Case study, AI search
A studio in Wrexham and a translation agency in Varna: eight AI-readiness checks, every one passed
Two existing websites, neither built by us, were taken through the technical pass and then the eight-item AI-readiness checklist we use on every account: a recording studio in Wrexham and a translation agency in Varna, Bulgaria, whose site runs in three languages. Both passed every item. That sentence means something exact and something limited. Exact: the sites are readable by the AI crawlers, answer their own questions in the first lines of each page, state the same facts everywhere, carry valid structured data, and are indexed and fast. Limited: a pass is a measured state of the site, not a ranking, not a booking, and not a promise that an assistant names either business for a given question.
Written by Daniel Stoychev, who ran the checks. Neither client is named.
Site one
A recording studio in Wrexham
An existing site for a business whose customers ask an assistant exactly the kind of question the engines now answer: where can I record near here, what does a day cost, what is in the room. The technical pass came first, because an assistant's search runs through the same index as Google's, and a page that is not indexed is not read by anything.
Then the eight checks, each passed. In the monthly prompt check that follows a pass, the studio has been named in answers for searches about itself. That is recorded because it happened, not claimed in advance, and it is worth saying plainly that being named by an assistant is not a booking.
Site two
A translation agency in Varna, in three languages
The harder of the two, because the site exists in Bulgarian, English and a third language, and an engine that finds three versions of a page with no signal about which is which either picks one at random or treats them as duplicates. The technical pass covered the language plumbing: hreflang pairs on every version, the language switch, and each version indexed as itself.
The AI-readiness checks were then run per language, not once for the site, since the consistency check in particular is where multilingual sites fail: the same address, hours and services have to appear the same way in every version. Every item passed in every language.
The eight checks
What each one asks, in a line
The full version, with what passes and why the engines care, is on the AI search optimisation page. This is the list as it was ticked on both sites.
- Can the AI crawlers read the site at all, and is nothing they need hidden behind a script?
- Does each service page answer its own question in the first two sentences, with a fact rather than a slogan?
- Are the name, address, phone, hours and services identical on the site, the profile, the directories and the social accounts?
- Is the structured data true, complete and valid in Google's own tool?
- Are the customer questions on the page, with short direct answers, in FAQ markup?
- Is there evidence of a real business: a named person, a real address, real photographs, a registration number?
- Is every service page indexed, and does it become usable on a phone in under 2.5 seconds?
- Is there a monthly prompt check with something to measure, and is who was named written down?
What a pass is
Readable, quotable, consistent, and measurable from now on
An assistant answers a question by reading pages it trusts and quoting the sentences that answer. A site that passes the eight checks is one those engines can read, can quote, and can cross-check against the profile and the directories without finding a contradiction. The eighth check is the one that turns the other seven into a result: from the month of the pass, the ten prompts a customer would ask are run across ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity, and who was named is recorded.
The pass is also the point at which the AI search work stops being a claim and becomes a monthly number. Before it, there is nothing to measure. After it, there is a list of prompts and a column of names, and either the business appears in that column or it does not.
What a pass is not
Not a ranking, not a mention, not a promise
Neither site is claimed to rank for anything on this page. Neither is claimed to be named by an assistant for a given prompt, except the studio's own searches, which are recorded above with the caveat attached. The engines choose from what they have read, their answers change between runs, and a business with thin pages and no reviews will not be named however clean its markup is. The pass removes the reasons a site cannot be cited; it does not make the citation happen.
What transfers to your site is the order: the technical pass first, then the eight checks, then the monthly measurement. The check is included in the free audit on every tier of the pricing page and repeated quarterly on Growth and Multi-area. The Chester case shows the same measure-first habit applied to the map pack.
Find out whether an assistant can read your site
Send the address. The free check includes the structured data and crawler-access items of the AI-readiness list and says which of the eight your site would fail today, within one working day.