SEO, GEO and the details
Your questions, answered.
What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?
SEO focuses on how search engines understand and discover your pages. GEO—generative engine optimization—focuses on making business information clear and usable in AI-generated answers. They share many foundations.
Is the website check free?
The public website check is free with no signup. Optional implementation help is a separate conversation.
Does this tell me if ChatGPT recommends my business?
No. Public website signals do not establish whether an AI tool recommends you or how often it mentions your business. That would require a separate measurement method.
Which pages will be checked?
The check covers your website’s main page and relevant public files. It is not a complete site crawl, backlink analysis or keyword-ranking report.
Will anything on my website change?
No. The public check is intended to read public information and suggest changes. You review and implement any changes separately. Only the website’s main page and relevant public files are requested.
What if a check cannot be completed?
A real report should show which information was reached and which was unavailable. When a firewall or server blocks access, Revendum halts immediately with an explicit Error ID rather than presenting fake or zeroed SEO scores.
Troubleshooting Knowledge Tree
Scanner Diagnostic & Resolution Hub
If our scanner paused during inspection, find your Error ID below for step-by-step resolution guides, network configurations, and visual dashboard schematics.
Security & Firewalls
#ERR_CLOUDFLARE_WAF Cloudflare security challenge halted scan: How do I allow Revendum and AI search crawlers?
Cloudflare’s automated Managed Challenge or Bot Fight Mode intercepted our inspection request with an HTTP 403 challenge page (<title>Just a moment...</title>). Because Revendum never stealth-bypasses WAF protections, the scanner halted to prevent synthetic scoring of Cloudflare interstitial code.
- Cloudflare Free: "Bot Fight Mode" runs before Custom Rules and cannot be bypassed by rule match. To scan your site, temporarily toggle Bot Fight Mode to OFF under Security › Bots, run your check, then toggle it back on.
- Cloudflare Pro / Business / Enterprise: Use Super Bot Fight Mode or a WAF Custom Rule with the Skip action as illustrated below.
3-Step Cloudflare Resolution:
- Log in to your Cloudflare Dashboard and navigate to Security › WAF › Custom rules.
- Click Create rule, name it
Allow Revendum & AI Crawlers, and configure:Field: User Agent • Operator: contains • Value: Revendum-GEO-Inspector - Under Then choose action, select Skip › All remaining custom rules and WAF Managed Rules, then click Deploy rule.
#ERR_ORIGIN_FORBIDDEN Origin server denied public access: How do I fix HTTP 403 Forbidden?
Your web server (Apache, Nginx, LiteSpeed, or Caddy) actively rejected our visit with an HTTP 403 status code. This is an origin-level permission error rather than a Cloudflare challenge.
Origin Server Troubleshooting Checklist:
- Folder Permissions: Check that your webroot (e.g.
/public_htmlor/var/www/html) has read permissions for the web server user (chmod 755for directories,chmod 644for files). - Directory Index: Ensure an
index.html,index.php, or valid homepage file exists; otherwise disabled directory browsing returns 403. - .htaccess or Nginx Deny Rules: Inspect your configuration for aggressive IP geo-blocking or user-agent bans blocking automated verification probes.
#ERR_AUTH_REQUIRED Password protection blocked the scan: Can I scan staging or password-protected sites?
Your website returned an HTTP 401 Unauthorized response requiring HTTP Basic Authentication (username and password prompt).
Revendum is a public website auditor designed to evaluate public web visibility. Our scanner does not store or transmit credentials and cannot inspect password-protected staging environments. To scan a development site, temporarily disable basic authentication or test against your production domain.
#ERR_RATE_LIMITED Server rate limit was triggered: Why did I receive an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests?
Either your origin server or Revendum's crawler rate protection returned an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests response.
Revendum limits public checks to 10 inspections per hour from the same connection to prevent abuse. If your own web host or CDN rate limiter triggered the response, ease origin connection burst limits or wait 5 minutes before initiating another check.
Server & Infrastructure Health
#ERR_SERVER_OUTAGE Origin server crashed or timed out: How do I fix HTTP 5xx or gateway timeouts?
Your server returned an HTTP 500, 502 Bad Gateway, 503 Service Unavailable, or timed out after our 3.5-second inspection horizon.
AI search models (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) prioritize sub-second Time-to-First-Byte (TTFB). If your origin takes longer than 3.5s to respond, AI crawlers skip the page and cite competitor signals instead. Review your backend application error logs (error_log, PHP-FPM, or reverse proxy logs) to resolve internal gateway timeouts.
#ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE Server closed connection without data: What causes connection drop or zero-byte response?
The web server abruptly closed the TCP socket without delivering HTTP headers or body bytes, or served an entirely empty response.
This typically occurs when origin firewalls (fail2ban, iptables) drop packets mid-handshake or web daemon worker processes crash ungracefully. Verify that your web daemon (Apache/Nginx) has sufficient worker processes and is not hitting memory exhaustion limits.
DNS & Domain Routing
#ERR_DNS_UNRESOLVED Domain DNS records not found: How do I resolve NXDOMAIN or DNS lookup failures?
Our scanner could not resolve your domain or subdomain to an allowed public IPv4 address.
Verify that your domain registrar or DNS management zone has active A or CNAME records pointing to your public hosting server. Note that internal RFC1918 private IP addresses (10.x, 192.168.x, 127.x) and loopback addresses are strictly rejected by Revendum's SSRF security layer.
#ERR_REDIRECT_LOOP Endless redirect loop detected on site: How do I fix circular HTTP redirects?
Your website exceeded maximum redirect hops in a circular redirection cascade (e.g. HTTP → HTTPS → HTTP, or apex → www → apex).
Check your .htaccess, Cloudflare SSL mode (ensure it is set to Full or Full (strict) rather than Flexible if your origin redirects to HTTPS), and canonical host rewrites to ensure redirects resolve in a single hop.
SSL & Security Certificates
#ERR_SSL_INVALID Untrusted SSL certificate blocked connection: How do I resolve TLS handshake failures?
A secure TLS connection over port 443 failed because your SSL certificate is expired, self-signed, or issued by an untrusted certificate authority.
Revendum mandates strict SSL certificate verification (CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER = true) to ensure data authenticity. Major search engines and AI assistants will not recommend or cite websites that trigger browser SSL/TLS certificate warnings. Install a valid certificate from Let's Encrypt or your hosting provider.