---
title: "The R&D tax adviser AI visibility checklist, 16 checks, ranked by evidence · Avouch"
description: "A practical AI-visibility checklist for UK R&D tax credit advisers, ordered by what Avouch's own 50-question sweep found actually moves a firm from being named to being recommended, compliance credibility, sector specialism, current scheme content and per-engine measurement."
url: https://avouchedfor.com/insights/rd-tax-checklist
markdown_url: https://avouchedfor.com/insights/rd-tax-checklist.md
---

# The R&D tax adviser AI visibility checklist

Sixteen checks, ordered by what our own sweep actually showed moves the number, a real compliance figure first, technical schema last.

**Steen Stones** · Reviewed 5 Aug 2026

This list is ordered by evidence, not alphabetically. Every item traces back to a specific finding from our own sweep of UK R&D tax advisers, a firm that works through this list top to bottom is working on what actually converted a mention into a recommendation in real AI answers, not a generic best-practice guess.

## Compliance credibility, do this first

- A real, substantiated HMRC enquiry rate published where an engine can read it as plain text.
- Your Additional Information Form process described plainly, mandatory since August 2023, and its absence from a firm's content now reads as a gap.
- A clear statement of your position under the merged R&D scheme (accounting periods from 1 April 2024), not the old SME/RDEC split.
- A named sign-off or review process (technical, legal, or both) that reduces claim risk, stated as a process, not a general quality claim.

## Track-record and specialism content

- A real average claim value, if you can substantiate it, the single most-cited figure type in our recommendation quotes.
- Named sector specialisms (biotech, construction, software, manufacturing) with the specific reason the specialism reduces risk, not just the label.
- Years operating in R&D tax specifically, stated as a number, not “established”.
- Fee structure stated plainly, contingency percentage, fixed fee, or both, since this market doesn't price the way most professional services do, and ambiguity here reads as a gap.

## Content currency

- No page still framed around the pre-merger SME/RDEC split as the current structure.
- Dated review stamps on scheme-specific content, HMRC's own guidance has moved twice in under a year, and content needs to show it's kept pace.
- Any AI-drafted technical or compliance content signed off by a named person against current HMRC guidance before it publishes.

## Measurement

- You can currently answer: how often is the firm named across the questions its buyers actually ask?
- You can currently answer: what share of those mentions become a specific recommendation?
- Both of the above are tracked per engine, our own sweep found every one of 87 firms converting zero on one major engine while converting real, different shares on the other two.

## Technical foundation

- robots.txt explicitly allows the AI crawlers rather than staying silent on them.
- Organization schema present on the homepage with real sameAs links to Companies House and equivalent.
- Named adviser profiles with visible credentials, not an anonymous "our experts" page.

> There's a difference between showing up and being recommended. AI cannot recommend what it doesn't know.

## Common questions

### Where does this checklist come from?

Every section traces to a specific finding from Avouch's own 18 July 2026 sweep of UK R&D tax advisers, see the pillar, cost, compliance and sweep-data pages in this territory for the underlying evidence behind each item.

### Is compliance really more important than SEO basics here?

Not instead of, alongside. Ordinary technical SEO still matters for whether an engine cites a page at all. But every recommendation our sweep found was won on proof of compliance or a track record, which is why those items lead this list rather than the technical foundation section.

### How is this different from a generic R&D tax marketing checklist?

A generic checklist would tell you to build backlinks and target keywords. This one is built from what actually appeared in the sentences AI engines used to recommend a specific firm in our own data, which is a different, narrower, more specific set of actions.

AI can't recommend what it doesn't know.

[Check if AI recommends you](https://avouchedfor.com/assessment) 

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