Every AI engine asks three questions before it recommends a business. Can I identify you as a specific business? Do other sources agree you exist and are who you say you are? Can I pull a clean answer off your site without working too hard? Hit those three and you are competing.
From the audits we have run: 43 percent of independent agencies are never named by AI in any buyer prompt, 6 percent show a license number on their site, and 13 percent hand a crawler an empty page. None of that is hard to fix. Most of it is on this list.
Part 1 of 5
Listings, profiles, and consistency
Every AI engine starts by asking whether you are a real, identifiable business. Directories are how it checks.
- 01
Audit NAP consistency
Your agency name, address and phone must match exactly everywhere on the internet. Mismatches read as two different businesses, and the machine would rather recommend nobody than guess.
FreeAudited - 02
Complete your Google Business Profile
Every field. Hours, the right category (Insurance agency), photos of the actual building, a link to your site. This is the single data source Claude, Gemini and Google AI lean on most.
FreeAudited - 03
Claim Apple Business Connect
Controls how Siri and Apple Maps see your agency. Apple Intelligence discovery runs through it.
Free - 04
Claim Bing Places for Business
Microsoft Copilot builds local recommendations almost entirely from claimed Bing Places listings.
Free - 05
Claim your Foursquare listing
ChatGPT relies heavily on Foursquare for local business data. About 70 percent of its local source.
Free
Part 2 of 5
Technical access for AI crawlers
If the robot cannot get in the front door, nothing else on this list matters.
- 01
Check your robots.txt file
Make sure GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Google-Extended are not blocked. Privacy plugins block them by default and nobody notices.
FreeAudited - 02
Create an llms.txt file
A short text file that tells AI crawlers what the agency does and which pages matter. Two minutes.
FreeAudited - 03
Implement IndexNow
Tells Bing and Copilot the moment you update a page instead of waiting for a crawl.
Dev task - 04
Test Core Web Vitals
Run the site through Google PageSpeed Insights, three times, because the number moves. If mobile is under 50, compress images and defer scripts.
Free to testAudited - 05
Remove JavaScript-only text
Your name, address, phone and services must live in basic HTML. Thirteen percent of the sites we audit hand a crawler an empty page.
VariesAudited
Part 3 of 5
Schema markup
The hidden code that tells a machine exactly what a page is, so it does not have to guess from your design.
- 01
Add InsuranceAgency schema
Use the InsuranceAgency type on the homepage, not generic LocalBusiness. Only 35 percent of the agencies we audit have it.
Dev taskAudited - 02
Add Person schema for each agent
Name, role, and license or NPN as a credential. AI engines verify that a licensed human stands behind insurance advice.
Dev taskAudited - 03
Add FAQPage schema
Marks up question-and-answer pairs so an AI can lift your answer verbatim.
Dev task - 04
Add Review and AggregateRating schema
Broadcasts your average rating and review count directly to the algorithms.
Dev task - 05
Link Organization schema to your profiles
sameAs links to your Facebook, LinkedIn and BBB pages tie the entity together across the web.
Dev task
Part 4 of 5
Content structure and depth
Specific is winnable. Generic is invisible.
- 01
Build one page per insurance line
No more auto, home and life on one page. Each line gets its own page with its own local detail and its own questions.
TimeAudited - 02
Structure with real H2 and H3 headings
Real header tags, not bold text. Machines read the outline.
Free - 03
Use answer-first formatting
The direct answer in the first sentence, the explanation after. That is what an answer engine quotes.
FreeAudited - 04
Add real author bylines
The licensed agent who wrote it, never Admin or Staff.
Free - 05
Publish hyper-local content
Coastal wind deductibles, contractor liability in your county, the hail season on your side of the state. The captives cannot write this from a national headquarters.
TimeAudited
Part 5 of 5
External validation
AI trusts what other sites say about you more than what you say about yourself.
- 01
Solicit specific reviews
Ask happy clients to mention their town and the policy type. Fifty specific reviews beat five hundred that say great service.
FreeAudited - 02
Verify Big I, PIA and state association listings
The associations keep public directories that AI cross-references. Make sure yours has your working website.
Free - 03
Maintain a BBB profile
Claimed and current. AI engines read it as a trust signal, and so does Copilot.
FreeAudited - 04
Secure local Chamber links
Join, and confirm the Chamber's site links to yours. A local knowledge-graph anchor.
Membership fee - 05
Monitor AI answers weekly
Once a week, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for the best insurance agent in your town. Track who shows up and who beats you. Or let the audit do it.
FreeAudited
If you would rather not
Every site we build does all 25 by default.
That is the honest reason this list is free. Most agencies read it, fix four or five things, and stall on the dev tasks. The website we build for independent agencies ships the whole list on day one, and we build it before you pay so you can judge it finished. $150 a month if you want it, $250 with monthly content.
Want to see where your current site stands first? Run the Free AI Search Audit ↗