SEO = how ready the site is for Google. AI Search = how likely ChatGPT, Perplexity & Google AI are to find and quote them.
Their own robots.txt blocks all 7 major AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, anthropic-ai, meta, Applebot), and the site has 0 schema markup and 0 pages in a sitemap.
For 'hair salon collingswood nj' and 'balayage south jersey' the salon's own website does not appear at all; competitors and directories take the page, and even a brand search surfaces their Facebook, Instagram, and the franchise site instead of the salon site.
weak - the robots.txt explicitly blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, anthropic-ai, meta-externalagent and Applebot-Extended, so the major AI engines are told not to read the site at all; there is also no schema, no FAQ, no llms.txt, and no name/address/phone on the homepage to pull from.
The site is secure (uses https) and works on phones (it has the mobile setting turned on).
Every picture on the home page has alt text, so it reads cleanly for screen readers and Google.
It has a page title and a description tag, so the basic building blocks are there.
It runs on WordPress, which is easy to add SEO and schema tools to.
The 'find your stylist' quiz and membership idea give the page real, useful content.
The robots file tells every big AI search bot (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI) to stay out, so AI tools basically can't see the salon.
There is no sitemap, so Google has no map of the site's pages.
There is no schema (the hidden code that tells Google it's a LocalBusiness/HairSalon with hours and reviews).
The salon's name, address, and phone number are not in plain text on the home page.
When you search the brand name, their own website does not show up first; Facebook, Instagram, and the franchise site beat it.
For real customer searches like 'hair salon collingswood nj' the site does not appear at all.
No social share tags (og:), so links shared on Facebook/text look plain and unclickable.
The description tag is 336 characters, more than double what Google shows, so it gets cut off.