't optimise for AI search by ignoring everything that makes a website work.

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That's not how any of this works. And the worst part is — the client trusted them.

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They paid good money because they were told this agency had special expertise, proprietary tools,

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insider knowledge about AI search. And it was all bollocks. Complete and utter bollocks.

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So what's the fix? What do you do if you're thinking about paying for an AI search optimisation audit?

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First of all, check your numbers before you spend a single penny.

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Look at your Google Analytics. Look at where your traffic actually comes from.

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If Google is driving 90-something percent of your organic search traffic — that's where you need to focus.

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AI search is interesting, but it's probably not paying your bills just yet.

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Then sort out your technical foundations. All those fancy AI search optimisation strategies

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mean absolutely nothing if your site has hundreds of errors, redirect chains, and duplicate content issues.

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Fix the basics. Fix what any system needs to work properly. And then be deeply suspicious

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of anyone selling AI-specific optimisation as something completely different from SEO. Because it's not.

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I'll say it again. The fundamentals are the same. Good content. Good structure. Good technical health.

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If someone tells you they have special proprietary tools for AI search that can do things normal SEO tools can't —

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run. Run fast.

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Never delete content based solely on AI visibility metrics. Check your actual analytics.

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Check what's bringing in real traffic, real leads, real money.

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Don't let someone talk you into burning down content that's working just because their made-up metrics say it's not appearing in ChatGPT.

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And lastly — if something sounds too proprietary and mysterious to explain, it's probably bollocks.

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Good SEO isn't a secret. Good SEO — people can explain what they're doing and why.

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If someone hides behind jargon and proprietary this and exclusive that — they're probably hiding their own incompetence.

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I don't have a neat bow to wrap this up in. The anger is the point. The frustration is the point.

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I care about this industry. I care about the businesses trying to do the right thing.

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I care about marketing directors who are just trying to make good decisions with their budgets.

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I fucking hate watching them get ripped off by people selling expensive nonsense.

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If this helped, don't keep it to yourself. Make sure you're following SEO Fucking What

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in whichever app you're listening to right now.

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Share it with someone who's being pitched an AI service. Share it with your marketing director before they sign that contract.

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And if you've got your own horror stories — shit audits, agencies promising the earth and delivering nothing —

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strategies that were just buzzwords in a slide deck — I want to hear them. Find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message.

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Because every story you give me tells me that this problem is real —

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and it's not just me being a grumpy cow on the internet.

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Until next time — get found, make money.

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And for fuck's sake, stop paying thousands for audits that ignore everything that actually matters.