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gptmelo Research · Original Industry Data

Do GEO Tools Practice What They Preach? We Audited 6 AI Search Visibility Platforms

By gptmelo Research · Published · Data collected July 10, 2026 · ~7 min read

TL;DR — Key finding: As of July 10, 2026, only 2 of 6 GEO platforms (33%) — gptmelo.com and Otterly.AI — deploy an llms.txt file on their own websites. Just 1 of 6 (AICarma) explicitly allowlists named AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) in robots.txt. None blocks AI crawlers, but one (ZipTie) applies a global Crawl-delay: 10 that can slow compliant bots. The industry selling AI-search readiness has not fully adopted its own playbook.

33%
of GEO tools tested serve a valid llms.txt on their own domain (2 of 6)
1 / 6
explicitly allowlists named AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) in robots.txt
0 / 6
block AI crawlers — the category is unanimously open to AI indexing
$29–$495
monthly price spread across published entry and top self-serve tiers

Why we ran this test

Generative engine optimization (GEO) vendors tell customers to add llms.txt, open their sites to AI crawlers, and structure content for citation. A natural question follows: do these platforms apply their own advice to their own websites? Nobody had published data on this, so we collected it ourselves.

On July 10, 2026, we fetched /llms.txt and /robots.txt directly from the production domains of six GEO platforms: gptmelo.com, peec.ai, otterly.ai, ziptie.dev, geoptie.com, and aicarma.com. Every data point below is publicly reproducible in under five minutes — just open the URLs.

Exclusive data: llms.txt & AI crawler readiness, tested July 2026

Table 1 · Direct fetch results, July 10, 2026. "Generic allow-all" = User-agent: * / Allow: / (or equivalent) with no AI-crawler-specific directives.
Platformllms.txtllms-full.txtrobots.txt AI crawler policySitemap declared
gptmelo.com Yes rich index + AI retrieval rules, updated 2026-07-01 Yes extended methodology file Allow-all; only private app routes disallowed Yes
Otterly.AI Yes features, company facts, resources Not found Allow-all; crawl-delay only for Bing/Yandex; no AI-bot rules Yes
AICarma Not found Not found Explicit allowlist — GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended each named & allowed Yes
Peec AI Not found Not found Generic allow-all Yes
ZipTie.dev Not found Not found Allow-all + global Crawl-delay: 10 — can throttle compliant crawlers Yes
Geoptie Not found Not found Generic allow-all Yes

Three takeaways from the raw files

1. llms.txt adoption is the exception, not the rule — even here. If only a third of GEO vendors ship llms.txt on their own domains, mainstream brand adoption is almost certainly lower. For teams deciding whether llms.txt is "table stakes," this is a useful base rate: deploying one puts your site ahead of most of the companies selling AI-search software.

2. Nobody blocks AI crawlers, but almost nobody optimizes for them either. Five of six sites rely on a generic allow-all robots.txt. Only AICarma names GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended explicitly. An allow-all policy works, but explicit directives remove ambiguity for newer bots and make crawler policy auditable.

3. Legacy SEO defaults can quietly hurt GEO. ZipTie's robots.txt carries a Yoast-generated block with a global Crawl-delay: 10. Search crawlers largely ignore this directive, but any bot that honors it fetches at most ~8,600 pages per day — a legacy setting worth re-checking now that AI crawlers matter.

The base rate matters: if you deploy llms.txt and explicit AI-crawler directives today, you're ahead of 4 of the 6 platforms that sell GEO software.

Market snapshot: published pricing & positioning, mid-2026

Alongside the technical test, we compiled published pricing and positioning from vendor pricing pages and independent reviews. Prices change; verify on each vendor's site before purchasing.

Table 2 · Compiled July 2026 from vendor pricing pages and third-party reviews (sources below). Prompt/check units are not directly comparable across vendors.
PlatformEntry paid planFree optionDistinctive angle
gptmeloStarter / Pro / VIP tiers (see pricing)Ongoing free plan, no credit cardMonitor → site audit → GEO articles in one workspace; archived full AI replies per question
Otterly.AILite $29/mo (15 prompts)7-day trialLowest paid entry point; GEO audits of 25+ on-page factors from Standard tier
GeoptieStarter from ~$41–49/mo14-day trial + free toolsBudget six-model coverage incl. Claude and Gemini; technical audit reports
ZipTie.devBasic $69/mo (500 checks)14-day trialBrowser-level monitoring of Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity
Peec AIStarter $95/mo (50 prompts)7-day trialMulti-engine dashboards (6 engines), sentiment analysis, unlimited seats
AICarmaNot published at test time — see vendor—Broad model coverage, daily visibility scores, unlimited prompts on paid tiers

The pattern: most of the category is monitoring-first — dashboards that tell you what changed. The open gap, and where the market is heading, is closing the loop from monitoring to on-site fixes and citation-ready content in one workflow. That gap is exactly what gptmelo's monitor → audit → publish flow targets, and it's also why Otterly added GEO audits to its Standard tier.

What this means for your brand: a 5-point action list

Based on the benchmark, the fastest way to be ahead of most of the market on AI-search readiness:

First, deploy /llms.txt with your canonical pages and key facts (a free generator takes minutes). Second, replace an implicit allow-all robots.txt with explicit directives for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended — and delete legacy Crawl-delay lines. Third, verify AI crawlers can actually reach your pages with an AI crawler checker. Fourth, add JSON-LD (Organization, FAQPage) so AI systems can extract facts cleanly — test with a structured data checker. Fifth, measure the outcome: track whether AI assistants actually mention and cite you on your buyers' questions, not just whether your pages are crawlable.

Methodology & reproducibility

Test date: July 10, 2026, single-day snapshot.

Sample: Six GEO/AI-search-visibility platforms: gptmelo.com, peec.ai, otterly.ai, ziptie.dev, geoptie.com, aicarma.com. The set matches the vendors covered on gptmelo's public compare hub plus gptmelo itself; it is not an exhaustive census of the category.

Technical checks: Direct HTTP fetch of /llms.txt, /llms-full.txt, and /robots.txt on each production domain; raw responses recorded verbatim. "Not found" = empty response or HTTP error at test time.

Pricing data: Compiled from vendor pricing pages and independent third-party reviews (linked under Sources). Not verified with vendors; units (prompts, checks, credits) differ and are not directly comparable.

Disclosure: This report is published by gptmelo, which competes with the other five platforms tested. All technical claims are independently reproducible by fetching the listed URLs. Dataset licensed CC BY 4.0 — cite "gptmelo Research, July 2026" with a link to this page.

Frequently asked questions

How many GEO tools deploy llms.txt on their own websites?

As of July 10, 2026, 2 of 6 tested (33%): gptmelo.com and otterly.ai. Peec AI, ZipTie, Geoptie, and AICarma returned no llms.txt content on their production domains.

Do any GEO tools block AI crawlers like GPTBot or ClaudeBot?

No — all six are open to AI crawling. But only AICarma explicitly allowlists named AI crawlers (GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended). The rest rely on generic allow-all rules, and ZipTie's global Crawl-delay: 10 can slow bots that honor it.

What is the cheapest GEO monitoring tool in 2026?

Among published prices, Otterly Lite at $29/month (15 prompts) is the lowest paid tier, followed by Geoptie (~$41–49/mo) and ZipTie ($69/mo). gptmelo's ongoing free plan (no credit card) is the lowest-cost way to start monitoring at all.

What is llms.txt and why does it matter for GEO?

llms.txt is a proposed plain-text standard served at a domain's root that gives large language models a curated index of the site's key pages and canonical facts. It helps AI assistants retrieve accurate, current brand information and cite the right URLs instead of relying on stale training data.

How can I reproduce this benchmark?

Open https://<domain>/llms.txt and https://<domain>/robots.txt for each of the six domains in any browser and compare against Table 1. Total time: about five minutes.

Where does your site stand on the same checklist?

Run the same llms.txt, AI-crawler, and structured-data checks on your own domain — free, no signup.

Run a free GEO site check →

Sources