goBOFU swaps AI visibility score for evidence-based site check

goBOFU has replaced its questionnaire-style AI Visibility Gap Scorecard with a public AI Presence Site Check that inspects up to five website pages and shows the evidence behind one AI presence sample. The shift is meant to give bootstrapped B2B SaaS teams a faster, inspectable read on whether product facts and buyer-facing proof are findable online.

Why it matters: - goBOFU is shifting from a scorecard to evidence, which changes the output from a single readiness number to a sample that can be inspected. - The new approach is aimed at founders and marketing teams that need a quick check on whether product facts, pricing, customer proof and third-party references show up in public search and answer engines. - The tool is designed to show where the crawl looked and what it found, which can make missed signals easier to diagnose.

What happened: - goBOFU replaced its AI Visibility Gap Scorecard with the AI Presence Site Check. - The public tool starts with a URL and follows a capped set of same-site links. - The checker inspects up to five HTML pages of 512 KB each. - The tool fetches robots.txt and llms.txt when available. - The tool searches the public web for third-party lists and profiles. - The tool tries one answer-engine reply. - If that answer engine is unavailable, the tool shows a sample synthesized from up to five web-search results. - The AI Presence Site Check is available at the company's announcement tool page.

The details: - The output shows the agent's route, the evidence it found and evaluator notes. - The output separates owned-site checks from off-site evidence. - The output marks blocked pages, skipped pages and possible name collisions. - The crawler reads returned HTML but does not run JavaScript. - A missing page, profile or answer means the capped run did not find it. - The missing result does not prove that the evidence does not exist. - The previous AI Visibility Gap Scorecard asked six yes-or-no questions and returned a score out of 100. - The new tool keeps the result as one inspectable sample instead of compressing the checks into one number. - The tool is intended for bootstrapped B2B SaaS founders and marketing teams.

Between the lines: - The change reflects a broader move away from opaque AI-readiness scoring and toward transparent evidence collection. - Limiting the crawl to a small, fixed sample makes the check fast and simple, but it also means the tool is a snapshot, not a full audit. - The explicit note that JavaScript is not executed matters because some sites may hide key content behind dynamic rendering. - The founder's quote underscores the product positioning: users are meant to inspect the evidence rather than trust a label.

What's next: - goBOFU will likely use the AI Presence Site Check as its main public-facing diagnostic instead of the old scorecard. - Users who need a fuller picture will need to treat the tool as an initial signal and not a definitive proof of absence. - The company may continue refining the crawler and evaluation notes as more users test the site check.