// Lighthouse Signal · AI

Are you visible to AI search?

Signal AI checks how ready your site is to be crawled, understood and cited by AI search and large-language-model systems - ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Gemini. One score, four dimensions, in under a minute.

We read your homepage, robots.txt, llms.txt and sitemap the way an AI crawler would. Nothing is stored.
26
Signals checked
13
AI crawlers tested
4
Scoring dimensions
60s
From URL to verdict
// The shift

Search is turning into an answer engine

People used to scan ten blue links and pick one. Now they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews a question and read a single, synthesised answer.

That answer is built from the sources a model can reach, parse and trust. If your site isn't one of them, you're not lower down the list - you're not in the room. And unlike a search ranking you can watch slip, there's no page two to tell you you've been left out.

The old way

Type a query, scan a page of links, click through a few, judge each site for yourself.

The new way

Ask a question, get one answer with a handful of cited sources, act on it without clicking.

Citation is the new click. The brands quoted in the answer win the attention - and the visit.
// The four dimensions

What AI systems actually look for

Signal AI reads your site the way an AI crawler does and scores it across four dimensions - the same four you'll see in your report.

01 · Coverage

Are the surfaces even there?

robots.txt, a current sitemap, structured data, an llms.txt file. A model can't read what doesn't exist - coverage is the floor everything else stands on.

02 · Accuracy

Are they configured correctly?

An open crawl path, valid schema, no accidental blocks. Small misconfigurations quietly lock the models out while everything looks fine to a human visitor.

03 · Quality

Is it clear enough to quote?

Plain answers, clean headings, facts a model can lift without guessing. Vague, padded copy gets skipped in favour of a competitor who said it straight.

04 · Readiness

Can you win citations from here?

Entity strength, author and organisation signals, content that matches the questions people actually ask. This is what turns "crawlable" into "cited".

// Why now

Why this only gets more important

AI answers compound. The first time a model cites a source for a question, that source becomes the default - and every later answer leans on it.

Answer engines are becoming the first stop for research, not the last - so the decision often happens before anyone reaches your site.

Models cite their sources inline. Being quotable is now what being rankable used to be, and the two don't always overlap.

Get cited early and you bank an advantage that's hard to unseat. Leave it and you spend next year dislodging whoever the model learned to trust.

None of this needs a replatform. Crawl access, structured data, an llms.txt file and clearer content are all fixable now. The hard part is knowing exactly what to change - which is what this Signal tells you.