Run Your First RankAudit — Rankar.ai Setup Guide

Meta Title: Run Your First RankAudit — Rankar.ai Setup Guide Meta Description: Run your first audit in RankAudit. Enter a URL, add competitors, and read the 7-tab report covering Overview, AI Readiness, Technical, Performance, Speed, Schema, and Competitors. Primary Keyword: how to run rankaudit Secondary Keywords: rankar ai audit, technical seo audit, ai search readiness audit, rankaudit setup URL Slug: how-to-run-first-rankaudit-rankar-ai Featured Snippet Target: To run a RankAudit, open Agency Dashboard → Rank Audit, paste a URL into the audit field (e.g. https://rankar.ai), optionally add up to 5 competitors, then click Run Audit. The audit returns a 7-tab report: Overview, AI Readiness, Technical, Performance, Speed, Schema, and Competitors.

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Introduction

RankAudit is the technical and AI-readiness audit module inside Rankar.ai's Agency Dashboard. Unlike traditional site audits that only check classic technical SEO signals, RankAudit also measures how visible your site is to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews — a dimension every modern site needs to own. This guide walks through the exact first-run workflow using https://rankar.ai as the demo URL.

Step 1: Open Rank Audit From the Sidebar

Sign in to Rankar.ai. In the left sidebar under CORE SEO, click Rank Audit. The URL becomes /agency-dashboard/rank-audit. On a fresh project you will see a clean input form titled "RankAudit AI-ERA — Comprehensive Website Audit · Built for Search + AI Engines."

Step 2: Enter the URL to Audit

The form has two fields. The first is URL TO AUDIT with placeholder https://example.com. Paste your domain — for this walkthrough, use https://rankar.ai. The form accepts the bare domain or a full URL with protocol.

Three quick sample sites sit below the input for instant demos: leatherapron.shop, stripe.com, notion.com. Click any of them to populate the URL field automatically. Useful when training a new team member on the tool.

Step 3: Add Competitors (Optional)

The second field is labelled COMPETITORS · optional, up to 5 — unlocks Smart Insights. Click Add to enter a competitor domain like semrush.com. You can add up to five. Adding competitors unlocks comparative views in the Schema, Speed, and Competitors tabs — the audit will show your scores alongside the competitor median so you can see where you lead and lag.

For a first audit, leave competitors blank. You can re-scan with competitors later once you know what categories you want to compare.

Step 4: Click Run Audit

Click the Run Audit button. RankAudit dispatches a multi-engine crawler that mimics Googlebot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. The crawler also pulls CrUX field data, Lighthouse metrics, and a live AI visibility probe across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini.

For a single-page site like rankar.ai, the audit completes in 30-90 seconds. Larger sites take longer.

Step 5: Read the Top Bar

Once the audit completes, the page header summarises the run:

• URL: https://rankar.ai/ with a LIVE badge (audit is current).
• 1 pages crawled: total pages in this audit.
• Scan took: total run time.
• Timestamp: when this audit was generated.
• Share / Export PDF / Re-scan: top-right action buttons.

Re-scan re-runs the audit with the same URL and competitor set. Share creates a public read-only link you can send to a client. Export PDF generates a branded summary.

Step 6: Switch Between the 7 Tabs

The audit report has seven tabs running across the top:

1. Overview — Site health score (0-100) and AI Search Readiness side by side.
2. AI Readiness (NEW) — How well your site is positioned for AI search.
3. Technical — Classic technical SEO checks (titles, canonicals, hreflang).
4. Performance — CrUX 28-day field data, Mobile vs Desktop.
5. Speed — Full Lighthouse + competitor side-by-side.
6. Schema — AEO Schema Readiness across 14 structured-data types.
7. Competitors — Side-by-side score comparison.

Each tab is independent. You can drill into one at a time without losing your place. Each issue panel inside each tab supports a Push X to RankOps button that creates remediation tasks in the RankOps module with one click.

Step 7: The Overview Tab — Your Headline

Overview shows two giant tiles:

OVERALL SITE HEALTH — a 0-100 score with a rating label (NEEDS WORK, GOOD, EXCELLENT). For rankar.ai the current score is 68 — NEEDS WORK. Beneath the score: counts for CRITICAL, WARNINGS, NOTICES. AI-ERA DIFFERENTIATOR / AI Search Readiness — a 0-100 score for how AI engines see your site. For rankar.ai this is 100 — EXCELLENT. Beneath it: VS COMPETITOR MEDIAN (you vs. industry average) and CHECKS PASSING (e.g., 8/8).

A LIVE AI VISIBILITY PROBE panel shows how often your domain is mentioned across 5 test prompts on 4 AI engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) — a real-world measure of your AI brand presence.

Step 8: Set Up Recurring Audits

For active client projects, configure RankAudit to re-scan weekly. The schedule lives in project settings. Weekly cadence catches regressions within 7 days and keeps the AI Visibility Probe data current as the LLMs change.

What's Next

The first audit is complete. The next article unpacks the AI Search Readiness tab in depth — the feature that sets RankAudit apart from every legacy site auditor.

Apply This With the Rankar Toolkit

RankAudit works best paired with the rest of the Rankar suite. Spin up the relevant tools: RankTalk • RankOps • RankAudit • RankWriter • RankTracker • RankAIO • RankBridge • RankLinks • RankLocal • RankLaunch • RankSpy • RankUX • RankLead. Each module shares data with the others — fewer tabs, one source of truth.