How Axios Local appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews
A free AI-visibility snapshot for Axios Local (axios.com) — a digital-native based in Arlington, VA.
Overall AI visibility
axios.com
60/100
Grade D
Across the four AI engines we audit (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews), Axios Local is rarely cited by the engines we tested, with an overall 60/100 score. The largest open lift is on the engines below where Axios Local's articles are missing structured signals other digital-native sites of the same size already publish.
ChatGPT
73
Crawler: GPTBot
GPTBot reaches the site and recent articles surface in citations.
Perplexity
54
Crawler: PerplexityBot
PerplexityBot allowed but author entities aren't strongly linked.
Claude
35
Crawler: ClaudeBot
ClaudeBot blocked or anthropic-ai variant disallowed in robots.txt.
Google AI Overviews
79
Crawler: Google-Extended
Google AI Overviews include the site for breaking and explainer queries.
What Axios Local can ship this week
- Cross-link each article from at least two evergreen topic pages so AI engines can find it after the homepage rotates it off.
- Publish a `/llms.txt` at the root that maps your beats, reporter bios, and the canonical URL for each topic.
- Mark paywalled body content with `cssSelector` exclusions but leave the lede + first 200 words free — that's what answer engines quote.
- Server-render every article. JS-only shells fail GPTBot's HTML fetch and quietly drop you out of citations.
- Add `<script type="application/ld+json">` NewsArticle schema with `speakable`, `dateline`, and `isAccessibleForFree` to every story page.
If you work at Axios Local — or any other digital-native — the same audit, but live and continuous on every article you publish, is what Mani does.
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