Crawlie is a free open-source website diagnostic tool that covers traditional Search Engine Optimization as well as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your site appear in AI-powered search results.
Imagine this: Your carefully crafted website ranks highly on Google search, but when people ask AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity—which are widely used these days—about it, they don’t mention your site at all. It’s as if the article you worked so hard on is shelved in the library, but the AI, acting as the librarian, doesn’t know the book exists.
Recently, an interesting open-source tool has emerged to solve this dilemma. It’s called ‘Crawlie’. GitHub - spronta/crawlie
Why is this important?
For website operators and marketers, ‘SEO (Search Engine Optimization, the technique of helping search engines understand your site)’ is already a must. However, the paradigm of search is shifting. Many people now ask questions to AI to get answers instead of typing keywords into a search bar. ShowHN: Crawlie – Free open-source SEO audit tool for humans and agents
The problem is that traditional SEO tools focus only on when humans search, are too expensive, or don’t properly inform you how AI perceives your site when it crawls it. Crawlie was created precisely for this purpose: to satisfy both ‘humans’ and ‘AI agents’ (intelligent software that navigates the web and performs tasks based on user instructions). ShowHN: Crawlie – Free open-source SEO audit tool for humans and agents
Easy to understand: A health check-up for your website
To use a simple analogy, Crawlie is a doctor that writes a ‘health check-up report’ for your website.
While existing SEO tools stop at eye exams (checking visible text and links), Crawlie adds a precision exam called an ‘AI consultation’. This process, which we call GEO (Generative Engine Optimization, the practice of optimizing content to be cited in generative AI search engines), checks whether your site is suitable for use as AI training data or as a source for answers. ShowHN: Crawlie – Free open-source SEO audit tool for humans and agents
For example, if a site’s structure is complex, a human can find their way by clicking menus, but an AI agent can easily get lost. Crawlie helps you find and fix technical errors so that when an AI agent visits your site, it receives a friendly map guide. This helps AI understand the core content of your website more accurately and increases the probability of your content being cited in responses to user questions.
Current status
Crawlie is an open-source project and can be used by anyone for free. GitHub - spronta/crawlie
It is currently available in the following ways:
- CLI version: You can execute it directly from the command-line environment using the Node Package Manager (npm). GitHub - spronta/crawlie
- macOS app: It provides an official installer for users who aren’t familiar with command-line tools, allowing for convenient diagnosis with just a few clicks. GitHub - spronta/crawlie
However, since this is a professional technical SEO tool, it requires some technical effort to actually modify the code based on the diagnostic report.
What happens next?
In the future, ‘Is my site on page 1 of Google search results?’ will be just as important as ‘Is my site cited as a source for AI answers?’. ShowHN: Crawlie – Free open-source SEO audit tool for humans and agents
The future web world will be one where humans and AI coexist and consume information together. As more tools like Crawlie become available, even ordinary people running personal blogs will have the power to make their content better visible to AI agents. It is time for your website to prepare for a ‘conversation’ with AI.
MindTickleBytes’ AI Reporter Perspective
Crawlie’s attempt to analyze interactions between AI and human users, going beyond simple data listing, suggests that technical SEO is moving beyond simple mechanical optimization toward ‘agent-friendly information architecture’. The fact that such a precise diagnostic tool has become available as free open-source software is highly welcome in terms of information accessibility.
References
- GitHub - spronta/crawlie: Fast, free, open-source technical SEO audit tool for humans and agents. (https://github.com/spronta/crawlie)
- ShowHN: Crawlie – Free open-source SEO audit tool for humans and agents. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592731)
- It requires a high monthly subscription fee
- It provides GEO features that consider not only humans but also AI agents
- It only works in web browsers
- Install the CLI version via npm
- Use a dedicated macOS app
- Unlock all features after a paid subscription
- Making a website's design look beautiful
- Optimizing a site to be cited in AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity
- Running social media advertisements efficiently