--- optiview_delivery: edge_optimized content_type: semantic_markdown source_url: https://optiview.ai/resources/ai-readable-website-audit-checklist/ brand_content: included publication_version: "9.0" published_at: 2026-10-16T20:36:07Z composition_version: composition-v2.1.0 presentation_version: presentation-v1.2.3 brand_content_source: narrative_graph delivery_publication: graph:33 narrative_versions: - 33 narrative_version: 33 --- # The AI-Readable Website Audit: 25 Checks Before You Optimize Practical guide — October 30, 2026 Before optimizing your website for AI, find out whether its information is accessible, complete, consistent and understandable. This 25-point audit gives you a place to start. By Optiview · Sources checked October 30, 2026 [Download this article (.md)](https://optiview.ai/resources/ai-readable-website-audit-checklist.md) Making a website more useful to AI doesn't begin with rewriting everything for AI. It begins with understanding what the website actually publishes, how that information is delivered and whether someone could use it to answer a customer question accurately. The following 25 checks are an Optiview editorial framework, not a list of Google ranking factors or universal requirements imposed by AI assistants. They combine established web fundamentals with practical questions about content quality and machine-readable delivery. Start with five important pages: your homepage, a product or service page, pricing or eligibility information, a trust or company page, and a page that explains how to take action. Record each finding as Pass, Needs Work or Unknown. ## Checks 1–5: Can the information be accessed? * 1\. Public response: Does the canonical page return a successful response without authentication or an unexpected access challenge? * 2\. Crawl policy: Do robots directives and page-level restrictions reflect your actual discovery intentions? * 3\. Index eligibility: Is the page technically eligible for indexing where search discovery is intended? * 4\. Canonical identity: Does the page identify the intended canonical URL, without conflicting signals? * 5\. Internal discovery: Can someone navigate to the page through meaningful internal links rather than knowing its URL in advance? These checks build on [Google's published technical requirements](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/technical). Passing them does not guarantee indexing, ranking, AI retrieval or citation. They establish a foundation worth verifying before other work. ## Checks 6–10: Are the essential facts actually present? * 6\. Identity: Does the page clearly identify the organization, offering or service being described? * 7\. Purpose: Does it explain what the offering does in terms a prospective customer would understand? * 8\. Audience: Does it identify who the offering is intended for and, where relevant, who it is not for? * 9\. Conditions: Are material restrictions, qualifications, eligibility requirements and dependencies included? * 10\. Next action: Does it explain what the reader can do next and link to the appropriate destination? Choose one real customer question for every page. If the page does not contain enough information to answer that question without guessing, record a content gap. Do not fill the gap with generated assumptions. ## Checks 11–15: Is the content organized clearly? * 11\. Page title: Does the title accurately describe the page's main subject? * 12\. Headings: Do headings establish a logical information hierarchy? * 13\. Relationships: Are products, features, requirements and outcomes connected through explanatory text? * 14\. Links: Do important supporting links use descriptive labels and lead to the correct pages? * 15\. Structured data: Where applicable, does structured data accurately describe information visible on the page? [Google's structured data guidance](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data) explains how structured annotations help Google understand page content and support eligible search features. Structured data should represent real content, not introduce facts absent from the page. ## Checks 16–20: Can the information be trusted? * 16\. Source ownership: Is there an identifiable team responsible for keeping the information accurate? * 17\. Evidence: Are important factual claims supported by appropriate documents, specifications or policies? * 18\. Consistency: Do other pages describe the same offering without material contradictions? * 19\. Currency: Are time-sensitive details reviewed and updated when circumstances change? * 20\. Qualifications: Are limitations presented close enough to the claims they materially change? Accuracy matters more than confident presentation. Google's [people-first content guidance](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content) emphasizes usefulness, reliability and content created for people. Our recommendation is to maintain a small owner-and-evidence record for each commercially important page. ## Checks 21–25: Does the delivered representation preserve meaning? * 21\. Response inspection: Have you inspected the actual body and Content-Type returned for your test request? * 22\. Important facts: Are required facts and their qualifications preserved in the delivered content? * 23\. Link integrity: Do references and next-action links remain usable in the representation being inspected? * 24\. Representation consistency: If HTML and Markdown are both available, do they communicate materially consistent information? * 25\. Observation boundaries: Are local delivery results recorded separately from search indexing, named AI retrieval and generated answers? These final checks distinguish publishing information from observing its downstream use. If you're testing content negotiation, follow the [Optiview delivery audit](https://optiview.ai/resources/audit-html-markdown-delivery/) and inspect actual responses rather than assuming a request preference was honored. ## Turn the audit into a prioritized worklist 1. Record Pass, Needs Work or Unknown for all 25 checks, with the affected URL and supporting observation. 2. Prioritize inaccessible pages, missing material facts and contradictory information first. 3. Assign each correction an owner, an expected outcome and a verification method. 4. Repeat the affected checks after publication. Investigate downstream AI behavior separately. For sites using Optiview Publish, the [technical setup guide](https://optiview.ai/docs/setup/) provides connection and publication acceptance procedures. Use those after the underlying information has been reviewed. ## Additional source context Fix inaccessible, missing and contradictory information before optimizing its presentation. A different delivery format cannot compensate for facts the business never published. Make your brand easier for AI to understand. ### Explore [Website publishing](https://optiview.ai/products/publish/) · [Developer tools](https://optiview.ai/products/#developers) · [Pricing](https://optiview.ai/pricing/) ### Learn [Guides](https://optiview.ai/resources/) · [Developer docs](https://optiview.ai/developers/) · [Research](https://optiview.ai/proof/) · [FAQ](https://optiview.ai/faq/) ### Company [About Optiview](https://optiview.ai/about/) · [Agencies](https://optiview.ai/partners/) · [Contact](https://optiview.ai/#contact) · [Privacy](https://optiview.ai/privacy/) · [Billing terms](https://optiview.ai/billing-policy/) ## Additional page links - [Resources](https://optiview.ai/resources/) - [The AI-readable web](https://optiview.ai/resources/topics/ai-readable-web/) - [AI doesn’t have one view of your website.](https://optiview.ai/resources/what-ai-services-see/) — Continue reading - [Keep the meaning. Simplify the format.](https://optiview.ai/resources/html-versus-markdown-for-ai/) — Continue reading - [What Information Does an AI Agent Actually Need From a Business?](https://optiview.ai/resources/ai-agent-content-requirements/) — Continue reading - [Preview a page](https://optiview.ai/demo/) — Continue reading - [Read the setup guide](https://optiview.ai/docs/setup/) — Continue reading --- # Published brand narrative # Site-wide brand information ## Who we are ### Optiview — Parse, Retrieve and Publish for AI Optiview helps businesses and developers make website information easier for AI to use. Parse converts supplied HTML into clean Markdown and source metadata. Retrieve fetches an eligible public HTTPS webpage and prepares its content. Publish helps a verified business prepare its own website content and make approved Narrative Graph context available through a supported connection. Parse and Retrieve use application keys and a prepaid developer wallet. Publish has separate website setup, ownership checks and a subscription. Optiview does not control whether an outside AI service discovers, uses or cites the resulting content. Applies to: Optiview ## Why we matter ### A clearer source, from website content to business context Webpages mix useful information with navigation, layout and application code. Businesses may also have important qualifications, answers and context that are not clearly published. Optiview gives developers a way to prepare source content for their applications, and gives businesses a way to publish the context their teams approve. Your application chooses how to use Parse and Retrieve results. Your business controls what it publishes through Publish. Clearer publishing makes information available; it does not determine an AI system’s answer. Each outside service chooses its own retrieval, recommendations and citations. ## What we offer ### Three products, with separate jobs and clear pricing - **Optiview Parse:** Supply complete HTML and a source URL. Receive clean Markdown, source and output hashes, parser details and processing warnings. Parse does not fetch the URL or execute JavaScript. A successful page uses 1 credit. - **Optiview Retrieve:** Supply one eligible public HTTPS URL. Optiview checks supported access and publisher policies, fetches anonymous static HTML and parses it. It does not search the web, execute JavaScript, bypass a login or access private networks. A successful page uses 5 credits total, including parsing. - **Developer credits:** USD $20 buys 20,000 credits shared by Parse and Retrieve. There is no developer subscription, automatic recharge or scheduled credit expiration. Failed jobs consume no credits. Applicable taxes and the total appear at checkout. Source size, quotas and retention limits apply. - **Optiview Publish:** USD $99 per website per month plus applicable tax. Connect a verified website, review the prepared source and optionally maintain approved Narrative Graph context in Identity, Story, Offerings, Trust, Knowledge and Actions. Choose site-wide or exact-page scope. Saving drafts does not publish them. Eligible AI tools can receive prepared Markdown or HTML through supported delivery, while ordinary visitors keep the normal website. Developer credits do not purchase Publish subscriptions. Parse and Retrieve do not add a customer’s private Narrative Graph to arbitrary third-party pages. See https://optiview.ai/pricing/ and https://optiview.ai/developers/ for the current offer and limits. ## Why trust us ### Inspect the output and understand what the evidence establishes Developers can inspect the prepared Markdown, job status, source metadata, processing warnings and credit ledger. Retrieve records the public source response it observed; Parse identifies supplied HTML rather than claiming to verify the current origin. Publish administrators can review parser output, the combined published-output preview, source checks and publication history. A preview is separate from a recorded live delivery. Saved edits remain separate from the active publication until explicitly published. Our experiment pages contain selected first-party AI conversations and source comparisons. Delivery records establish what was served, not downstream ingestion, recommendations, citations or revenue. Observed language matches do not establish causation or a consistent visibility improvement. Explore the evidence and limitations at https://optiview.ai/proof/. ## Helpful knowledge ### Common questions about the three products **Which product should I use?** Use Parse when you already have HTML. Use Retrieve when you need Optiview to fetch one eligible public page first. Use Publish when your business wants to prepare its verified website and publish approved context. **Do Parse and Retrieve require website ownership or DNS changes?** No website connection is needed for these developer products. You remain responsible for source rights and permitted downstream use. Public availability does not grant a reuse license. **How do developer accounts and keys work?** Create a developer workspace and save the personal sign-in key and offline recovery code. Create scoped service keys for server-side applications. Email is an unverified contact identifier, not account-ownership proof or an email-only recovery method. Keep all credentials private. **Can my agent use Optiview?** The authenticated developer API returns prepared content for your application or model. A downloadable JavaScript client and local MCP adapter are available. Your host must authorize sources and any credit expenditure. Compatibility does not establish adoption or a partnership with an AI provider. **Does the API include my private Narrative Graph?** Parse and Retrieve are source-only. Verified website publishing and approved publisher context belong to the separate Publish workflow. **Does Publish replace our website or CMS?** No. Your website stays in its existing system. Your web team establishes and tests a supported connection. Your team reviews and explicitly publishes any Narrative Graph additions. Ordinary visitors retain the normal website experience. **Does every AI tool get the prepared version?** No. Delivery depends on the website connection, source eligibility and the request. Some tools explicitly request Markdown; supported AI requests may also receive prepared Markdown or HTML through eligible delivery paths. Traditional search crawlers retain the original website response. A claimed tool name does not prove the requester’s identity. **Does the demo publish or save to our workspace?** No. The public demo is a separate preview. Its AI-generated examples require review and do not transfer automatically into an approved publication. **Will Optiview guarantee citations or recommendations?** No. Optiview prepares and publishes sources. Outside AI services choose what to retrieve, use and cite. ## What to do next ### Choose your starting point - [Compare Parse, Retrieve and Publish](https://optiview.ai/products/) to choose the right workflow. - [Create a developer workspace](https://app.optiview.ai/developers) for self-service Parse and Retrieve, then add credits and create an application key. - [Read the API quickstart and agent-tool setup](https://optiview.ai/developers/) for request examples, supported sources, errors, quotas and downloads. - [Review pricing and terms](https://optiview.ai/pricing/) for prepaid credits and the separate Publish plan. - [Preview your website](https://optiview.ai/demo/) to inspect prepared content and explore unapproved narrative examples without connecting or publishing. - [Plan Publish setup](https://optiview.ai/onboarding/) with your web team. Publishing requires ownership checks, review and a supported connection; contact [hello@optiview.ai](mailto:hello@optiview.ai) for assisted setup. Already using Publish? Review your Narrative Graph, publish approved changes explicitly, inspect the combined source in Markdown and check recorded delivery in Activity. Keep your existing visibility tools to study downstream AI answers.