How IndexToAI works
IndexToAI reads your site the way AI tools do, turns your facts into formats they read, tells Bing when your pages change, and asks five AI engines your customers’ questions to show what they really say.
What the free scan checks
The scan reads your home page, robots.txt, llms.txt and sitemap, then scores what AI tools can and can’t see. Every failed check comes with the exact fix.
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Can AI tools open your home page? | We load your home page the way AI crawlers do. If it fails or is blocked, nothing else matters. |
| Are AI search tools allowed in? | We read your robots.txt for the bots that power AI answers: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User (ChatGPT), Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User (Claude), PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User, Bingbot and Googlebot. Blocking training-only bots like GPTBot or Google-Extended is your choice and doesn’t stop AI search; we just show it. |
| Does your site say who you are in code AI reads? | Structured data (schema.org) with your business name, address, phone, hours and links to your profiles. |
| Do you answer customer questions? | A visible FAQ or question-and-answer section. AI answers are built from exactly this kind of text. |
| Does your opening sentence say what you do and where? | Answer-first writing: the first lines of your home page should say what you are, who you serve and where. |
| Is there enough real text? | Pages that only appear after JavaScript runs can look empty to crawlers. |
| Is your site fresh? | A visible or coded date from the last 12 months. |
| The basics | A secure connection (https), a sitemap, a clear title and description, one main headline, a canonical address, and a preview image for sharing. Plus an llms.txt file (helpful to some AI tools, ignored by Google). |
How your AI profile works
Your profile is a clean page on indextoai.com with your facts, services and answers, plus the structured data AI tools read. It stays hidden from search engines until you confirm you own your website. Confirming takes a minute: upload one small text file to your site, or paste one line into your home page’s header. Once confirmed, your profile shows a “Website ownership confirmed” badge and joins our public directory and our llms.txt list.
Profiles only contain what you approve. We never add ratings or reviews, and links from a profile to your site are marked as sponsored, the way Google asks paid listings to be marked.
How Bing updates work
IndexNow is an open standard that lets a site tell search engines a page changed, instead of waiting for a crawl. Bing, Yandex, Seznam, Naver and Yep use it; Google doesn’t. It needs a small key file on your site, which is the same file you use to confirm ownership. After that, one tap sends your pages to Bing. We send at most a few pushes a day, as IndexNow asks. More about IndexNow.
How AI answer checks work
Each month (Plus), we take up to 10 questions your customers would ask, like “best balayage salon in West Palm Beach”, and send each one to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok through their official APIs, with live web search on. We never put your business name in the question. Then we record whether you were named, whether your website was linked, your position among the businesses named, and who was named instead.
What we never do
- Promise that any AI will recommend you.
- Write fake reviews, ratings or testimonials, or add rating markup to your profile.
- Post on Reddit, Quora or anywhere else pretending to be a customer.
- Sell your data.
Our scanner
Our scanner identifies itself as IndexToAI-Scanner/1.0 (+https://indextoai.com/scanner). It only runs when a person asks for a scan of a site, and only reads the home page, robots.txt, llms.txt and the sitemap. It doesn’t follow links across your site. More about the scanner.