seo-ai-searchlisted

# SEO + AI search visibility Research-backed playbook (compiled September 2026 from primary sources: Google/Bing docs, Vercel/Cloudflare crawler data, Pew/Ahrefs/Semrush studies). Facts marked **VOLATILE** age within months — web-search them before relying on them; unmarked principles are stable. ## The one rule that covers everything **Everything you want indexed, ranked, or cited must be in the initial server-rendered HTML.** Googlebot renders JavaScript (late, in a second pass); **no major AI crawler executes JavaScript at all** (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, CCBot fetch but never render — Vercel/MERJ data; VOLATILE per-bot, stable as a rule). Client-side-rendered content is invisible to the systems the client wants to win. SSG/ISR > SSR > CSR; CSR only behind login. ## Pick the workflow - **Building or relaunching a site** → do "Implement" below, then read [references/technical.md](references/technical.md) and [references/structured-data.md](references/structured-data.md) for the details of each step. - **Auditing an existing site** ("why don't we rank / why doesn't AI mention us") → run `node scripts/audit.mjs https://the-site` first (automates layers 1–2: robots/sitemap health, raw-HTML completeness, per-bot access), then follow the 8-step order in [references/audit-checklist.md](references/audit-checklist.md). Never audit from lab data alone; use field data and raw-HTML checks. - **Keyword/content strategy** → the no-paid-tools method and honesty tiers in [ref