What the assessment actually is
The Website AI Assessment is diagnosis. It answers one question — why isn’t this site bringing in customers? — and turns the answer into a list of changes worth making, ordered by how much each one matters. It is not a redesign, a content plan, or a monthly retainer. It is the step that stops you from spending money fixing the wrong thing.
The expensive way to skip it
Most businesses skip it, which is understandable. It feels like paying for a conversation when you’d rather pay for work. But the failure mode is expensive and common: a business spends five figures rebuilding a website that was never the problem, when a single noindex tag, a canonical pointing at a competitor’s page, or a robots.txt line left in from a staging server was quietly keeping it out of Google entirely. That happens more often than anyone admits, and no amount of new design fixes it.
The other reason it matters now is that “being found” means something different than it did three years ago. A growing share of questions get answered directly inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews, without anyone clicking a blue link. A site can be perfectly healthy by 2019 standards and still be invisible in the place its customers are now asking. An assessment that only checks title tags will not tell you that.
What changes once you know
The document is not really the point. The point is that a month from now your money is going into the thing that was actually holding the site back, and you can say out loud which thing that is and why it came first. That is a considerably better place to be than the one most businesses are in, which is spending confidently on a guess. It also makes every quote you receive after this readable — you will know whether the person quoting you has found the real problem or is selling you their usual package.
What’s in Meridian’s assessment
Six areas, run automatically by the same engine on every assessment. This list is what actually executes, not a marketing summary of it, and deliberately so.
1. Indexability — is Google even allowed to list you?
robots.txt rules, robots meta tags, the X-Robots-Tag response header, canonical tags pointing away from the page, and whether an XML sitemap exists and actually contains the page. This is first because when it’s wrong, nothing else matters.
2. On-page
Title tag presence, length and keyword use; meta description presence and length; H1 presence and uniqueness; H2 section structure; and image alternative text.
3. Technical
HTTPS, mobile viewport, declared page language, Open Graph tags, and structured data (JSON-LD).
4. Content and keyword density
Content depth, whether the primary keyword appears in the opening text, and keyword density measured against a natural range — so both thin content and keyword stuffing get identified. Stuffing is the more common own-goal.
5. Local and AI answer readiness
A visible phone number, a Google Business Profile or map link, LocalBusiness schema, and FAQPage schema — the last of which is what lets a page be quoted by AI answer engines. Where more than one page is reviewed, we also flag titles and meta descriptions duplicated across pages.
6. AI answer-engine visibility (AIO / GEO)
We query Claude automatically, using search phrases relevant to your business, and report for each whether you are cited with a link, mentioned without one, or absent — and where a competitor is cited instead, which one it was. Google AI Overviews isn’t queryable automatically yet, so the assessment does not check it — we would rather say so than imply it.
For NYC restaurants and event spaces: the in-person room walk
Your room is a ranking factor you can hear. Music past conversation level, lighting too dim to read a menu, video that fails an event client mid-event — guests feel these in the first five minutes, and what they feel becomes short visits, flat reviews, and no guest photos. Reviews and photos are exactly what local search and AI answers read. Meridian’s founder has spent thirty years in live production as a lighting designer and AV technician, and trained at The Juilliard School through its professional stage lighting technician internship; if your business is a New York City restaurant or event space, ask to add an in-person room walk to your assessment — sound, lighting, and video assessed on-site, findings delivered in the same report. Where the room needs physical work, we can refer independent AV technicians; that work is quoted separately and is never part of the assessment.
Three competitors, benchmarked
You nominate up to three competitors. We report what they publish that you don’t: the topics their pages cover, the structured-data types they use, the FAQ content they carry, and the AI answer-engine queries where they get cited and you don’t. Findings you can act on, not a leaderboard.
The roadmap
Every finding is graded by severity and paired with a specific recommended fix. The report closes with a prioritized roadmap — the changes we’d make, in the order we’d make them, each one stating what it addresses and why it sits where it does, so you can follow it without needing us to explain it. If you never speak to us again, the document still works.
How much does it cost?
Meridian’s is $1,000, one-time, and it is credited in full toward the 90-Day Evaluation, either build, or the Done-For-You project if you go on to hire us — so for anyone who proceeds, the assessment doesn’t add to the total. It sequences the payment; it isn’t an extra charge.
For context, the market splits roughly into four bands. An automated tool report costs under $100 and is worth about that: it’s a crawler’s opinion with no judgement attached. A freelancer typically charges $500 to $800. An agency-delivered audit for a small site usually runs $2,000 to $3,500, with turnaround of one to three weeks. Enterprise audits run well past $10,000.
$1,000 sits between the freelancer band and the agency band, and that’s deliberate: the mechanical work — the crawl, the on-page and technical checks, the AI-visibility sampling, the competitor comparison, and your Revenue Leak Report, which turns your own Google reviews into the complaints costing you customers, with a conservative dollar range and the math shown — runs automatically and costs the same to deliver whether you pay $100 or $1,000 for it. What the other part of the price buys is what doesn’t automate: a graded Google Business Profile Report Garnett prepares by hand — guaranteed within 48 hours, not whenever he gets to it.
A no-cost tool is excellent at finding what a crawler can see: missing tags, broken structure, slow pages. It cannot tell you whether an AI engine cites your competitor instead of you, or which of forty findings to fix first. The assessment’s report does both — it checks whether Claude mentions you, and grades every finding by severity — and it does them automatically: the report is AI-generated from start to finish. What a person adds, reliably and on a deadline, is the Google Business Profile Report.
If $1,000 feels like a lot to commit to
It is a real amount of money, and nothing about the process pressures you into it before you are ready. There is no call to book first, no scope to negotiate — you pay, the report generates once your payment is confirmed, and until it has generated you can cancel for a full refund. If the report turns out to be defective, the 14-day re-run-or-refund term in our Refund Policy is not a loophole, it is stated plainly for exactly that reason. Once you have the report, the decision about what to do next is entirely yours, and nothing in that report is written to talk you into anything you would not otherwise choose.
How long does it take?
The report itself generates automatically once your payment is confirmed, and is ordinarily ready within minutes of starting. Where checkout confirms a payment on its own, it starts straight away; a payment through a PayPal payment link or an invoice is matched to your order by a person first, so that step isn’t instant, and the report link is emailed to you once it’s ready. Your Revenue Leak Report generates with it, no extra wait, and Garnett’s hand-prepared Google Business Profile Report follows within 48 hours of your report; that’s a real commitment, not an estimate, funded by the price rather than squeezed around it.
What you receive, and what you don’t
You receive a written report and a prioritized action list, plus two more reports: a Revenue Leak Report, generated automatically, and a graded Google Business Profile Report, prepared by Garnett within 48 hours. That is the whole deliverable, stated plainly, because “prioritized action list” can read like a promise to action it — and it isn’t one.
Implementation is not included. You can carry the changes out yourself, hand the document to whoever maintains your site, or engage us separately for the 90-Day Evaluation, a build, or the Done-For-You project. All are fine. The report is written so that the first option is genuinely viable, which is the test of whether it was worth $1,000.
Who this is for, and who it isn’t
It’s for a business with an existing website that isn’t producing enquiries, where nobody can say precisely why. It’s for anyone about to commission a rebuild who’d like to know what was actually wrong first. And it’s a prerequisite for our builds and the Done-For-You project when you already have a site — we don’t quote a rebuild for a site nobody has looked at.
It is not for you if you already know what’s wrong and just need it built; go straight to a build. It’s not for a brand-new business with no site to assess — clients without an existing website skip straight to a build or the Done-For-You project, no assessment required.
An honest word
We can’t control Google’s algorithm, your competitors’ budgets, or what an AI engine decides to cite this week. We don’t promise rankings, traffic, or revenue, and you should be wary of anyone who does. AI answer engines in particular are non-deterministic and personalize their results, so the visibility findings are a point-in-time sample rather than a fixed measurement.
What we commit to is this: every check named on this page is a check that actually runs, the report is written for your site specifically, and the roadmap is ordered the way we would genuinely do the work. The report is 100% AI-generated; the part a person makes is the Google Business Profile Report, which Garnett prepares by hand and sends within 48 hours of your report being delivered. If a finding is uncertain, it will say so rather than sound confident.
Frequently asked questions
How much does the assessment cost?+
$1,000 one-time, credited in full toward the 90-Day Evaluation, either build, or the Done-For-You project if you proceed. Market-wide: under $100 for an automated tool report, $500–$800 for a freelancer, $2,000–$3,500 for an agency-delivered audit of a small site.
What does it include?+
Six areas — indexability, on-page, technical, content and keyword density, local and AI answer readiness, and AI answer-engine visibility with Claude automatically — plus up to three competitors benchmarked and a severity-graded roadmap.
How long does it take?+
The report generates automatically once your payment is confirmed, and is ordinarily ready within minutes of starting; a payment through a PayPal payment link or an invoice is matched to your order by a person first, so that step isn’t instant. Your Revenue Leak Report generates with it, no extra wait, and Garnett’s hand-prepared Google Business Profile Report follows within 48 hours of your report — a real commitment, not a guess.
Do I need it?+
If your site isn’t producing enquiries and nobody can say why, yes — it answers that before you spend on a fix. If you already know what’s wrong and just need it built, skip it. This is diagnosis, not treatment.
Is the fee refundable?+
Until your report has been generated, yes: you can cancel for any reason and receive a full refund — email info@meridianseo.ai with the subject “Cancel assessment”. Once the report has been delivered, the assessment is not refundable as a matter of course, because the deliverable has been supplied in full and is prepared specifically for your site. Two terms still protect you after delivery. If the report is defective — it fails to generate, arrives materially incomplete, or analyses a business or website other than the one you submitted — tell us within 14 days of delivery and we will re-run it at no charge or, if you prefer, refund it in full. And if the Google Business Profile Report has not been sent within 7 days of your report being delivered, you may request a full refund of the assessment fee. The full terms are in Section 5 of our Refund Policy. If you go on to hire us, the fee is credited in full toward whatever you do next.
Do you fix what you find?+
Not as part of this purchase. The deliverable is the report, the roadmap, and Garnett’s two reports. Implement it yourself, hand it to your developer, or engage us separately for the 90-Day Evaluation, a build, or the Done-For-You project.
How many pages do you review?+
The assessment is scoped to your site’s significant pages rather than a fixed page count — the homepage plus the pages that carry your services, products and locations. Where more than one page is reviewed we also report titles and meta descriptions duplicated across pages, which is a common and quietly damaging problem. If you have an unusually large site, mention it in your follow-up call and we’ll scope anything beyond the standard crawl.
Start your assessment
The report generates automatically once your payment is confirmed. Your Revenue Leak Report generates with it, no extra wait, Garnett’s hand-prepared Google Business Profile Report follows within 48 hours, and the fee credits in full toward whatever you do next.
Start the $1,000 assessment →