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AI Crawler URL Inspector

See how AI crawlers extract and understand your web pages. AI crawlers strip away design to focus on content and structure—this tool shows you that perspective: the markdown they extract, the metadata they capture, and how well-structured your content is for AI comprehension.

Inspect any URL

Enter a URL to see how AI crawlers extract and understand the content on that page.

How it works

1

Enter any URL

Provide the page you want to inspect. Can be any public URL—your site, a competitor, or any page you're curious about.

2

Content extraction runs

We fetch your page and extract content the way AI crawlers typically would—parsing HTML, metadata, and structure.

3

Review the results

See the extracted content in three views: AI View (markdown), Metadata (all tags), and Structure (heading hierarchy and issues).

Complete Guide

Understanding How AI Crawlers See Your Website

When you look at your website, you see carefully designed pages with branded colors, engaging images, and thoughtful layouts. When AI crawlers visit the same pages, they see something completely different—stripped-down text, metadata, and structure. Understanding this gap is fundamental to AI search optimization.

This guide explains how AI crawlers process web content, what factors determine whether your pages are AI-friendly, and how to use this tool to identify and fix issues.

The AI Crawler Perspective

AI crawlers approach web pages with a fundamentally different goal than human visitors. They're not interested in aesthetics or user experience—they want to extract structured, accurate information.

What AI Crawlers Extract

When an AI crawler visits your page, it extracts several types of content:

  • Text content: All visible text, converted to a clean format without styling
  • Structure: Heading hierarchy, lists, tables, and content organization
  • Metadata: Title, description, Open Graph tags, schema markup
  • Links: Internal and external links, anchor text
  • Semantic signals: HTML5 semantic elements (article, section, nav, aside)

What AI Crawlers Ignore

Conversely, AI crawlers typically ignore:

  • Visual design: CSS, colors, fonts, spacing
  • Images: Unless alt text is present (which they do read)
  • JavaScript interactions: Accordions, tabs, animations
  • Session-dependent content: Personalized elements, logged-in states

Why the AI View Matters

The gap between your intended content and what AI actually sees can be significant. Common disconnects include:

JavaScript-Rendered Content

Modern websites often render content dynamically using JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular. While some AI crawlers can execute JavaScript, many cannot or choose not to. If your key content only appears after JavaScript runs, AI crawlers may see an empty page.

Server-side rendering (SSR) or static generation solves this problem by providing fully-rendered HTML that all crawlers can read.

Content Position

AI models pay more attention to content that appears early in the document. If your page starts with extensive navigation, sidebars, and promotional banners before reaching the main content, AI may underweight your primary message.

HTML source order matters more than visual presentation. Your main content should appear early in the HTML even if CSS positions it below other elements visually.

Heading Structure

AI uses heading tags (H1, H2, H3) to understand content hierarchy and topic structure. Common issues include:

  • Multiple H1 tags (confuses the main topic)
  • Skipped heading levels (H1 directly to H3)
  • Headings used for styling rather than structure
  • Important sections without headings

Semantic Markup

HTML5 semantic elements provide important context signals. Using <article> for main content, <nav> for navigation, <aside> for secondary content, and <section> for thematic groupings helps AI understand page structure.

Using the URL Inspector

This tool provides three views into how AI crawlers see your pages:

AI View (Markdown)

This shows the cleaned, structured text that AI models work with. Look for:

  • Is your main message clear and prominent?
  • Does the content flow logically?
  • Are important sections properly headed?
  • Is any content missing (JavaScript-rendered)?

Metadata View

This displays all the meta tags AI crawlers extract, including:

  • Title and meta description
  • Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:image)
  • Twitter Card tags
  • Schema.org structured data
  • Canonical URL

Structure View

This visualizes your heading hierarchy and content organization, showing:

  • Heading tree (H1 → H2 → H3)
  • Structural issues (skipped levels, multiple H1s)
  • Content sections and their relative prominence
  • Link counts and distribution

Common Issues and Solutions

Issue: Content Not Visible to Crawlers

Symptoms: AI View shows much less content than your page actually contains.

Solutions: Implement server-side rendering, use progressive enhancement, ensure critical content is in initial HTML.

Issue: Poor Heading Structure

Symptoms: Structure view shows skipped levels, multiple H1s, or flat hierarchy.

Solutions: Audit heading usage site-wide, ensure one H1 per page, maintain proper hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3).

Issue: Missing or Incomplete Metadata

Symptoms: Metadata view shows missing title, description, or structured data.

Solutions: Add comprehensive meta tags to all pages, implement relevant schema types, verify metadata renders correctly.

Issue: Content Buried Below Navigation

Symptoms: AI View shows extensive navigation/header content before main content begins.

Solutions: Use skip-to-content links, move main content earlier in source order, use semantic <main> element.

Best Practices for AI-Readable Pages

Follow these principles to ensure your pages are optimized for AI crawler comprehension:

1. Prioritize server-side rendering. Ensure your critical content is in the initial HTML response, not dependent on JavaScript execution.

2. Use semantic HTML throughout. Article, section, nav, aside, header, footer—these elements provide crucial structure signals.

3. Maintain proper heading hierarchy. One H1 per page, logical H2/H3 substructure, no skipped levels.

4. Front-load important content. Key information should appear in the first 500 words and early in the HTML source.

5. Include comprehensive metadata. Title, description, Open Graph, and relevant schema.org markup.

6. Write for extraction. Clear, factual statements that can be quoted. Avoid relying on context that might not be captured.

Monitoring and Iteration

AI-readability isn't a one-time fix. As you update your site, new issues can emerge. We recommend:

  • Testing key pages after any significant updates
  • Including URL inspection in your QA process
  • Periodically auditing competitor pages to benchmark
  • Monitoring AI visibility metrics over time

Use this tool regularly to ensure your pages remain AI-friendly as your site evolves.

Why use this tool?

See What AI Sees

View the markdown and metadata that AI crawlers extract from your pages. Understand exactly what content AI systems can access.

AI Readability Score

Get a 0-100 score for how well AI models can parse and understand your content. Know where you stand before optimizing.

Structure Analysis

Visualize your heading hierarchy, link count, content organization, and semantic structure. Identify structural issues.

Issue Detection

Identify specific problems that hurt your AI visibility—poor heading structure, missing metadata, content positioning issues.

Actionable Suggestions

Get concrete recommendations to improve how AI crawlers process your pages. Prioritized by impact.

Compare Intent vs Reality

Understand the gap between your intended content and what AI actually extracts. What you designed vs what AI sees.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the AI Crawler URL Inspector show me?

This tool shows how AI crawlers typically extract content from your pages. You'll see: (1) A markdown representation of your content—stripped of design and formatting, (2) The metadata captured—title, description, Open Graph tags, (3) Your heading structure and content hierarchy. Plus, you get an AI readability score with specific issues and suggestions for improvement.

Why does the AI view look different from my actual page?

AI crawlers don't see your website the way humans do. They strip away CSS, JavaScript interactions, images, and visual design to focus purely on content structure. They convert your page to plain text/markdown, following heading hierarchies and extracting semantic meaning. The gap between what you designed and what AI sees is often surprising—and fixing it can significantly improve your AI visibility.

What's a good AI readability score?

Scores above 70 indicate your content is well-structured for AI consumption—clear headings, semantic HTML, descriptive metadata, and content that appears early. 40-70 means there's room for improvement—common issues include buried content, poor heading hierarchy, or missing metadata. Below 40 suggests significant problems that may prevent AI models from properly understanding your content.

How do AI crawlers process web pages?

AI crawlers follow a multi-step process: (1) Fetch the HTML—they may or may not execute JavaScript, (2) Extract text content—stripping navigation, footers, ads, and boilerplate, (3) Identify structure—headings, lists, paragraphs, links, (4) Extract metadata—titles, descriptions, schema markup, (5) Convert to a clean format for AI training or retrieval. Understanding this process helps you optimize your content.

Do all AI crawlers see pages the same way?

Generally yes. AI crawlers follow similar extraction patterns—they're all trying to get clean, structured content. They may differ in JavaScript rendering capabilities, timeout thresholds, and robots.txt handling, but the core content extraction is similar. This tool shows a representative view of how your content appears to AI systems.

Why is heading hierarchy important for AI?

AI models use heading hierarchy (H1 → H2 → H3) to understand the structure and importance of your content. A clear hierarchy helps AI: (1) Identify the main topic (H1), (2) Understand subtopics and their relationships (H2, H3), (3) Extract relevant sections for specific queries, (4) Quote your content accurately with proper context. Skipped heading levels or multiple H1 tags confuse AI models about content organization.

What content issues hurt AI visibility most?

The most damaging issues are: (1) JavaScript-rendered content—if your text only appears after JS executes, many AI crawlers won't see it, (2) Content buried below navigation—AI pays more attention to content that appears early, (3) Thin content—pages with minimal text provide little for AI to work with, (4) Poor semantic HTML—div soup instead of proper section, article, aside tags, (5) Missing or inaccurate metadata.

How do I improve my AI readability score?

Focus on these improvements: (1) Use clear heading hierarchies—H1 for title, H2 for sections, H3 for subsections, (2) Write semantic HTML—use article, section, nav, aside tags appropriately, (3) Include descriptive meta tags—title under 60 chars, description under 160, (4) Front-load important content—key information should appear in the first 500 words, (5) Ensure text is in HTML, not rendered by JavaScript.

Can I test pages that require login?

This tool can only inspect publicly accessible pages—the same pages AI crawlers can access. If your content is behind a login, AI crawlers can't reach it either. For authenticated content, consider whether you want AI to index it at all. If so, you may need to create public-facing summaries.

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