Intro

Everyone’s rushing to drop an llms.txt file into their root directory because they were told to do so on LinkedIn, but the reality is that alone won’t be your AI visibility game-changer.

From our research and extensive testing with our customers, it’s clear that AI crawlers operate differently from traditional SEO crawlers. While Google can execute JavaScript, build the DOM, and index dynamic content, most AI bots still read your raw HTML and stop there. No scripts, no dynamic loading, no fancy front-end trickery.

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The key is to adapt your setup to the way AI crawlers work.

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That’s why in this guide, we’ll break down six technical factors that can make or break your brand visibility in AI search. Just like in technical SEO, running a GEO audit is the essential step zero before diving in. If you’re still figuring out what the perfect GEO audit should cover for your product or clients, here are some initial assumptions based on our research at GPTrends**.**

Table of Contents

1. Understand your tech stack (and estimate migration effort)

Before you think about optimizing for AI search, you need to know if your site’s tech stack plays nicely with AI crawlers. Unlike Google, most AI bots don’t run JavaScript. They grab whatever’s in the initial HTML and call it a day. If your content only appears after client-side rendering, they’ll never see it.

Examples of friendly stacks are:

• WordPress - old but gold, but PHP-powered frameworks are generally good to go!
• Next.js – as long as Server-Side Rendering (SSR) or Static Site Generation (SSG) is enabled.
• Statistically generated content - plain HTML, or Hugo, Gatsby, Astro, Jekyll ect. for when you want to keep it simple
• Site builders - Framer, Webflow, Wix, Builder.io, and the other ten thousand options.

More importantly, let's look at the unfriendly stacks:

• Standalone React with CSR (Client-side rendering) – Legacy Create React App (CRA), Vite + React, or standalone React Router.
• Standalone Vue with CSR – Vue CLI, Vite + Vue, or standalone Vue Router.
• Angular and other frameworks with CSR – Angular CLI, or Svelte without SvelteKit.

If you have a framework that is unfriendly to AI Crawlers, migration should be your first priority. If you are on React, consider moving to Next.js. Using VUE? Nuxt.js might be a good option for you.