Start by checking whether AI answers can use your site as a source.
Customer questions go to AI as well. This page explains, in order, why that is, what may be wrong with a site, what SAGAMORE checks and how it helps, and how far we measure and what we do not guarantee, using public sources and the actual audit items.
Evidence
Market figures come only from public sources we have checked; nothing is estimated.
Not measured
Where the access or subscription is missing, the report says “not measured” and we do not fill in numbers.
No guarantees
We do not guarantee visibility, citations or rankings. They depend on search and AI answers that we do not control.
Why AI answers now matter
When AI answers first, clicks drop. People now ask AI as well as search boxes. AEO (answer engine optimization) is the work of fixing your site and content so AI answers can use them as a source.
Evidence: three public sources
8%of Google searches with an AI summary led to a result click
Without a summary it was 15%. When an AI summary appears, the links in the results get clicked less.
Source: Pew Research Center, July 2025. Browsing records of 900 U.S. adults, March 2025
23.67 millionKoreans who used the ChatGPT app in July 2026
More than any other AI chatbot app in Korea. It suggests many people put their questions to a chat window.
Source: WiseApp·Retail, via AI Times, Aug 2026. Sample survey of smartphone users in Korea
About 20%of Naver searches where AI Briefing answers first
That is about one search in five, and Naver, Korea’s main search portal, says it will double the share by the end of 2026. For those searches, the AI answer appears before the links.
Source: Naver earnings call, February 6, 2026, reported by Seoul Economic TV
What these numbers do not say
- The three sources cover different groups: Google searches by U.S. adults, a sample of Korean smartphone users, and Naver searches. We do not add them up or compare them.
- 8% and 15% are U.S. Google figures. They do not show whether Korean searches differ in the same way.
- They are not evidence that any particular site is losing visits or inquiries, or that citations will rise. SAGAMORE does not guarantee visibility or citations.
What may be wrong with a site
These are the items the audit checks page by page, and the state in each that we count as not easy to cite. We first check whether any of them apply.
Direct first paragraph
The first paragraph does not answer the question right away.
Q&A structure
Questions and answers are not laid out separately, so it is unclear which part is the answer.
Trust signals
Author, date, sources and expertise are not visible on the page.
Thin content
The page has too little content for its search intent.
Indexing & speed
The page is missing from the search index or loads slowly. Checking this needs Search Console view access and a PageSpeed key.
Bot access & basics
robots.txt, the sitemap, canonical URLs and structured data, the settings search and AI bots read first, are missing or block the bots. Checked in the baseline audit when we can get the source or a local build.
What counts as being cited?
The AI answer lists your site as a source and builds on its content. When we assess citations, this is the standard: an answer that mentions your name without a source is not counted. This audit does not count site visits or inquiries.
What we check and how we help
We check three things: AI citation readiness, page scores, and indexing and speed. They go into a report. If you choose monthly checks, we re-check on the same standard at the interval we agree on.
AI citation readiness
We check first-paragraph answers and Q&A structure, not AI answer screens.
Page scores
Within the agreed scope and available data, up to 300 pages (up to 10 free) are assessed for answer fit, trust signals and a direct first paragraph. Missing evaluations are marked unassessed.
Indexing & speed
Search Console and PageSpeed Insights data, once access and a key are in place, show which pages are missing from the index or slow.
Rewriting and publishing
If you hire us to implement, we rewrite the first paragraphs and Q&A of pages below the bar, and write and publish new articles where needed. Sentences with figures, legal references or professional judgment are confirmed by you before publishing. For indexing and speed issues that need code or server changes, the report names the page and the reason, and your developer or hosting provider makes the change.
What we check How it works Services
How is AEO different from SEO?
If SEO is about showing up in search results, AEO is about being a good source for AI answers. The audit covers both: on the search side, indexing and speed (when access and keys are in place) and Naver web-document and blog rankings (when the search API key is set); on the AI side, whether first paragraphs answer the question right away and other signs a page is easy to cite.
How far we measure, and what we do not guarantee
We don’t promise the items below. Where the access or subscription is missing, the report says “not measured” and we don’t fill in numbers.
Consumer AI answers
We don’t run automated checks on the answers shown in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. A provider’s API response is not the same as those screens, and API observation needs separate activation and keys. There is no Google AI Overviews observation today.
Search Console, Bing, GA4
We can use them only if you grant read access or send exported files. Items without access are “not measured”.
Naver AI Briefing
We haven’t confirmed whether Naver officially provides AI Briefing data, so we don’t cover it today. For Naver, when the search API key is set, we read only web-document and blog rankings. Naver Maps and Place visibility are outside this service.
Visibility, citations, rankings
We do not guarantee results. They depend on search and AI answers that we don’t control.
How do you check citations?
At the start we agree on a list of the questions your customers actually ask. We don’t run automated checks on the answers shown in ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews, so if you check those yourself and send us the date and result, we log them question by question as a separate category. AI answers can change from one ask to the next, so we read the record over time rather than a single result.
If page scores go up, do citations follow?
The score is how we choose which pages to fix; it does not mean citations will rise. A higher score means the page is closer to a citable form; whether citations actually changed is checked separately, from the records you send us. We do not guarantee that citations increase.