Full Audit Pipeline
How Paceghost Works
Section titled “How Paceghost Works”Paceghost treats every website as an execution environment — not just a document index. Our methodology combines real browser execution, multi-model AI analysis, and triple-pillar benchmark measurement.
The 5 Pipeline Steps
Section titled “The 5 Pipeline Steps”Step 1 — Crawlability Check
Section titled “Step 1 — Crawlability Check”Paceghost fetches your site’s robots.txt, llms.txt, and ai.txt files and checks which AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PaceghostBot, Googlebot, PerplexityBot, and others) are allowed or blocked. The result is a crawlability status: fully open, partially blocked, or fully blocked.
If robots.txt blocks PaceghostBot, the audit halts here — we respect your site’s directives. llms.txt and ai.txt are displayed as informational signals.
Cost: Free.
Step 2 — Website Snapshot
Section titled “Step 2 — Website Snapshot”A real headless browser visits your domain and captures a screenshot, the full DOM structure, page metadata (title, description, headings, links, schema markup), and raw HTML. This is the factual record of what the page looks like at the time of the scan.
The snapshot is the input to Step 3. It also lets you verify that the crawl is seeing the correct version of your page — not a cookie-walled or JavaScript-broken version.
Cost: Free.
Step 3 — Website Analysis (Synthetic Domain Profile)
Section titled “Step 3 — Website Analysis (Synthetic Domain Profile)”The snapshot content is sent to multiple AI models for analysis. Each model evaluates the page against E-E-A-T signals (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), credibility indicators, and AI readability.
The output is a Synthetic Domain Profile — a structured result derived from your real DOM content, not from model training data. It includes:
- AI-generated one-sentence summary of your site
- Branded keywords (your brand, product names, etc.)
- Unbranded keywords (topics relevant to your domain)
- User intent queries (what users might search to find you)
- E-E-A-T scores (Trustworthiness, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Experience signals)
Important: The Synthetic Domain Profile is NOT what an AI model “knows” about you from its training data. It is what the model extracts from your actual page content at scan time.
Cost: Small credit cost.
Step 4 — Visibility Benchmark
Section titled “Step 4 — Visibility Benchmark”The keywords from your Synthetic Domain Profile are run through three search channels simultaneously:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) — Traditional search results from Google and Bing.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) — AI-augmented search and AI Overviews from Google AI Overview, Google AI Mode, and You.com.
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) — Direct LLM queries testing what multiple AI models (GPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, DeepSeek) say about your domain when asked directly.
For each query and each engine/model, we record:
- Whether your domain appears in results (domain found / domain cited)
- What position or rank
- What snippet, summary, or citation is shown
Both linked and unlinked citations are detected via triple-pass brand matching. Results are measured at a single point in time per audit.
Cost: Varies by tier — higher tiers include more AI models and endpoints, producing broader results.
Step 5 — Create Report
Section titled “Step 5 — Create Report”All data from Steps 1–4 is compiled into a downloadable report package:
- PDF — Executive summary with scores, charts, and key findings
- JSON — Full data bundle for programmatic use
- CSV — Zipped export for spreadsheet and BI tool import
- Public share URL — A link you can share with stakeholders
Report files are retained for 30 days. The underlying audit data (crawlability results, snapshot, analysis, benchmark responses) is retained permanently.
Cost: Free.
Full Audit
Section titled “Full Audit”Running all 5 steps in sequence is called a Full Audit. Crawlability, Snapshot, and Report are always free. The Analysis and Benchmark steps consume credits, with the Benchmark cost scaling based on your tier’s included models and endpoints.
AI Models & Search Endpoints
Section titled “AI Models & Search Endpoints”Higher subscription tiers access more AI models and search endpoints, producing broader and more accurate benchmark results. See the AI Models & Tiers page for which models and endpoints are available at each tier.