What Free, Underrated SEO and GEO Tools Are Worth Using?

Which free platform reports are underrated?

Google Search Console's generative AI report. Since June 2026, and for all sites since 31 August, it shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and device. It does not show queries or the answer text, and it cannot separate AI Mode from AI Overviews, but it tells you which pages Google's AI features use.

Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report. It shows how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries, with the grounding queries the AI used to find them. Few site owners check it, and, with Clarity, it is one of the few places to see the search phrases behind AI citations.

Microsoft Clarity's AI views. Clarity, free, shows which grounding queries retrieve your pages, which pages are cited, and AI bot and referral activity, alongside session recordings.

GA4's AI Assistant channel. Since May 2026, GA4 groups visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and some other assistants into their own channel. Perplexity and Claude visits still appear under referrals, so check both.

Which free technical tools are worth installing?

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider, free up to 500 URLs, crawls your raw HTML and shows broken links, redirects, blocked pages and robots directives; structured data validation, JavaScript rendering and a custom user agent such as GPTBot need the paid licence.
• Robots Exclusion Checker (Chrome) flags robots.txt rules, noindex tags and blocks on named AI bots for the page you are on.
• Adobe's AI content visibility checker (Chrome) shows how much of a page's content an AI agent can read without running scripts.
• View Rendered Source (Chrome) compares the raw HTML with the rendered page, so you can see what disappears for crawlers that do not run JavaScript.
• Google's Rich Results Test and URL Inspection confirm that Google can render a page and read its structured data.

Our page on free Chrome extensions for GEO audits covers the extensions in more detail.

Which free AI checkers are worth a look?

Amplitude's report covers ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews with competitors and sources; HubSpot's grader scores how three models describe you from training data; Mangools' free tier checks five prompts weekly; AthenaHQ's Essential tier gives starting credits across several engines; and Ahrefs' free checker summarises Brand Radar data. Our page on which free AI visibility tools show scores, competitors and citations compares them feature by feature.

What makes free tools underrated is how specific their findings can be. Clarity's grounding-query view can show that Copilot retrieves your pricing page for "cost of a bookkeeping service for a small bakery", a phrase you never targeted, which tells you what to state more plainly. Robots Exclusion Checker can show, on the page you are viewing, that robots.txt blocks one named AI bot, such as OAI-SearchBot, while letting Googlebot through; a CDN or firewall block will not show there, so test that with a request sent as the bot or your CDN's logs. Neither costs anything, and both point to a concrete change.

What do free tools leave out?

• Your buyers' questions answered on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI together.
• Repeated runs at a useful scale: a few free tiers repeat a handful of prompts, but none repeats 20 or more questions across all the main engines.
• Recommended versus merely mentioned, which matters most when someone is choosing.
• Which cited pages mention you, and which are opportunities.
• What to change, drafted from your own site. Amplitude offers general recommendations, but not drafts built from the facts on your pages.

You can get some of this by asking the engines yourself in clean sessions, three times each, and logging every cited link. That is free in cash and costly in hours.

Which free tools are overrated?

• Single-score graders. A number out of 100 with no answers behind it is hard to act on, and it often reflects what a model remembers rather than what live search returns.
• "Readiness" scores. Technical checklists for agent protocols or AI files measure plumbing, not whether any answer cites you.
• llms.txt generators. Easy to install, but no major AI platform has committed to reading the file.
• Asking ChatGPT in your own account. Memory and past chats about your company tilt the answer towards you.

How do you check AI answers by hand without fooling yourself?

1. Use clean sessions: a temporary or unpersonalised chat, or an account with no history.
2. Write the questions as buyers would, without your brand name, and keep the wording fixed.
3. Ask each question three times and note how often each business is named.
4. Open every cited link, not just the first, and note whether it mentions you.
5. Repeat on a second engine, because different engines lean on different sources.

Done this way, five questions take an hour or two a week, which is the real cost of the free route. Keep the log in one place with the date, engine and wording, or next month's check will not be comparable with this one.

What does a free weekly routine look like?

1. Monday: check Search Console's generative AI report and Bing's AI Performance report for pages gaining or losing AI impressions and citations.
2. Tuesday: check GA4's AI Assistant channel and referrals for visits from assistants, by landing page.
3. Wednesday: run five of your most important buyer questions in ChatGPT and Perplexity in clean sessions and note who is named and cited.
4. Monthly: crawl the site with Screaming Frog and spot-check key pages with the Chrome extensions.

When is a paid tool worth it?

When the hours spent asking and logging grow, when you need results you can repeat and show to someone else, or when you want the fixes written. Kovmere's one-time Check costs $19 with no account: up to 18 buyer questions and 2 brand checks, three runs on each of OpenAI, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude and Google AI Overviews, the answers and cited pages, and up to three priority fixes. Pro at $49 a month re-tests the same questions every week, with a full three-run baseline each billing period and single-run checks in weeks two to four, and up to 12 fixes per billing period.

Kovmere is not free and does not replace the platform reports above; it measures one market per site, samples engine APIs rather than consumer apps, and does not cover AI Mode or Copilot. Many teams use the free reports every week and a paid reading when they need to decide what to fix. More on starting without spending is in how to make your website visible to AI search engines for free.

What do people ask about free GEO tools?

Which free tool should I start with?

Search Console's generative AI report and Bing's AI Performance report, because they come from the platforms and cost nothing.

Can free tools tell me what ChatGPT says about my business?

Not fully. Amplitude's free report covers ChatGPT for a limited set of prompts; for your own buyer questions, ask in clean sessions or use a paid tool.

Is Screaming Frog's free version enough for small sites?

For sites under 500 URLs, usually yes, for checking crawlability, broken links, redirects, titles and robots directives. Structured data validation, JavaScript rendering and a custom user agent such as GPTBot need the paid licence; use Google's Rich Results Test for structured data on key pages.

Do free checkers repeat questions?

Most give a single reading. Treat their results as a first impression rather than a measurement.