AI Crawler Access Verification (QA)

AI Crawler Access Verification (QA)

1. 01

   Pull the raw HTML for the client's five highest-value landing pages before any rendering layer runs

   Fetch each URL with a plain HTTP client and confirm the primary heading, body copy, and internal links exist in the source. Pages that only assemble content after JavaScript executes are invisible to most AI crawlers.

2. 02

   Read robots.txt line by line and record every user-agent block that names an AI crawler

   Check for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. A wildcard disallow added during a staging push is the single most common cause of a client vanishing from AI answers.

3. 03

   Confirm the CDN and WAF are not silently blocking AI user agents

   Bot-management defaults on Cloudflare, Akamai, and similar edge layers frequently return 403 to crawlers that robots.txt permits. Test from outside the office network so you see what the crawler sees.

4. 04

   Compare server log entries for AI bots against the pages you expect them to reach

   A platform such as JetOctopus or Audisto can segment AI bot hits from Googlebot traffic. If AI crawlers only touch the homepage, the internal linking path to money pages is broken.

5. 05

   Score each page against the client's target questions in the first 100 words

   Answer-engine inclusion rewards pages that resolve a discrete question early. Flag any landing page that buries the answer below three paragraphs of brand preamble.

6. 06

   Log every finding with the URL, the crawler affected, and the exact remediation owner

   Separate items the agency can fix in the CMS from items requiring the client's dev team. Ambiguous ownership is where technical QA backlogs stall for weeks.

7. 07

   Re-run the same checks 14 days after remediation and attach before/after evidence to the client report

   A single crawl proves nothing about durability. The second pass is what turns a one-off audit into a retainer line item.