// services / ai search
AI SEO services, starting with whether AI can read your site
Before anyone rewrites a page for ChatGPT or Perplexity, someone should check their crawlers can get in. My AI SEO services start there, on your WordPress site, and only then move to answers and citations. Book a call and I'll run that check before recommending anything else.
// what it costs
- US$149Deep audit and growth report, one off, on Upwork
- US$999Audit and fixes, one off, on Upwork
- US$299 or US$750month to month, with a report every month
Audits from US$149, audit and fixes from US$999, and month to month plans at US$299 for maintenance or US$750 for growth. Booked and paid on Upwork.
What should AI SEO services check before anything else?
AI SEO services can mean AI tools producing SEO work faster, or AI search optimization: being found and cited in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. I offer the second, as one consultant working remotely. It starts with whether those systems can reach, render and read your WordPress site at all, because no rewrite helps a page a crawler never receives.
How would I diagnose this on your site?
This is the order I check it in on a WordPress or WooCommerce site, before changing anything. You'll get the findings back in writing, each tied to a number in your own Search Console.
See my full diagnosis process- i.
The robots.txt the server returns
Read rule by rule for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended.
- ii.
Pages fetched as each AI crawler
Whether Cloudflare, Wordfence or a host wall returns a 403 or a challenge instead of the HTML.
- iii.
Access logs filtered for AI user agents
No entries at all usually points to a block at the CDN edge.
Is Cloudflare quietly blocking the AI engines you want?
Book a call on UpworkWhat do AI SEO services include?
Three jobs in a fixed order, because each one depends on the one before it. This page is the first; the other two have their own pages.
Access: the readiness audit
Robots.txt rules, CDN and firewall settings, and rendering checked for every AI agent that matters to you. It's the rest of this page.
Answers: passages worth lifting
Question headings and first-sentence answers on pages that already rank. That's my AEO services page.
Citations: being chosen as a source
Consistent facts, original numbers and clear entities across the site. That's generative engine optimization services.
Which AI crawlers should your robots.txt allow?
The engines I test are ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Each AI company runs more than one agent, and a rule that's written to stop training can also stop search answers, so it's decided agent by agent. The WordPress robots.txt guide walks through where the file comes from and how to edit it.
| User agent | What it does | Blocking it means |
|---|---|---|
| GPTBot | Collects content that may train OpenAI's models | Opting out of training, not ChatGPT search |
| OAI-SearchBot | Crawls pages for ChatGPT's search results | Pages can drop out as ChatGPT sources |
| ClaudeBot | Collects content that may train Claude | Opting out of Anthropic training |
| Claude-SearchBot | Indexes pages for Claude's search results | Pages can drop out of Claude's search answers |
| Claude-User | Fetches a page when a Claude user asks about it | Claude can't read the page on request |
| PerplexityBot | Builds Perplexity's search index | Pages can drop out as Perplexity sources |
| Google-Extended | A token controlling Gemini training and grounding in Gemini Apps, not a crawler | No effect on Google Search or AI Overviews |
Why can AI crawlers be blocked when Google indexes you fine?
Firewalls and hosts are built so they won't block Googlebot. AI crawlers don't get that treatment, and you'd rarely notice until it's checked.
Cloudflare's AI crawler setting
It blocks known AI crawlers at the edge before robots.txt is read, and since 1 July 2025 Cloudflare's default blocks them.
JavaScript challenges
Challenge pages stop clients that can't run scripts, which describes most AI crawlers.
Security plugins
Wordfence and similar firewalls can rate-limit unfamiliar bots, logged in the plugin and never in Search Console.
Can AI crawlers see content WordPress loads with JavaScript?
Assume they can't. Googlebot renders pages before indexing, but Vercel's crawler study found none of the major AI crawlers it tracked rendered JavaScript, OpenAI's, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot included. Elementor tabs that fetch content by AJAX and injected review widgets are the usual WordPress gaps, and you'll find the deeper fixes on JavaScript SEO.
How does an AI SEO project run, step by step?
- i.
Access fixed first
Every AI agent you want gets through robots.txt, the CDN and the firewall, confirmed in the server logs.
- ii.
A dated baseline
Your buyers' questions asked logged out on each engine, with GA4 referrals from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai noted as a floor.
- iii.
One set of facts
Name, services, areas and people checked across pages, author boxes and Organization and Person markup.
- iv.
Passages on ranking pages
The pages already earning impressions get question headings and answers that stand alone.
- v.
The same questions, asked again
Re-sampled after four to eight weeks and reported as a trend, never a promised citation count.
What does AI search readiness look like on client sites?
One site where crawler access was a written decision, and one where AI search markup went in while a host problem was still being cleared. The Lux Jewels case study shows that live robots.txt.
The robots.txt allows AI crawlers on purpose, with a comment in the file saying why. ChatGPT and Claude referrals are the owner's own report, which Search Console can't confirm.
Read the case study →
Structured markup went in with the AI search pass, while Search Console still reported two homepage hosts from before the www redirect, the kind of gap a readiness audit flags first.
Read the case study →What's in an AI search readiness audit, and what isn't?
The audit is the access layer only. Once crawlers can get in, the passage and citation work above is quoted separately, so you're never paying for rewrites a blocked crawler would never read.
Included
- Live robots.txt rules for each AI agent and the Google-Extended token
- Fetch tests as each crawler, plus a server log check
- Cloudflare, security plugin and host bot settings
- Raw HTML checks and Organization and Person markup
Not included
- Writing an llms.txt file no major engine reads
- AI-generated content at volume or link building
What happens after you book an AI search readiness call?
- i.
Your site fetched as each crawler
GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, so you'll see any block before the call.
- ii.
Rules decided with you
Which agents to allow is your call, and you'll make it for training and for search separately.
- iii.
A readiness quote on Upwork
Findings ranked by severity, and a clear answer if nothing's blocked at all.
- iv.
Access confirmed in the logs
Server logs rechecked after the change, since AI crawlers never appear in Search Console.
What else do people ask about AI SEO services?
How much do AI SEO services cost?
The readiness audit depends on how many security layers, CDN rules and templates sit in the way, so no price is shown here. You'll get a quote on Upwork after the first fetch tests, and any answer or citation work is quoted after that.
Does blocking Google-Extended remove me from AI Overviews?
No. It controls whether Gemini models train on your pages and use them for grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI. Google says it doesn't affect inclusion in Google Search, and AI Overviews are part of Search.
Do I need an llms.txt file or an AI SEO plugin?
Neither makes a site ready. llms.txt is a 2024 proposal no major AI search engine has said it reads, and readiness problems usually sit in Cloudflare, the host or the theme.
Do AI SEO services replace normal SEO?
No. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet, so crawlable, indexed pages still come first.
Can Search Console show traffic from ChatGPT?
No, it only covers Google. GA4 can show chatgpt.com referrals when the referrer's passed, which makes it a floor, not a total.
The measurement half of this is in the post on ChatGPT referral traffic, and the structured data half starts with adding schema to WordPress so it matches the page.
Can AI crawlers actually reach your site?
Send me the URL. I'll read your robots.txt and firewall rules for GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot, fetch your key pages the way each one does, and tell you what they can and can't see.
Book a call on Upwork