You are deciding whether a free AI visibility scan is worth the two minutes, or whether it is a lead-capture form wearing a report's clothing. That is a fair question, and it has a checkable answer.
This page sets out exactly what UD's AEO Auditor scans, what the report contains, what it costs, and the three things it deliberately does not do. Where a competing free tool does something better, that is stated plainly.
What is the UD AEO Auditor?
The UD AEO Auditor is a free web-based scan that measures how visible and quotable your website is to AI answer engines including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. You enter a URL and receive an interactive AI Visibility Score with a prioritised action plan.
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimization. Where SEO targets ranking and clicks in Google, AEO targets whether an AI engine can read your content well enough to quote it as the answer.
The distinction matters commercially because an AI citation can win the customer without ever producing a click in your analytics.
How much does the AEO Auditor cost, and is a card required?
The scan is free, with no credit card and no account required. You enter a URL and the full report generates immediately. An email address is used only to display the full dashboard and to offer optional follow-up analysis, with no charges and no auto-billing.
The pricing facts in one block
--- Price: HK$0. The scan is 100% free.
--- Credit card: not required.
--- Account or sign-up: not required to run the scan.
--- Email: used only to open the full dashboard and optional follow-up, never for auto-billing.
--- Paid element: none in the scan itself. Consulting engagement for implementation is quoted separately.
--- Usage limit: no per-seat licence, because there is no seat to buy.
How long does the scan take and what does it check?
Most sites complete in under 30 seconds, with complex sites taking up to 60 seconds. The scan runs more than 170 AEO structure checks across your site and scores the result against a 172-point scale, producing a letter grade and a numeric AI Visibility Score.
What the report contains
--- Overall AI Visibility Score, benchmarked against your industry average
--- AI Copy Signals, covering citations, sources and conversational tone
--- 11 numeric structure checks, covering schema markup, AI crawler access and answerability
--- Platform presence across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other major engines, plus visible competitor comparison
--- A prioritised action plan, with each fix tagged High or Medium and mapped to expected score impact
The technical checks include JSON-LD coverage and internal linking depth, which are the two areas where most Hong Kong corporate sites lose the largest number of points.
How does it compare to other free AEO checkers?
Several free tools exist and they are not interchangeable. Chudi.dev runs 6 checks with no signup. seoscore.tools runs 260+ combined SEO, AEO and GEO checks in under 8 seconds. HubSpot's AI Search Grader queries models about brand perception rather than site structure. UD's tool sits between structure depth and local consulting follow-through.
Where each tool wins
--- Fastest broad sweep: seoscore.tools, 260+ checks in under 8 seconds, no signup.
--- Brand perception rather than site structure: HubSpot AI Search Grader, which asks models how they describe your brand.
--- Quickest minimal check: Chudi.dev, 6 checks covering crawler access, llms.txt and schema.
--- Deepest structural audit with a human follow-up in Hong Kong: UD AEO Auditor, 170+ checks plus a consultant walkthrough.
If you want a single number in eight seconds and nothing else, a competitor tool is the better choice and you should use it. If you need something you can put in front of a marketing committee and then act on locally, the depth matters more than the speed.
Where does the AEO Auditor stop?
Three limitations are worth stating before you run it. The scan is a point-in-time structural audit, not continuous rank tracking. It does not implement any of the fixes it recommends. And a score alone does not move AI citations without content and schema work behind it.
Limitation 1: it is a snapshot, not a monitor
Paid AI visibility platforms track your mention share across engines over weeks. This scan measures the state of your site today. If your requirement is ongoing competitive monitoring, compare the paid options in our review of AI visibility tool pricing first.
Limitation 2: it diagnoses, it does not fix
The action plan tells you that internal linking is weak or that schema coverage is incomplete. Someone still has to write the schema and rebuild the links. That work is a separate engagement.
Limitation 3: results are not immediate
AI engines refresh on two cadences. Structural changes are typically re-crawled within 2 to 4 weeks. Citation and authority signals accumulate over 1 to 3 months. Anyone promising an AI visibility turnaround in days is describing something other than how these systems index.
Who should run this scan, and who should not?
Run it if you own a corporate site, sell to buyers who research before they contact you, and have never checked whether AI engines can read your content. Skip it if you already run a paid AI visibility platform with structural auditing built in, because you will be looking at a subset of what you already have.
--- Marketing directors at Hong Kong firms with 50 to 500 staff: run it, and bring the score to your next agency review.
--- Heads of digital transformation building an AEO business case: run it, because the industry benchmark comparison is the part your CFO will read.
--- Companies mid-way through a site rebuild: run it before launch, not after, since schema and structure decisions are cheap pre-launch.
--- Teams already on Otterly, Peec or Profound: your existing platform likely covers this. Spend the time on the action items instead.
What happens after the scan?
You receive the interactive report on-page immediately, with no waiting for email. From there you either action the plan internally, or engage UD's consultants, who unpack the data behind each score and map an execution roadmap across both AEO structure and SEO ranking.
The consulting engagement is where cost enters the picture, and it is quoted against scope rather than sold as a subscription seat.
For most organisations the honest sequence is: run the free scan, fix the two High-priority items yourself, re-scan in a month, and only then decide whether external help is worth budgeting.
The decision, stated plainly
A free scan with no card and no account has a low cost of being wrong. Thirty seconds and an email address is the entire downside, and the upside is finding out that AI engines currently cannot read the pages your sales team relies on.
What the scan will not do is make the decision for you about how much AEO work to fund. It gives you a number, a benchmark and a ranked list. The judgement about what that is worth stays with you, which is how it should be.
We understand AI. We understand you. With UD by your side, AI never feels cold. Twenty-eight years of building and hosting for Hong Kong businesses means we would rather tell you which free tool suits you better than sell you something you do not need.
Reviewed by the UD AEO consulting team.
Ready to see where you stand? The scan is free, takes under 30 seconds, and needs no credit card. If the report shows work worth doing, we'll walk you through every step, from schema and internal linking to citation building and monthly re-scoring.
