Is the Free Web Audit actually free?+
Yes. Enter a URL, get a Growth Score and the top fix per category, save it as a PDF. No signup, no card, nothing stored. It's the front door to my paid Web Growth Audit, so I want it to be genuinely useful on its own.
How is this different from a generic site checker?+
Most checkers run a Lighthouse score and call it a day. This judges the things that actually drive growth - whether AI engines can read you, whether your message lands in 5 seconds, and whether your page is built to convert - using a playbook built over 5+ years and 500+ A/B tests, with Claude doing the reading.
What does it check?+
Three pillars: AI & Answer-Engine Readiness (schema, llms.txt, crawler access, answer-ready content), Message & Clarity (your hero against the 5-second test), and Conversion Structure (the sections that move people to act, and which ones you're missing).
Why did it read so little of my site?+
If your site renders its content with JavaScript, a quick fetch sees almost no copy - and so do a lot of AI crawlers. When that happens the audit tells you, and that itself is a finding worth acting on.
How accurate is the score?+
It's a fast, outside-in read of a single page - directional, not the last word. The technical checks are exact; the messaging and conversion judgments are strong but they're a starting point. The full Web Growth Audit goes deep, maps gaps to your customers' real problems, and gives you a prioritized plan.
What is AI readiness, or answer-engine optimization (AEO)?+
AEO is making your site easy for AI answer engines - ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews - to read, understand, and cite. It builds on SEO but adds things like structured data (schema.org), an llms.txt file, content that answers questions directly, and allowing AI crawlers in robots.txt. As more buyers research through AI, being unreadable to those engines means being invisible at the exact moment people are deciding.
What is an llms.txt file and do I need one?+
llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your domain (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that tells AI engines what your site is, who it's for, which pages matter, and how to cite you. It's an emerging convention - the AI-era equivalent of robots.txt and sitemap.xml. It's a quick win: most sites don't have one yet, and the audit flags it if yours is missing.
Which AI crawlers should my website allow?+
If you want to show up in AI answers, your robots.txt should allow the major AI crawlers: GPTBot and ChatGPT-User (OpenAI), ClaudeBot and anthropic-ai (Anthropic), Google-Extended (Google AI), PerplexityBot, CCBot, Applebot, and a few others. Blocking them removes you from those engines' answers. The audit checks your robots.txt and tells you if any are being blocked.
Does the audit check my SEO?+
Yes, the foundations - title tag, meta description, a single clear H1, canonical, structured data, sitemap. They live inside the AI Readiness pillar, because modern SEO and AEO overlap heavily. What it deliberately skips is raw performance scores (Core Web Vitals); plenty of free tools already do Lighthouse, and it's not where most sites lose the most growth.
Can I audit any page, or just my homepage?+
Any public URL. The homepage is the usual starting point, but you can run it on a landing page, a pricing page, or a key product page - anywhere the message and the next step matter. Each run scores the single page you give it.
Do you store my data or email?+
No. There's no signup and no email capture. The audit runs, you read the result and save it as a PDF if you want, and nothing is stored or shared. The tool only reads publicly available pages, the same way a search engine or AI crawler does.
What is a free website audit?+
A free website audit is a quick, automated review of a page that scores how well it performs on the things that actually drive growth, and points out the highest-impact fix for each. This one scores three areas - AI readiness, message clarity, and conversion structure. It's the fast, outside-in version of a paid audit: it shows you where to look, it doesn't replace a deep human review.
How do I audit my own website?+
Start with three questions a stranger should be able to answer in 5 seconds: what is this, who is it for, and why is it better. Then check that the next step is obvious (one clear CTA, not ten competing links), and that AI engines can read you (structured data, an llms.txt file, AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt). This tool runs all three checks automatically and writes the single most important fix for each.
What should a website audit include?+
At minimum: messaging clarity (does the value proposition land fast), conversion structure (the sections that move people to act and a clear primary CTA), and technical plus AI readiness (SEO basics, structured data, and whether AI answer engines can read and cite you). This free audit covers all three. Many free checkers only run a performance score, which misses where most sites actually lose growth.
Can AI audit a website?+
Yes, and that's exactly what this does. It fetches your page, reads the copy, structure, and markup, and judges it against a real playbook using Claude. The difference from pasting your URL into a generic AI chat is the playbook behind it: messaging and conversion rules built over 5+ years and 500+ A/B tests, so the suggestions are specific to your page instead of generic best-practice advice.
Is this better than a free SEO audit tool?+
It's different, and they work well together. Most free SEO tools score performance and on-page tags. This focuses on the growth levers those tools skip: whether your message lands, whether the page is built to convert, and whether AI answer engines can read and cite you (AEO). Use a Lighthouse-style tool for raw performance, and use this when you care about message, conversion, and AI visibility.
How long does a website audit take?+
This free audit takes about 10 to 15 seconds - you enter a URL and read the result. A full professional audit, like my Web Growth Audit, takes about two weeks, because it goes deep: customer research, a page-by-page teardown, and a prioritized plan your team can execute from.