Have you paid thousands for an AI search optimisation audit?

Did it mention the 462 non-AI related errors on your site?

No. And you've been fucking had.

This is SEO Fucking What? I'm Nikki,

and I've been doing SEO for over 30 years — before it was even called SEO.

I help people like you make money from your website by actually getting found on search.

And today I'm absolutely livid, because I saw something this week that made my blood boil —

an AI search optimisation audit. It cost thousands of pounds.

Massive document, proprietary tools, competitive analysis. The whole works.

And you know what? It was complete and utter shit. So this is what happened.

I got sent this audit to look at from an agency that's pivoted away from SEO and into GEO —

you know the type — the ones who've decided that traditional SEO is dead and AI search is the future.

So they've rebranded overnight and started charging premium prices for — well, let's find out, shall we?

This audit was huge. Beautifully presented, lots of charts and graphs. Very impressive looking.

Cost the client thousands of pounds. Thousands. And it was all about how their site was performing in ChatGPT

and how to get more AI citations. Sounds great, right?

Except for one tiny little problem. It was fucking useless.

You want to know what wasn't in this thousands-of-pounds audit?

462 hreflang errors. 462.

631 redirect chains. That's right. 631.

90 duplicate H1 tags. Nearly a thousand images missing alt text.

Basic technical SEO — the stuff that affects how any search system, AI or otherwise, understands and trusts your website.

Not mentioned. Not a peep.

Do you know how I found this stuff out? One click of a button. Free audit.

Using tools that anyone can access. But no — let's obsess over ChatGPT citations instead.

Here's where it gets really infuriating. I checked the analytics for this site —

Google Analytics. The free one that we all have access to.

The Google organic traffic is 44 times higher than their ChatGPT referral traffic. 44 times.

We're talking multiple tens of thousands of users per month from Google.

Less than a thousand from ChatGPT. Was this mentioned in the audit? Was it fuck.

Not a single word about the platform that's actually paying their bills.

Not a single mention of the search engine that's driving 96% of their search traffic.

Instead, all of the focus was on AI citations, AI visibility, AI this, AI that —

while the platform that really matters, the one their customers are actually using, was completely ignored.

It's like having a house with a massive hole in the roof, water pissing through the ceiling,

and hiring someone who comes in and says, "Do you know what we need to do? Redecorate the garden shed."

But it gets worse. I mean, of course it does.

This audit recommended deleting hundreds of pages. Hundreds. Sweeping kill lists

based on their proprietary AI visibility metrics — special tools that showed zero clicks on these pages

from anywhere, including Google. So I did something a little bit off the wall —

something that was apparently beyond the capabilities of this multi-thousand-pound audit.

I checked Google Analytics again. And guess what? Those pages are getting clicks.

Real traffic. Real people. Real Google searches. Pages they wanted to delete are actually performing.

They're bringing in visitors. They're doing their job. Because some made-up AI visibility tool

said they weren't appearing in ChatGPT, the recommendation was to bin them.

No analysis of whether those pages convert. No check on what would happen to the site's topical authority

if you just deleted them. No consideration of the technical shit storm underneath that's actually dragging everything down.

these pages don't get cited by ChatGPT, so get rid of them.

That's not an audit. That's a spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet was wrong.

Now, before anyone accuses me of being anti-AI — I want to be really clear. AI search matters.

I'm genuinely excited about where it's going. I think it's fascinating technology

and I really do think it's going to change how people find information.

But right now, today, Google is still paying the bills for most websites.

It's still where the vast majority of search traffic comes from. It's still how most of your customers find you.

And if your fancy AI search optimisation audit ignores every technical fundamental

while recommending you set fire to content that's actively performing, you haven't bought an audit.

You've bought a very expensive way to bollocks up your traffic on two platforms instead of just one.

But why does this make me so angry? I talk about this stuff a lot.

I rant about the GEO grifters and the AEO arseholes and all the hustle bros selling made-up services.

But this one really got to me — because this isn't just some random person on LinkedIn flogging a course.

This is an actual agency. A company that's taken thousands of pounds from a client

and delivered something that could genuinely damage their business.

If that client had followed this advice — deleted those pages, ignored those technical issues —

they would've hurt their Google rankings and their AI visibility.

Because guess what? Google and AI systems care about the same fundamentals:

site structure, technical health, content quality, user experience.

You can't optimise for AI search by ignoring everything that makes a website work.

That's not how any of this works. And the worst part is — the client trusted them.

They paid good money because they were told this agency had special expertise, proprietary tools,

insider knowledge about AI search. And it was all bollocks. Complete and utter bollocks.

So what's the fix? What do you do if you're thinking about paying for an AI search optimisation audit?

First of all, check your numbers before you spend a single penny.

Look at your Google Analytics. Look at where your traffic actually comes from.

If Google is driving 90-something percent of your organic search traffic — that's where you need to focus.

AI search is interesting, but it's probably not paying your bills just yet.

Then sort out your technical foundations. All those fancy AI search optimisation strategies

mean absolutely nothing if your site has hundreds of errors, redirect chains, and duplicate content issues.

Fix the basics. Fix what any system needs to work properly. And then be deeply suspicious

of anyone selling AI-specific optimisation as something completely different from SEO. Because it's not.

I'll say it again. The fundamentals are the same. Good content. Good structure. Good technical health.

If someone tells you they have special proprietary tools for AI search that can do things normal SEO tools can't —

run. Run fast.

Never delete content based solely on AI visibility metrics. Check your actual analytics.

Check what's bringing in real traffic, real leads, real money.

Don't let someone talk you into burning down content that's working just because their made-up metrics say it's not appearing in ChatGPT.

And lastly — if something sounds too proprietary and mysterious to explain, it's probably bollocks.

Good SEO isn't a secret. Good SEO — people can explain what they're doing and why.

If someone hides behind jargon and proprietary this and exclusive that — they're probably hiding their own incompetence.

I don't have a neat bow to wrap this up in. The anger is the point. The frustration is the point.

I care about this industry. I care about the businesses trying to do the right thing.

I care about marketing directors who are just trying to make good decisions with their budgets.

I fucking hate watching them get ripped off by people selling expensive nonsense.

If this helped, don't keep it to yourself. Make sure you're following SEO Fucking What

in whichever app you're listening to right now.

Share it with someone who's being pitched an AI service. Share it with your marketing director before they sign that contract.

And if you've got your own horror stories — shit audits, agencies promising the earth and delivering nothing —

strategies that were just buzzwords in a slide deck — I want to hear them. Find me on LinkedIn. Send me a message.

Because every story you give me tells me that this problem is real —

and it's not just me being a grumpy cow on the internet.

Until next time — get found, make money.

And for fuck's sake, stop paying thousands for audits that ignore everything that actually matters.