The AuditLamp Fix Library
This is the list of fixes for the problems our audit actually finds, written so a non-technical owner can act on each one. There are 35 fixes live here, every one grounded in the docs, including Google's official AI optimization guide. The order is the order that matters: “fix what blocks the crawler before you polish what it reads.” Find your symptom below and follow the fix.
Crawl and access
If a crawler cannot reach or read your page, nothing else matters. Start here. These are the failures that quietly remove you from search and AI answers entirely.
- How to fix robots.txt blocking AI crawlers The single most common reason a site never gets cited.
- How to allow AI search crawlers to read your site Beyond robots.txt: CDN, firewall, and rate-limit blocks.
- How to fix a website that doesn't render without JavaScript If your answer needs JS to appear, the bot sees an empty shell.
- How to get your site indexed in Bing for AI search Bing powers Copilot. Absent from the index, absent from the answer.
- How to fix an accidental noindex tag One leftover tag removes the page from Google entirely.
- How to fix a site still on HTTP Browsers warn, crawlers distrust, and the fix is usually one afternoon.
- How to fix soft 404 errors Pages that say "not found" but tell the crawler everything is fine.
- How to fix XML sitemap errors Dead URLs, fake dates, and the two fields Google ignores.
Speed and mobile
Real users feel these before any crawler does. Google measures both with field data from real Chrome visits, so lab tricks do not hide the problem.
- How to fix a slow Largest Contentful Paint The four real levers behind the one number owners hear about.
- How to fix mobile usability errors Google indexes the mobile page. If it is broken, that is the page that ranks.
- Why you should self-host your web fonts A third-party font CDN costs you speed and, in some courts, legal standing.
On-page basics
What the page says about itself, in the places machines read first. Most of the folklore in SEO lives here, so these fixes spend real time killing it.
- How to fix your title tag for search and AI Descriptive beats clever, and no, there is no official character limit.
- How to fix a missing meta description Not a ranking factor. Still worth writing, and here is why.
- How to fix a missing H1 tag One clear main heading that says what the page is.
- How to fix heading structure Headings carve the page into passages a machine can lift.
- How to fix canonical tag errors A hint, not a directive, and easy to point at the wrong page.
Content problems
The page loads, the machine reads it, and there is nothing worth quoting. These are the content failures behind most "why don't we show up" questions.
- How to fix thin content Thin means no substance for the query, not too few words.
- How to fix duplicate content There is no penalty. There is a real cost. Both explained.
- Is there an ideal word count for AI search? No. Google says so. Here is what to aim for instead.
- How to fix keyword cannibalization Two of your pages fighting over one query, and how to pick a winner.
- How to fix missing internal links Orphan pages and the plumbing that gets crawlers to every page.
- How to fix readability for AI citations Tangled sentences do not get quoted. Plain does not mean shallow.
Structure and schema
Once a machine can read the page, it has to understand what the page and the business are. This is where structured data and entity clarity do the work.
- How to fix missing structured data (JSON-LD) How engines learn what your page is.
- How to fix entity clarity for AI search So an engine can tell who you are and recommend you.
- How to add Article schema that is actually complete The fields that matter and the fake-date trap.
- How to add Organization schema for entity clarity One node, real sameAs links, on the homepage.
- Should you still add FAQ schema? Google ended the rich result for most sites in 2023. Most advice hasn't caught up.
Citable content
Being readable gets you in the room. Being citable gets you quoted. These fixes are what turn a page into the passage an AI lifts into its answer.
- How to add answer blocks AI can cite The self-contained first paragraph that answers before it explains.
- How to make your content extractable for AI AI quotes self-contained passages, not whole pages.
- How to add statistics that earn AI citations Specific, sourced numbers get pulled into answers.
- How to add expert quotes that AI will cite Attributed quotes give an engine something concrete to lift.
- How to add outbound citations that boost AI visibility Citing sources is what makes you a source worth citing.
- How to fix stale content for AI search A current answer beats a confident but outdated one.
Trust and authorship
Engines and AI assistants both ask the same quiet question: who is behind this site, and should anyone believe them? These fixes answer it.
- Why your site needs a real About page The page engines check when they ask who stands behind the content.
- How to add an author bio that builds credibility A real name with real credentials, marked up so machines can verify it.
Know the terms
If the vocabulary is new, these short, plain definitions explain the crawlers and concepts the fixes above refer to.
- What is OAI-SearchBot? OpenAI's crawler that earns you a ChatGPT citation.
- What is PerplexityBot? Perplexity's crawler for cited sources.
- What is query fan-out? How AI Mode turns one question into many searches.
- What is the great decoupling? Why impressions rise while clicks fall.
Where this fits
The fix library sits under our two pillars: what is answer engine optimization explains being the answer, and what is generative engine optimization explains being the cited source. More fixes are rolling out as we document each check our engine runs. To see which of these apply to your site right now, run the free preview with our AEO checker or the full audit.