Quick answer: On Squarespace, the first thing to check is the crawler setting that blocks known AI crawlers, because when it is on, ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI products are told to stay away. Squarespace does not let you edit robots.txt directly, so that setting, page visibility, and your written content are the main levers you have.
The audit scores 15 signals out of 100: whether OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Bingbot and eight other AI agents may crawl the page, whether it is indexable, llms.txt and sitemap presence, structured data, content depth, answer capsules, and metadata. Nothing is stored.
How Squarespace handles AI crawlers by default
Squarespace generates robots.txt and sitemap.xml automatically and does not allow direct edits to robots.txt. Instead it offers crawler settings, including an option to block known artificial intelligence crawlers.
Squarespace adds some structured data automatically, such as basic site and product information. Custom JSON-LD can be added through code injection on plans that include it.
Squarespace AI SEO checklist
Work through these in order. The first three decide whether AI engines can read your site at all; the rest decide whether they choose to cite it.
- Check the AI crawler settingIn your site settings, find the crawler settings and look at the option for artificial intelligence crawlers. If it blocks them, turn it off to let ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar products crawl your site. Then run the audit to confirm robots.txt changed.
- Check search engine crawling is allowedIn the same area, confirm search engine crawlers are not blocked, and check that important pages are not hidden from search results in their page settings.
- Submit your sitemap to Google and BingYour sitemap is at /sitemap.xml. Submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Add Organization and FAQ schemaIf your plan includes code injection, add JSON-LD for Organization in the site header, and FAQPage on pages with visible FAQs. Keep the schema text identical to what visitors see.
- Write more than captionsImage-led layouts often carry only short captions. Add text blocks that explain services, pricing and differences in full sentences.
- Publish guides on the blogSquarespace blog posts are a simple way to create the question-answering content that AI answers cite.
- Skip llms.txtSquarespace does not let you add files to the root of your domain. llms.txt is optional and not required by the major AI engines.
Common Squarespace problems the audit finds
- The AI crawler block switched on, often without the owner realising what it does
- Pages hidden from search results in page settings
- Portfolio or gallery pages with almost no text
- No custom schema on plans that support code injection
- Headings styled as large paragraph text instead of real heading elements
After you fix the basics
Access and markup make a Squarespace site eligible for AI answers; they do not guarantee citations. Engines choose sources that answer the question directly and that other sites refer to. Re-run the audit after each change, check whether ChatGPT can reach your pages, and make sure your site is verified and indexed in Bing, since several AI assistants rely on the Bing index.
Squarespace AI SEO FAQ
Audit every important Squarespace page
Run the audit on your homepage, a top product or service page, and your most visited article. Each page type fails for different reasons.
Back to the audit