Question 1

What is Searchlight AI?

Accepted Answer

Searchlight AI is a comprehensive website optimization tool that analyzes your site's visibility to AI search engines and language models. We provide instant basic analysis with your overall score, site overview, and structure assessment — no signup required. Create a free account to unlock detailed category breakdowns, actionable recommendations, and platform-specific implementation code.

Question 2

How does the analysis work?

Accepted Answer

Our AI-powered engine examines six key areas: structured data, meta tags, content clarity, technical performance, sitemap & discovery, and AI readiness. We analyze factors like schema markup, semantic HTML, content structure, and technical optimization to determine how well AI systems can understand your website.

Question 3

Is the service really free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You can instantly analyze any website and see your overall AI visibility score, site interpretation, and structure analysis — no signup required. Create a free account to unlock the full report with detailed category breakdowns, specific recommendations, and copy-paste implementation code. Advanced features like AI Discovery Tools (llms.txt and robots.txt generators) are available with Professional and Enterprise plans.

Question 4

Do you store my website data?

Accepted Answer

For anonymous analyses (without login), we only temporarily process your website's publicly accessible content to generate the report. Results are not permanently stored. If you create an account, we store your analysis history so you can track improvements over time.

Question 5

How accurate are the recommendations?

Accepted Answer

Our recommendations are based on current best practices and research in AI search optimization. However, the field is rapidly evolving. We regularly update our analysis criteria, but we cannot guarantee specific results or rankings in AI search engines. Always test changes on a staging environment first.

Question 6

Can I analyze any website?

Accepted Answer

You can analyze any publicly accessible website. The site must be reachable via HTTPS or HTTP and not blocked by robots.txt. We respect website owner preferences and will not analyze sites that explicitly block automated access.

Question 7

How often should I re-analyze my website?

Accepted Answer

We recommend re-analyzing your website after implementing significant changes based on our recommendations, or at least once per quarter to ensure you're keeping up with evolving best practices in AI search optimization.

Question 8

What's the difference between AI optimization and SEO?

Accepted Answer

While traditional SEO focuses on ranking in search engines like Google, AI optimization ensures your content is discoverable and understandable by AI assistants and language models. These systems prioritize structured data, semantic clarity, and machine-readable formats over traditional ranking signals. Both are important for comprehensive online visibility.

Question 9

How does Searchlight measure AI traffic to my site?

Accepted Answer

Once you connect Google Analytics 4 (Professional and Enterprise plans), Searchlight reads GA4's native AI Assistant channel — rolled out by Google on May 13, 2026, with medium ai-assistant auto-applied to recognized assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude — and also detects humans referred by AI tools via referrer and UTM signals (Perplexity, Copilot and others). Every traffic source is classified as AI, SEO, Social, Referral or Direct. This is not the same as AI bot crawls.

Question 10

What's the difference between AI bot visits and AI-referred users?

Accepted Answer

AI bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot, etc.) are crawlers that read your pages so AI assistants can summarise or cite them. They show up in your server logs, not in GA4. AI-referred users are humans who clicked a citation inside an AI assistant and landed on your site — those do show up in GA4 as referral traffic. Searchlight separates the two on the AI Visibility tab so you can act on each independently.

Question 11

Why is my AI traffic 0 in GA4 even though my site appears in ChatGPT?

Accepted Answer

A few reasons. First, GA4 deliberately filters all known bots — so AI crawler hits never appear there. Second, Google's new native AI Assistant channel (released May 13, 2026) is rolling out gradually, so it may not yet be visible on every property — in that case AI sessions still land under Referral until you add a Custom Channel Group. Third, some AI assistants (notably Gemini and Microsoft Copilot) strip the referrer header in some flows, so a portion of those visits gets bucketed as Direct. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude reliably pass referrer (and increasingly UTM tags), so most measurable AI traffic comes from those.

Question 12

How do I see GPTBot / ClaudeBot / PerplexityBot hits to my site?

Accepted Answer

Because GA4 strips bots, you need a log-based or edge-level tracker. On WordPress, use a plugin like Wordfence Live Traffic, Burst Statistics or WP Statistics. If you already use Plausible, Matomo, Fathom, Umami or PostHog, disable bot filtering and segment by user-agent. Otherwise, use Cloudflare AI Audit (free), Vercel Firewall, or DarkVisitors. On Pro/Enterprise the dashboard's AI Visibility tab recommends the right path automatically based on what we detect on your site.

Question 13

Can I see which queries lead AI tools to cite my site?

Accepted Answer

Yes — connect Google Search Console (Professional and Enterprise plans) and the dashboard unlocks an AI Discovery Potential view that highlights informational, question-style queries most likely to trigger AI citations. We merge GSC click and impression data with on-page engagement so you can see which keywords are not only ranking, but also pulling visitors that AI assistants tend to surface.

Question 14

What emails will I receive if I create an account?

Accepted Answer

When you create an account, you'll receive a welcome email to help you get started. Subsequently, we may send you helpful tips, product updates, and occasional promotional offers (maximum 1 per week). All marketing emails include an easy one-click unsubscribe link, and you can manage your email preferences at any time from your dashboard. Transactional emails (like password resets or security alerts) are essential to your account and cannot be disabled.

Question 15

Who can I contact for support?

Accepted Answer

If you have questions or need assistance, you can reach out through the contact information provided in your admin dashboard after creating an account. We strive to respond to all inquiries within 48 hours.

Question 16

What's the difference between Free and Professional plans?

Accepted Answer

Free accounts include full analysis reports with scores, recommendations, and implementation code. Professional plans ($29/month) add AI Discovery Tools for generating optimized llms.txt and robots.txt files, increased daily scan limits (50/day vs 5/day), priority processing, advanced guides, and dedicated support. Enterprise plans offer custom solutions for teams and agencies.

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