Type "AEO agency" or "GEO agency" into Google today and you'll find a mix of traditional SEO shops that have added a paragraph about AI search to their homepage, and a much smaller number of teams that have actually shipped measurable AI citations. Telling the two apart matters, because this field is young enough that the gap between "we mention ChatGPT" and "we get clients cited by ChatGPT" is enormous.
This guide covers what a genuine AEO/GEO agency actually does, how to evaluate one, and what it should cost.
What AEO and GEO Agencies Actually Do
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are related but distinct disciplines. AEO structures content to be lifted as a direct answer, by Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, and voice assistants. The core unit of work is the extraction block: a tight, self-contained 40-60 word answer placed immediately after the H1. GEO targets a different outcome, being cited as a source inside a synthesised answer from ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, which depends more on entity clarity, topical authority, and citation-worthy content than on any single formatting trick.
A real AEO/GEO agency does both, alongside the technical SEO and authority-building that both depend on. Neither discipline works in isolation from the other, and neither replaces the foundation of a crawlable, fast, well-structured site.
SEO Agency vs AEO/GEO Agency: What's Actually Different
- The target changes. SEO targets a ranking position. AEO/GEO targets inclusion in a synthesised answer or citation list, a binary outcome that doesn't correlate cleanly with traditional rank.
- The content interventions are specific and research-backed. The Princeton GEO study (Aggarwal et al., ACM KDD '24) tested content changes across 10 LLMs and found three with measurable impact: adding cited statistics, adding named expert quotations, and citing authoritative sources. A genuine GEO agency implements these systematically, not as a vague "write better content" gesture.
- Measurement is different. Rank trackers don't capture AI citation. A GEO agency tracks citation frequency across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini directly, alongside AI Overview impressions in Search Console.
- The competition level is different, for now. Traditional SEO for most commercial terms is saturated. AEO and GEO are not, which is exactly why moving now matters more than it will in two years.
How to Evaluate an AEO/GEO Agency
- Ask for real citation results, not ranking screenshots. "We got this client cited in Perplexity for these queries" is a fundamentally different claim than "we improved their rankings."
- Ask which specific interventions they use, and why. An agency that can name the statistics/quotations/citations framework and explain the research behind it is operating from evidence, not guesswork.
- Ask how they measure success. Monthly citation tracking across named platforms, with source attribution, is the standard. "We'll keep an eye on it" is not.
- Ask whether AEO/GEO runs alongside technical SEO, or as a bolt-on. AI crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot) still have to successfully crawl and parse your site before anything else matters. An agency selling AEO without addressing crawlability is selling half a solution.
- Ask for a timeline that matches reality. AI Overview and snippet inclusion can move in 2-8 weeks with well-structured content. Durable GEO citation building, entity authority, topical depth, compounds over months, not weeks. Anyone promising instant results across the board is overselling.
A quick test: ask a prospective agency to explain, unprompted, the difference between what wins a featured snippet and what earns a ChatGPT citation. If they can articulate the distinction between extraction (AEO) and generative synthesis (GEO) without conflating the two, they understand the space. If everything gets folded into one vague "AI SEO" pitch, be cautious.
What AEO/GEO Optimization Costs
- Foundation: from around $3,000/month. An AEO audit and content gap analysis, a handful of AEO-optimised posts monthly, schema implementation, and monthly citation tracking.
- Growth: from around $6,000/month. Full GEO, AEO, and traditional SEO run as one strategy, platform-specific playbooks, link building and digital PR, and weekly citation dashboards.
- Authority: from around $12,000/month. A full embedded content team, founder thought leadership, PR and earned media for citations, and proprietary research assets designed to be cited.
Most agencies worth hiring offer some form of free visibility audit before you commit, use it to see where you currently stand before spending anything. Our own free AEO Visibility Audit shows exactly how a domain appears across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews today.
Is It Too Early to Hire One?
It's the opposite. AI Overviews already appear in roughly 15.69% of US Google searches (Semrush, 10M+ keyword study), and AI-referred visitors convert at 4.4× the rate of traditional organic visitors per the same study. The competition for citations is still low relative to traditional SEO's saturation. Brands building AI visibility now are accumulating a citation footprint that gets structurally harder for competitors to displace the longer they wait to start.
Final Thoughts
The AEO/GEO agency landscape in 2026 splits cleanly into two camps: teams that have actually shipped and measured AI citations, and teams that have added a slide about ChatGPT to their existing SEO pitch deck. Ask for specifics, ask for real citation results, and be wary of anyone folding AEO, GEO, and traditional SEO into one undifferentiated pitch without being able to explain how each actually works.
If you want to see exactly where your brand stands in AI search today, start with a free AEO Visibility Audit, no obligation.
FAQ
What does an AEO/GEO agency actually do?
An AEO/GEO agency structures and rebuilds your content so it gets extracted as a direct answer by Google AI Overviews and Perplexity (AEO), and cited as a source by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini (GEO). In practice this means rewriting page openings into extraction blocks, adding FAQPage and Article schema, citing statistics and authoritative sources, and tracking citation frequency across AI platforms, work a traditional SEO agency typically doesn't do.
What's the difference between an SEO agency and an AEO/GEO agency?
A traditional SEO agency optimises for ranking in blue-link search results: keywords, backlinks, Core Web Vitals. An AEO/GEO agency optimises for being cited inside AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, a different goal that requires different content structure, different schema, and different measurement. The best outcome runs both as one integrated strategy, since technical SEO and authority-building remain the foundation AEO and GEO sit on top of.
How do I evaluate an AEO or GEO agency before hiring one?
Ask them to show real AI citation results, not just ranking screenshots, ask which specific content interventions they use and why (statistics, quotations, authoritative citations), ask how they measure success (citation frequency tracking, not just traffic), and ask whether they run AEO/GEO alongside technical and traditional SEO or as a bolt-on. Vague answers about "optimising for ChatGPT" without specifics are a red flag, this is a young enough field that most agencies are guessing.
How much does AEO/GEO optimization cost?
AEO/GEO programmes typically start from around $3,000/month for a foundation package covering an audit, a handful of AEO-optimised posts, schema implementation, and monthly citation tracking. Full integrated GEO, AEO, and traditional SEO programmes typically run from around $6,000/month. Category-defining, PR-backed AI presence programmes run $12,000/month and up.
Is it too early to hire an AEO/GEO agency?
No, the opposite: AEO and GEO are still low-competition compared to traditional SEO, which means citations earned now compound with less resistance than they will once more brands catch on. A citation embedded in an AI model's associations with your brand persists differently than a ranking that can be displaced by the next algorithm update, early movers have an advantage that shrinks over time, not one that waits.
Can my existing SEO agency handle AEO/GEO too?
Some can, most can't yet. AEO/GEO requires specific content interventions validated by research (like the Princeton GEO study), platform-specific playbooks for how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity each retrieve and cite content, and citation-tracking measurement that's different from rank tracking. Ask your current agency directly what they've shipped and measured, not just whether they're "aware of AI search."