What a GEO audit actually shows you
"Audit" can mean anything from a free tool's one-number readout to a serious diagnostic. Here's what a proper one contains — and what you should refuse to pay for.
1. Where you stand, with honesty about noise
Your presence and citation rate across the major engines, measured several times so the figure carries a confidence band. A single run is a snapshot of a system that changes its mind; a real audit tells you the difference between signal and sampling noise.
2. Your share of voice against named rivals
Not "you appear sometimes", but how often you're named relative to the specific competitors a buyer would weigh. This is the number that tends to wake people up.
3. The sources behind every result
The pages and platforms the engines lean on for your category. Where a competitor is present and you're absent is the gap — and the gap is the plan.
4. A prioritised action plan
Three or four things to fix first, ranked by leverage, so you could act on it whether or not you hire anyone.
What to refuse: a single vanity "visibility score" with no confidence interval, no competitor context and no source diagnosis. It looks like insight and tells you nothing you can act on.