We've audited 1,168+ websites for AI search visibility.
Most are invisible. Here's what we found.
The fixes are simpler than you think — but most agencies aren't selling them yet.
By Connor Whitlock, Founder · Cited Digital · Published · Updated
We watched businesses lose 30-65% of their organic traffic practically overnight. Good businesses. Smart businesses. Wiped out by a change they didn't see coming.
The cause? AI search. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot started answering users' questions directly — pulling from a small set of well-structured sources and ignoring everything else.
The SEO industry was slow to respond. Most agencies are still optimizing for page 1 rankings that don't matter when an AI answer sits above them.
That's why we built Cited Digital.
We turned that research into a scoring system that tells you exactly where your site stands — in plain language, not SEO jargon.
What We Won't Do
We won't sell you services you don't need. The free audit shows you what's broken. If nothing's broken, we'll tell you.
We won't hide behind jargon. Every recommendation comes with specific instructions. "Add FAQ schema to your service pages" — not "optimize your structured data taxonomy."
We won't tell you everything is fine when it isn't. If your site is invisible to AI search, you need to know.
What We Believe
AEO isn't optional anymore. If your content isn't structured for AI extraction, you're invisible to the fastest-growing segment of search.
Your content should work for AI and humans. Good AEO is about structuring your expertise so both AI systems and readers can find and trust it.
You deserve to know what's broken before you spend a dime. That's why the audit is free.
See where your site stands in 60 seconds.
Run Your Free Audit →Connor Whitlock
Founder & Lead Auditor — Cited Digital · Roanoke, VA
I'm a software engineer who watched the SEO industry sleepwalk through the largest shift in search since the smartphone. AI Overviews now answer almost half of Google searches, and most agencies are still selling page-1 rankings on results that don't load anymore.
I built Cited Digital after auditing my first hundred sites by hand and seeing the same gaps every time: blocked AI crawlers, missing schema, no question-headed content. The fixes are technical but small. Most local trades and DTC brands could move from invisible to cited in a few hours of focused work — they just don't know what to fix.
The audit engine I built and run reads your site the way ChatGPT and Perplexity actually crawl it. Every report I deliver is one I'd be willing to publish under my own name — because, well, I do.
- Built & runs the Cited Digital AEO audit engine end-to-end
- 1,168+ real sites audited across HVAC, plumbing, roofing, electrical, DTC, and more
- Custom scoring system calibrated against SE Ranking, Ahrefs, and Previsible research
- Engineering background — no ghostwriters, no offshore contractors, no fake testimonials
- Refund guarantee on every $497 audit — I only get paid if the report is genuinely actionable
- Roanoke, VA — solo founder, founder-led delivery, founder-answered email
How we score: the audit methodology
Every Cited Digital AEO score breaks into five weighted categories, calibrated against published research from SE Ranking (2.3M pages), Ahrefs (75K brands), and Previsible (5K AI prompts):
- Content Structure (30% weight) — question-headed sections, list density, paragraph clarity. The strongest on-page signal: Q&A formatting drives a 180% citation increase per Previsible's research.
- Technical & Crawlability (25%) — robots.txt allowance for GPTBot/ClaudeBot/CCBot, Core Web Vitals, response time, internal linking. Crawlability is binary: if AI can't read you, nothing else matters.
- E-E-A-T Signals (23%) — named author bylines, credentials, original research, citations from external sources. Important but partially redundant with domain authority.
- Schema Markup (12%) — JSON-LD types present (FAQPage, Article, HowTo, Organization, BreadcrumbList). A facilitator, not a driver: schema is 3x weaker than equivalent content per SE Ranking.
- Meta & Technical (10%) — title hygiene, meta descriptions, Open Graph, canonical tags. Standard SEO baseline; no study shows independent citation impact.
The scoring system is tuned so a site at 75+ is citable on competitive AI queries, 90+ is the first source AI cites, and sub-50 is effectively invisible. That's based on what we actually see in our 1,168-site corpus — not theoretical thresholds.
Contact
Email: contact@citeddigital.co — every email is read and answered by Connor personally, usually within one business day.
Frequently asked questions about Cited Digital
Who runs Cited Digital?
Connor Whitlock, the founder, runs every step — from the audit engine code to the report writing to customer email. Cited Digital is intentionally a single-operator firm, not an agency. There are no contractors, no offshore writers, no outsourced support. Every report you receive is one Connor would put his name on.
How is Cited Digital different from a traditional SEO agency?
Most SEO agencies still optimize for Google page-1 rankings. We optimize for being cited inside AI answers — Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot. Our scoring system is calibrated against AEO research (SE Ranking, Ahrefs, Previsible) rather than legacy SEO heuristics, and our reports return paste-ready schema and content fixes, not ranking dashboards.
How much does an audit cost?
Free quick scan with score and top issues. $497 for the full report (10 pages, paste-ready schema, page-by-page priorities, Fix Manifest for ChatGPT/Claude Code). $1,997 for the Fix Pack where we apply the top fixes ourselves. $297/month for the Watch & Update retainer with monthly re-audits and citation tracking.
Do you offer a guarantee?
Yes. If your $497 paid audit returns fewer than 5 specific actionable fixes, we refund every dollar. No questions, no hoops. The audit refuses to run on sites we can't fully crawl, so we only take payment when we can actually deliver.
How long does an audit take?
The free quick scan returns results in 60 seconds. The full $497 paid report is delivered within 24 hours. Fix Pack implementation typically takes one week. Watch & Update retainer audits run monthly.
What kinds of businesses do you typically audit?
Local trades (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, appliance repair, garage door, pool installers), DTC ecommerce brands on Shopify, dental practices, veterinarians, and law firms. We don't typically work with marketing agencies (a quirk of our targeting — we don't want to compete with our customers' service partners).
Do I need a developer to apply the fixes from the audit?
For the $497 audit, the Fix Manifest is written for non-developers — you can paste it into ChatGPT or Claude Code and it walks the assistant through implementation with you. For the $1,997 Fix Pack, we do the implementation. Either way, no in-house technical team is required.
Is the audit data confidential?
Your audit URL and report are private to your account. We use anonymized aggregate data (industry averages, common-issue rates) to publish original research like the 2026 State of AEO report — but no individual site is identified or quoted without explicit permission.