SEO content and AI search visibility
What Distro does for AI search (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and others), what the AI Citation Readiness scan checks, and what it does not measure.
AI search tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity can only quote your site if their crawlers can reach it and understand it. Distro helps in two ways: it scans your site for AI citation readiness, and it writes articles in a structure that is easy to quote. It does not track whether AI tools actually mention or cite you.
What Distro does and doesn't do
| Distro does | Distro doesn't |
|---|---|
| Scans your website for the technical basics AI crawlers need (crawler access, structured data, page structure, speed) | Track real citations or mentions of your brand in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or other AI tools |
| Gives you a readiness score and a "what to fix first" list | Show AI search rankings, AI traffic or share of voice |
| Writes articles with an answer-first opening, clear headings, FAQs and schema suggestions | Change your website's code, robots.txt or llms.txt for you |
| Uses your Google Search Console data to plan topics | Guarantee that any AI tool will quote your content |
Think of the readiness score as "can AI search read my site?", not "is AI search recommending me?".
Run the AI Citation Readiness scan
- Open SEO & Content and stay on Overview.
- Find the AI Citation Readiness card and click Scan my site.
- Wait for the scan to finish. It checks the website saved on your product, starting from your homepage.
You can scan once per day per product. If you try again the same day, you'll see "Already scanned today. Try again tomorrow." Use Re-scan the next day to see your change since the last scan.
What the scan checks
The score runs from 0 to 100 across four categories:
| Category | What it looks at |
|---|---|
| Crawler Access | Whether search crawlers used by AI tools and search engines are allowed by your robots.txt and can actually load your homepage: OpenAI search, ChatGPT live fetch, Anthropic search, Claude live fetch, Perplexity, Google, Microsoft Copilot (Bing) and Apple. Also whether you publish an llms.txt file. |
| Structured Data | Valid JSON-LD, entity schema (who you are), homepage schema, search and social metadata, a canonical URL, and whether your schema matches your page content. |
| Content Structure | A clear H1/H2 hierarchy, an answer-first summary, page content crawlers can read without running scripts, clear naming of your business, and coverage of the questions buyers ask. |
| Technical | Sitemap, HTTPS, homepage indexability, page performance, mobile viewport and Core Web Vitals. |
A few details that help you read the result:
- Training crawlers (the bots AI companies use to train models) are shown for information only. Blocking them doesn't lower your score, because training and search visibility are separate choices.
- Some technical checks can show Not returned when the data isn't available. Untested checks don't reduce your score.
- The footer counts blocking issues and advisories. Start with What to fix first.
- Fix in SEO engine opens the Search Diagnosis tab.
Fixing common issues
Most fixes happen on your website or hosting, not in Distro. Follow your website platform's documentation for each one:
- A crawler is blocked: check your robots.txt and any firewall or bot-protection setting on your host. A security setting can block crawlers even when robots.txt allows them.
- No llms.txt: consider adding a short llms.txt file at the root of your site describing your business and key pages.
- Missing or invalid schema: add Organization (or similar) JSON-LD to your homepage that matches what the page says.
- No answer-first summary: open your homepage with one or two plain sentences that say what you do and for whom.
- Sitemap not reachable: publish a sitemap and submit it in Google Search Console.
Then run the scan again the next day.
How Distro writes for AI search
Two settings in SEO & Content → Settings shape every article. Both are on by default:
- AI citation optimization ("Structure articles so AI search can quote them"): each draft opens with a direct, quotable answer, adds a Key takeaways list and uses clear section headings. The editor's Publishing Guide shows AI Citation Notes explaining how the article is structured.
- FAQ section: adds questions and answers to the article. When you publish or export, Distro includes the FAQ in the article together with FAQ schema.
Each draft also comes with schema suggestions (such as Article and FAQPage) and external sources. Review these before you publish.
Measuring results
Because Distro doesn't track AI citations, use other signals to judge progress:
- Search Diagnosis shows real impressions, clicks and positions from Google Search Console for your site.
- Your own website analytics can show visits referred from AI tools.
- Asking AI tools the questions your buyers ask, every few weeks, gives you a rough picture of whether your pages come up.
Search engines and AI tools decide what to show and quote. Good structure and steady publishing improve your chances; nothing guarantees a citation.
Related
Email us at hello@usedistro.com with what you tried and what you see. Signed in? Help & support in the app has walkthrough videos and a message form.