--- title: "Understanding How AI Assistants See Your Pages in Just a Few Minutes" id: "5418" type: "post" slug: "ai-assistants-page-visibility" published_at: "2026-08-18T15:34:57+00:00" modified_at: "2026-08-18T15:35:34+00:00" url: "https://www.sylvaincharbit.com/en/blog/en-aeo/ai-assistants-page-visibility/" markdown_url: "https://www.sylvaincharbit.com/en/blog/en-aeo/ai-assistants-page-visibility.md" excerpt: "LLMs are seen less and less as black boxes, and they open up a little more every day. When it comes to understanding what they make of our websites, though, things stayed murky for a long time. Fortunately, that is..." taxonomy_category: - "EN AEO" --- # Understanding How AI Assistants See Your Pages in Just a Few Minutes - par [Sylvain Charbit](https://www.sylvaincharbit.com/author/scharbit/) - [18/08/2026](https://www.sylvaincharbit.com/en/blog/en-aeo/ai-assistants-page-visibility/) - [0 Commentaires](https://www.sylvaincharbit.com/en/blog/en-aeo/ai-assistants-page-visibility/#respond) - [EN AEO](https://www.sylvaincharbit.com/en-aeo/) LLMs are seen less and less as black boxes, and they open up a little more every day. When it comes to understanding what they make of our websites, though, things stayed murky for a long time. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. Here is how to display the content AI assistants actually see, so you can course correct quickly when something is missing and, more importantly, know what to look at to improve your visibility. ## Hands-off or hands-on? There are broadly a few ways, more or less precise, to analyze a page through the lens of an LLM: - The Chrome extension - Chrome settings - External tools ### Extension A number of free Google Chrome extensions, such as the Ahrefs SEO Toolbar, let you switch the user agent straight from their interface. Quick and simple, it is the go-to option for anyone who would rather not fiddle with settings. Pick the agent you want, refresh the page, and off you go. Drawbacks: - Not always reliable when updates are too few and far between - Can be easily detected and blocked by site protection services like Cloudflare - Adds one more extension to your browser toolbar and may slow things down ### Chrome settings More manual, but also more reliable and lighter on browser resources: setting the user agent of your choice in the Network Conditions panel is a good middle ground, as long as you do not mind tracking down the user agent strings yourself (here are ChatGPT’s, for example) and, of course, you know what you want to test. Here is how to do it: 1. Open Chrome and go to the page you want to analyze 2. Right click => Inspect, or Cmd+Option+I / F12 3. Click the three dots at the top right of the panel => More Tools => Network Conditions 4. Uncheck “Use browser default” 5. Paste the user agent string you want to use into the field below 6. Refresh the page That is all there is to it. Just remember to check the default box again when you are done. Drawbacks: - Manual - Has to be redone every time You can even simply turn off JavaScript in Chrome DevTools (Run command => Disable JavaScript) to get a rougher view of what most AI user agents see. ### External tools Plenty of paid tools like Botify or Prerender can give you a preview very quickly, but this is expensive software that is out of reach for most people. Free alternatives do exist, such as Fetch & Render: effective and easy to use. Drawbacks: - Often paid ## What is the point? You can now see what LLMs see. Boom. Great, but what do you do with that? Here is a non-exhaustive list of things to act on: - **Important text content displays correctly.** It does not? JavaScript on your text modules may be to blame. - **Page elements are laid out properly.** Are they overlapping? Check your responsive behavior as well as any prerendering you have in place. - **Links are present and clickable.** Hyperlinks or the navigation menu not showing up? JavaScript again, or your prerendering setup. - **The status code is 200 (OK).** Seeing a 404 or a 401? Look at the user agent blocks in place on your site, or the ones set by third party software like Cloudflare sitting in front of your pages. These are only a few simple examples, but they can sometimes save you from tearing your hair out for days. ## What results can you expect? The main goal is to unlock the full potential of your content in the answers produced by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and the rest. For example, opening up your site to ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot, which are known for being frequently blocked by third party services because of their very high crawl rates, can have a significant impact on visibility, conversions, and traffic. Another example: if most of your text content, previously invisible to AI crawlers, finally becomes visible to a large share of them, the number of mentions in relevant answers will increase dramatically, driving real results and greater influence. ## In summary Whether you prefer an extension or the manual route, what matters is patiently studying the content these AI user agents are served, so you can give them what they want, exactly the way you would with Googlebot in SEO. These are routine, recurring checks (ideally once a quarter) that should move to the top of your list whenever something goes wrong for no apparent reason. 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