Can AI See Your Website? A 30-Minute Check

We have already written about how to build a website that Google and ChatGPT cite in their answers. After making those changes, site owners usually have one question left: can AI actually see the site? Below are five checks that take about half an hour. You will need access to your site, Google Search Console, Yandex Webmaster and your analytics.

Check 1. Does your site let the right crawlers in (5 minutes)

Each AI search tool has its own crawler, and it is easy to block one by mistake. Open yoursite.uz/robots.txt and make sure it does not disallow:

• Googlebot, which gets your site into Google, including AI Overviews and AI Mode;
• YandexBot, which gets your site into Yandex and Alice AI answers;
• OAI-SearchBot, the ChatGPT search crawler. If it is blocked, your site will not appear in ChatGPT answers except as a plain link.

GPTBot, OpenAI's other crawler, collects content for training models. According to OpenAI's documentation, the settings for it and for OAI-SearchBot are independent: you can block GPTBot and still stay in ChatGPT search. After you change robots.txt, OpenAI's systems need about a day to pick up the change.

robots.txt can be fine while bot protection at your host or in Cloudflare still keeps crawlers out. You can spot this in the server logs: if they show no visits from OAI-SearchBot or Googlebot, check your firewall rules. To tell a real crawler from a fake one, compare IP addresses against the lists OpenAI publishes, such as openai.com/searchbot.json.

Check 2. Are your pages indexed (5 minutes)

Google states plainly that AI answers have no extra requirements: a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. So the next step is to look at reports you already have:

• the Pages report in Search Console: how many pages are indexed and why the rest are not;
• the Indexing section in Yandex Webmaster: the same questions for Yandex;
• the noindex, nosnippet and max-snippet tags in the code of your key pages. The first removes a page from search; the other two limit the text Google can show, including in AI answers.

Start with your service, pricing and contact pages. If they are not indexed, AI will answer questions about your company using other people's websites.

Check 3. Ask the AI yourself (10 minutes)

Write down 5 to 10 questions that clients ask before they buy. For example: "how much does a website for a clinic in Tashkent cost", "which studio builds Flutter mobile apps", "how to connect Payme to a website". Ask them in ChatGPT with search turned on, in Google (where an AI Overview appears or AI Mode is available) and in Alice. For each answer, note three things: whether your company is mentioned, whether there is a link to your site, and who the AI cites instead of you.

AI answers depend on wording, language and even the user, so a single check tells you little. Repeat it once a month with the same list of questions and compare the results. And do not paste clients' names or phone numbers into chatbots: that is personal data, and it has to be handled in line with the law on personal data.

Check 4. Do people arrive from AI answers (5 minutes)

According to OpenAI, ChatGPT automatically adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its links, so these visits show up in analytics.

• Since May 2026, Google Analytics 4 has a separate AI Assistant channel for visits from chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It does not catch everything: mobile apps often send no source, and those visits end up under Direct.
• Yandex Metrica has no dedicated channel. Open the sources report and build a segment by referrer: chatgpt.com, gemini.google.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai.
• In Search Console, clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the Performance report under the Web search type, together with regular clicks. There is no separate filter for them.

Check 5. The Alice AI report in Yandex Webmaster (5 minutes)

In April 2026, Yandex Webmaster added a tool for site visibility in Alice AI. It shows the share of queries where Alice uses your site as a source, examples of those queries and the sites on your topic that it cites more often. The report is available to site owners who have verified their site in Webmaster. Data builds up gradually, so a new site will not see it straight away.

What to do with the results

These are the most common situations:

• A crawler is blocked in robots.txt or the firewall. Open access, then check the logs and the index a few days later.
• Service pages are not indexed. Fix the errors that Search Console and Webmaster report, and check the internal links to those pages. If the site is old and has many problems, see our article on redesigning without losing rankings.
• The AI knows your company but cites directories and competitors. That means your site has no direct answer to the question. Add prices or a price range, timelines and an FAQ section to your service pages. We showed how to put an FAQ together quickly in "A Website FAQ in 10 Minutes".
• There are answers in Russian but not in Uzbek. Check that your Uzbek pages are fully translated and linked to the Russian ones with hreflang. Details are in our article on multilingual websites.
• The AI mentions your company, but there are hardly any visits. For simple questions, people get the answer right in the chat. We discussed how to deal with this in our article on how AI search is taking traffic from websites.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I check?

Repeating the manual question check once a month is enough. Check robots.txt and the index after every site update and whenever you change hosting or security settings.

Why does ChatGPT give outdated or wrong information about my company?

AI builds answers from many sources, including old directories and other people's articles. Correct the information on your own site and in your map listings, and use the same name, address and phone number everywhere your company appears. You cannot change the answer directly, but over time it follows the sources.

Why does my analytics show almost no visits from ChatGPT when my site appears in its answers?

Some visits from mobile apps arrive without a source and are recorded as direct. Many users also get their answer in the chat and never click through.

Can I be guaranteed a place in AI answers?

No. Google, Yandex and OpenAI choose the sources for each answer themselves. What you can do is remove technical barriers and make sure your site has a clear answer to your client's question. If someone promises a guaranteed spot in AI answers, ask them to explain exactly how that works.

Would you like us to run this check for you? Get in touch: we will look at crawler access, the index and the text of your key pages and tell you what is keeping your site out of AI answers. If your site needs rebuilding, see what our website development includes.

Google, Gemini, ChatGPT, Yandex and Alice are trademarks of their respective owners. Evolution Systems is not affiliated with these companies. Information about the services' features is based on their documentation as of October 2026.