Becoming the cited source
The Answer Audit
The short answer
The Answer Audit is the fixed-scope first phase of an Answer Engineering engagement. It shows how answer engines currently describe your organization, where those answers are wrong or incomplete, and which of your pages carry commercial or compliance risk. You receive the findings before committing to any further work.
What We Examine
| Area | What we check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Answer engine responses | How AI assistants answer the questions buyers ask about you, your category, and your competitors | Shows what buyers are told before they reach you |
| Accuracy | What is said about your pricing, capability, compliance, and people | Errors here carry commercial and regulatory risk |
| Sources | Which sources answer engines appear to rely on, including pages you no longer maintain | Reveals outdated pages still shaping answers |
| Your pages | Answer-first structure, named authors, and structured data | Decides whether you can become the cited source |
| Risk | Statements that are outdated, contradictory, or unsupported | Ranks what to fix first |
How the Audit Stays Private
The audit starts from what is already public: your website and what answer engines say about you. Access to unpublished material or analytics is optional and agreed in writing first.
Analysis runs on local tooling. Content structure and internal linking are analyzed with CQIP Semantic Linker, a tool that runs on a local machine with no third-party dependencies. Drafts and commercial documents are not sent to external services, and an NDA can be in place before you share anything.
What You Receive
- A findings report, with each issue ranked by risk and commercial value.
- Page-level recommendations your own team could act on.
- A scoped outline for the engineering phase, so you can decide on wider work with the evidence in front of you.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does an Answer Audit take?
Scope and timing are agreed after our first confidential chat, and depend on the size of your site and the number of questions in scope.
Do you need access to our systems?
Not to start. The audit begins with public information. Any access to unpublished material or analytics is optional and agreed in writing first.
Is the audit useful if we do not go further?
Yes. The findings and page-level recommendations are yours, and your own team can act on them.
Which answer engines do you look at?
The AI assistants and AI search summaries your buyers are most likely to use, agreed with you at the start based on your market.
Keep reading
Related
Start with a Confidential Chat
A no-obligation conversation with H D Fraser about how answer engines represent your organization today, and what a privacy-first approach would involve. NDA on request.