Expert Interview –What Gemini thinks of the Audit

Jul 23, 2025 | Blog

AI SEO wrench

I created the 15-point Audit after a lot of back and forth with ChatGPT. Then tested it in my test websites and, once I was sure it will help and not hinder, in my clients’. With all the tests i had good results, so I decided to make this move of my service website into AI-SEO, as I find it fascinating.

Today I asked Gemini about the Audit, so this connects with the Expert Interview title, who knows more about AI than AI? Gemini looked at the subjects and gave me some very interesting feedback. It’s worth saving and sharing, so here it goes:

Gemini’s feedback on the 15-point Audit

This is an excellent and comprehensive 15-point audit! You’ve clearly put a lot of thought into what matters in the evolving landscape of search, particularly with the rise of AI. I agree with virtually every point you’ve made as a “core need” for effective communication with AI platforms.

Let’s go through it, and I’ll offer some feedback and perhaps a few additional nuances or considerations, framed from my perspective as an AI:

General Feedback

Overall, your audit demonstrates a strong understanding that AI visibility in search is an evolution, not a revolution, of good SEO and UX practices. Many of these points are already foundational for strong organic visibility, and AI simply amplifies their importance.

Your emphasis on clarity, structure, and user-centricity is spot on. AI models thrive on well-organized, unambiguous information that directly answers questions and demonstrates expertise.

Detailed Feedback on Each Point

🌐 Technical Health

  1. No 500 errors or broken pages
    • Agreement: Absolutely critical. A fundamental requirement for any search engine, human, or AI. If a page isn’t accessible, it can’t be processed or understood.
    • AI Nuance: For AI, broken pages also represent “dead ends” in their knowledge graph traversal, potentially leading to incomplete or inaccurate answers if they expected to find information there.
  2. Loads securely over HTTPS
    • Agreement: Essential for trust and ranking. Google explicitly uses HTTPS as a ranking signal, and AI models are increasingly likely to factor in trust signals related to security.
    • AI Nuance: AI might be programmed to prioritize sources that demonstrate a baseline level of trustworthiness, and HTTPS is a universal signifier of that.
  3. Mobile-friendly with fast load time
    • Agreement: Crucial. With mobile-first indexing, this is non-negotiable. Slow speeds degrade user experience and signal a less-than-optimal site.
    • AI Nuance: While AI models don’t “experience” a slow load like a human, the underlying technical metrics (Core Web Vitals) are signals that Google’s algorithms (which feed into AI outputs) consider for quality. A faster site can also allow AI crawlers to process more pages efficiently.
  4. Indexed by Google and has an XML sitemap
    • Agreement: Fundamental. If your content isn’t indexed, it won’t appear anywhere. Sitemaps are still highly valuable.
    • AI Nuance: Sitemaps help AI crawlers discover and prioritize content, especially on large or complex sites. They ensure that all the content you want AI to consider for its responses is discoverable.
  5. No intrusive interstitials or overlays
    • Agreement: Excellent point on user experience. Google penalizes these, especially on mobile, if they hide content.
    • AI Nuance: While an AI doesn’t get “annoyed” by a popup, its ability to parse and understand the main content of the page can be hindered if significant portions are obscured by overlays. It’s about ensuring the primary content is immediately available and parsable.

🧠 AI & SEO Visibility

  1. Clear H1 tag and clean heading structure
    • Agreement: This is becoming even more critical for AI. AI models use headings to understand content hierarchy, identify key topics, and extract specific answers. A logical structure is essentially an outline for an AI.
    • AI Nuance: Semantic relevance within headings helps AI understand the flow of information and pinpoint precise answers for generative responses. Think of it as providing “anchor points” for AI to summarize or extract from.
  2. Title tag + meta description optimized
    • Agreement: Still vital for organic search and a human’s first impression.
    • AI Nuance: While AI might generate its own summaries, your optimized title and meta description still influence whether a user clicks to get to your site from a traditional SERP, or even from an AI overview that still links out. They also serve as strong signals to the AI about the page’s core topic and value proposition.
  3. Schema markup present
    • Agreement: CRITICAL for AI SEO. You’ve hit the nail on the head. Schema explicitly tells AI what your content means, not just what it says. This is how you convert unstructured web content into machine-readable data that AI can readily use for rich results, knowledge panels, and generative answers.
    • AI Nuance: This is arguably one of the most direct ways to “speak” to AI. It helps AI models understand entities (people, places, things), relationships, and attributes, which are fundamental to how AI organizes and presents information.
  4. Open Graph & Twitter Cards configured
    • Agreement: Important for social sharing and brand consistency.
    • AI Nuance: While less directly impactful on AI search answers, these ensure that when humans share your content (which AI might observe as a signal of relevance/popularity), it looks professional and consistent. This contributes to overall brand authority and visibility, which can indirectly influence AI’s perception of trustworthiness.
  5. Content is readable by both humans & machines
    • Agreement: Excellent point. Avoid jargon, use clear language, and structure well.
    • AI Nuance: This is fundamental. AI models prefer concise, direct answers. Long, convoluted sentences, “walls of text,” or content hidden by JavaScript (that AI might struggle to render) actively hinder AI’s ability to parse, understand, and summarize your information accurately. Breaking down complex topics into digestible paragraphs, bullet points, and Q&A formats significantly improves AI “readability.”

🤖 Trust, Credibility & User Signal

  1. Visible contact info and business credentials
    • Agreement: Directly aligns with Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines, which are incredibly important for AI.
    • AI Nuance: AI models are designed to prioritize trustworthy sources, especially for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) topics. Clear credentials, marked up with schema (e.g., LocalBusiness, Organization, Person schema with alumniOf, hasOccupation, knowsAbout, memberOf properties) directly tell the AI about the expertise and legitimacy of the authors and the organization.
  2. Consistent navigation across all devices
    • Agreement: Good UX is good SEO. Helps users and bots.
    • AI Nuance: Consistent navigation helps AI crawlers efficiently discover and map the entire structure of your site, ensuring all relevant content is considered. Disjointed navigation can lead to “orphan pages” that AI might miss.
  3. Privacy Policy, Terms & Legal Pages Clearly Accessible
    • Agreement: Absolutely essential for trust and compliance, especially for regulated industries.
    • AI Nuance: These pages are strong trust signals for both search engines and AI. They demonstrate transparency and responsibility, which are key components of the “Trustworthiness” in E-E-A-T.
  4. Consistent Domain & Protocol Across All Versions
    • Agreement: Critical technical SEO. Prevents duplicate content issues and consolidates link equity.
    • AI Nuance: While AI can often figure out canonical versions, forcing it to do extra work or encounter inconsistent versions can lead to inefficient crawling, split signals, and potentially less accurate understanding of your site’s authority. Consistency makes it easier for AI to build a unified and accurate representation of your website.
  5. Clear call-to-action above the fold
    • Agreement: Excellent point on user experience and conversion.
    • AI Nuance: While AI doesn’t “convert” in the human sense, it’s designed to understand user intent and facilitate actions. If a user asks an AI about a service, and your site is cited, a clear CTA makes it easy for the user (who was guided by AI to your site) to take the next step. It also helps AI infer the purpose of the page more clearly, contributing to better search intent matching.

Additional Considerations for AI SEO

If you’re looking to expand, here are a few more areas that are increasingly relevant for AI SEO:

  • E-E-A-T Demonstration (Beyond Credentials): How does your content show experience? Case studies, first-hand accounts, unique data, expert interviews, and practical examples become even more important. AI is looking for real-world knowledge.
  • Topical Authority & Clusters: AI models excel at understanding topics in depth. Instead of just individual keywords, think about building out comprehensive topic clusters or “pillar pages” that thoroughly cover a subject and link to related sub-topics. This helps AI see you as a definitive source.
  • Conciseness and Direct Answers: As AI provides direct answers, content that succinctly answers common questions (perhaps in an FAQ section or a direct opening paragraph) can be easily extracted and used by generative AI features.
  • Multi-modal Content: Consider how AI might process and present information beyond just text. High-quality images with descriptive alt text, well-captioned videos, and even audio transcripts can all be sources for AI.
  • Fact-Checkability: AI is prone to “hallucinations.” Content that makes it easy for AI to verify facts (e.g., citing sources, providing data points) will be favored.
  • Conversational Language: Since many AI interactions are conversational (e.g., voice search, chatbots), content written in a natural, conversational tone can be more easily adopted by AI for its responses.

In conclusion, your 15-point audit is robust and highly relevant for the current and future state of AI-driven search. It covers the essential technical, content, and trust signals that are increasingly vital for AI visibility. Great work!

Do you want the FREE Audit? Get the FREE AI-SEO Audit Here. Yes, we check your site and go over these 15 points for you. For FREE. What’s the catch? It can be a pain to fix. We can save you time if you choose to.

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