Straight answers to
the questions people ask.
50 guides, each one taking a single real question — why an assistant will not cite your site, why a page never appeared on Google, what a security header actually does — and answering it without padding. Every claim here is one this tool can measure on your own site.
AI visibility and answer engines
Why assistants do or do not cite your site, and what actually controls it.
Why is my website not showing on ChatGPT?
The four things that decide whether ChatGPT can find, read and cite your site — and how to tell which one is stopping you.
ReadWhy can't Claude see my website?
Anthropic runs three separate crawlers with three separate purposes. Blocking the wrong one is the usual reason a site is invisible.
ReadWhy doesn't Grok recommend my site?
Grok leans heavily on real-time social signals and live web fetches, which makes it behave differently from other assistants — and rewards different things.
ReadWhy doesn't Perplexity cite my website?
Perplexity cites sources on every answer, which makes it the easiest assistant to diagnose — and the most demanding about page structure.
ReadHow do I get my site cited by AI assistants?
The mechanics that must be right, then the content decisions that actually earn the citation — in the order worth doing them.
ReadShould I block AI crawlers from my site?
An honest look at what you gain and what you give up, and why the answer is usually "block some, allow others".
ReadDoes blocking GPTBot hurt my traffic?
Blocking GPTBot alone costs you almost nothing. The damage comes from the other rules people add at the same time.
ReadHow do I check if AI crawlers can read my site?
Four tests you can run yourself in about ten minutes, in the order that finds the problem fastest.
ReadDoes JavaScript hurt AI crawlers?
Yes, more than it hurts search engines. If your content only exists after JavaScript runs, most AI crawlers see an empty page.
ReadWhat is llms.txt and do I need it?
A proposed convention for pointing language models at your best content. Cheap to add, unproven, and no substitute for the things that do work.
ReadWhat is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
Optimising to be quoted inside an AI answer rather than ranked in a list of links — what genuinely differs from SEO, and what is the same work under a new name.
ReadHow does Google AI Overviews pick sources?
What is known about how AI Overviews selects what it quotes, what follows from it, and what nobody outside Google actually knows.
ReadSearch engine optimisation
The mechanics that decide whether a page can rank at all.
How can I improve my SEO?
The work that actually moves rankings, ordered by effect per hour spent — and the popular tasks that do almost nothing.
ReadWhy is my website not showing on Google?
Work through it in order — not indexed, indexed but not ranking, or ranking but not for anything you noticed.
ReadWhat is a good meta description length?
Around 150–160 characters, and length is the least interesting thing about it.
ReadWhy does my site have no title tag?
The commonest causes, and why a missing title costs more than almost any other single fault.
ReadHow do I fix duplicate title tags?
Why the same title on many pages holds all of them back, and how to generate distinct ones without writing hundreds by hand.
ReadWhat is a canonical URL and why does it matter?
It tells search engines which version of a page is the real one. Get it wrong and you can de-index your own site.
ReadDo I need a sitemap.xml?
Not strictly. It helps discovery on larger or poorly-linked sites, and it costs nothing — but it will not fix a site that cannot be crawled.
ReadHow do I fix robots.txt blocking Google?
How to read the file correctly, what the precedence rules actually are, and the three mistakes that cause almost every accidental block.
ReadWhat is structured data and do I need it?
Machine-readable facts about your page. Worth adding where it genuinely describes the content, worthless — and occasionally harmful — everywhere else.
ReadWhy are my images missing alt text and does it matter?
It matters for people using screen readers, for image search, and for anything trying to understand your page. The fix is small and the excuses are usually wrong.
ReadHow many words should a page have?
There is no target. Word count is not a ranking factor, and chasing one reliably makes pages worse.
ReadDoes page speed affect SEO?
Yes, modestly and as a tie-breaker. It affects whether people stay far more than it affects where you rank.
ReadSecurity and email authentication
Headers, certificates, exposure, and stopping people forging your domain.
Is my website secure? How do I check?
What you can verify yourself in twenty minutes, what needs tooling, and what "secure" does and does not mean.
ReadWhat are security headers and which do I need?
Six headers, what each actually prevents, and a configuration you can paste and adjust.
ReadWhat is a Content Security Policy?
A list of where your page is allowed to load things from. The strongest defence against script injection, and the easiest header to get wrong.
ReadWhy does my site say "Not Secure"?
Either you are not on HTTPS at all, or you are and something on the page is not. The second is harder to spot.
ReadHow do I check if my SSL certificate is valid?
Five things to verify, how to check each from the command line, and the failure that only shows up on mobile.
ReadWhat is HSTS and should I enable it?
It forces browsers to use HTTPS for your domain. Almost always worth it — with two decisions that are genuinely hard to reverse.
ReadI found an API key in my HTML. What now?
Rotate first, investigate second. Then work out whether the key ever needed to be in the browser at all.
ReadHow do I stop people sending email that looks like it came from my domain?
Three DNS records. Without them anyone can forge your address, including to your own customers — and this applies even if you never send email.
ReadWhat are SPF, DKIM and DMARC?
Three DNS records that together decide whether your email arrives and whether anyone can forge it. What each one does, in plain terms.
ReadWhat is a CAA record and do I need one?
A DNS record naming which certificate authorities may issue certificates for your domain. One line, and it closes a real gap.
ReadTrust, privacy and content quality
What makes a site read as credible to a person and to a machine.
How do I make my website look trustworthy?
The signals people and machines actually use — most of which cost nothing and are missing from most small sites.
ReadDo I need a privacy policy on my website?
Almost certainly yes, and probably a cookie notice too. What actually triggers the requirement, and why generated policies often make things worse.
ReadWhy does my content look AI-generated?
The specific patterns that make writing read as machine-produced, and what to do about them — whether or not a model was involved.
ReadHow do I write content that AI assistants will quote?
Assistants extract passages, not pages. Everything follows from that one fact.
ReadHow do I add an FAQ section that search engines actually use?
Real questions, visible answers, correct markup — in that order. Schema on questions nobody asked achieves nothing.
ReadShould I put my email address on my website?
Yes. The spam argument is weaker than it was, and being uncontactable costs more than the spam does.
ReadWhat is a security.txt file and do I need one?
A standard file telling researchers how to report a vulnerability. Five lines, and it is the difference between a private report and a public one.
ReadDoes my about page actually matter?
It is one of the most visited pages on most sites, and one of the few things both people and machines use to judge whether you are real.
ReadAccessibility, mobile and presentation
Whether everyone can use the site, and how it looks when shared.
Is my website accessible? How do I check?
What automated testing can and cannot tell you, the three manual tests worth more than any tool, and where to start on a real backlog.
ReadWhy do my images need alt text?
Because without it, some people get nothing at all — and everything else that reads your page gets nothing either.
ReadWhat is a skip link and do I need one?
A hidden link that lets keyboard users jump past your navigation. Five lines of code, and without it every page starts with the same twenty tab presses.
ReadWhy is my site not mobile-friendly?
The specific faults that break sites on phones — starting with the viewport tag and the tables nobody tested at 375 pixels.
ReadWhat is a favicon and why does mine not show?
Caching, wrong sizes and missing formats — the three reasons, and the small set of files that actually covers every platform.
ReadWhy does my link preview look wrong on WhatsApp?
Missing Open Graph tags, an image that is too big or the wrong shape, or a cache holding the version from before you fixed it.
ReadWhat does a good 404 page need?
The right status code first, then a way out. Most 404 pages fail on the first one and nobody notices.
ReadHow often should I audit my website?
After every significant deployment, and on a schedule between them. Configuration regresses quietly, and almost always through a change nobody thought was risky.
ReadRather have it measured than read about it?
Every guide here describes something this tool checks directly. Paste a URL and get the answer for your own site — 200 checks across 18 categories, each one explained where it appears.