How to choose a GEO agency: 12 questions, red flags and fair proof

Why is choosing a GEO agency harder than choosing an SEO agency?

It is harder because the field is young, the platforms change often and nobody controls the outcome. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the work of getting a brand named and cited in answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Two years ago few people sold it. Today many do, and the quality ranges from careful practitioners to people who renamed an old service.

With classic SEO you can compare agencies against long established norms. With GEO the norms are still forming. Engines do not publish how they pick sources, results vary between runs, and a method that worked in one month can fade in the next. As of October 2026 that is still true. A buyer therefore has to judge process and honesty more than promised outcomes.

This guide gives you a way to do that. It lists twelve questions to ask any provider, red flags, ways to test claims yourself, what fair proof looks like and how the main pricing models work. It is written to be fair to everyone. We run a GEO agency, so we have a stake, and we say so. We do not name or rank any firm. Use the questions on us too.

What should a GEO agency actually do for you?

Before comparing providers, be clear about the job. Real GEO work usually falls into five groups. First, measurement: a set of buyer prompts, run across several engines, to see whether you are named, cited or absent, and how you are described. Second, technical access: making sure AI crawlers can read your site, which means robots rules, sitemaps, canonicals, rendering and structured data. Third, content: restructuring pages so they give a direct answer early, use headings that match real questions and support claims. Fourth, entity and brand consistency: the same facts about you across your site, profiles and the wider web. Fifth, authority: mentions and citations from third party sources that engines read.

Not every agency covers all five, and that is fine. What matters is that they tell you which they do, which they leave to others and how they fit together. For a deeper view of each, see our guides to technical GEO, GEO content strategy and GEO authority building.

Which 12 questions should you ask any GEO agency?

Use these in a call or in writing. Good providers like specific questions. Weak ones answer with slogans.

1. How do you decide which prompts matter?

A sound answer starts with your buyers: what they ask before they purchase, how they phrase it, which markets and languages they use. It then covers how many prompts are tracked, how they are grouped and how the list is kept stable so tests can be compared. Our guide to researching buyer prompts shows one method. Be careful of an agency that tracks only your brand name, which tells you little about discovery.

2. How do you measure results, and how often do you retest?

You want a baseline before any work, a repeat on the same prompts after, and a trend over time. Ask which engines are included, how they handle the fact that answers vary by run, and how they record results. A fair provider says that single readings are samples. Read more in how to measure GEO performance.

3. What exactly will you change on my site?

Ask for a list in plain words: robots rules, sitemap, canonicals, structured data, page rewrites, internal links. Ask who makes the changes, on what platform and with what access. A provider who works on staging or through a Git repository and logs every change is easier to trust than one who asks for an open admin login and offers no record.

4. How do you handle AI crawlers?

Different companies run different bots for training, search and user triggered fetching. For example, OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User, and Google documents Google-Extended as a control for some AI uses. A knowledgeable provider can explain which to allow for your goals and why, and how they test that the rules work. See what to allow in robots.txt. You can also run our AI Crawler Access Checker before the call and compare what they say to what you see.

5. What do you not control, and what do you not promise?

This is the most revealing question. The honest answer is that no one controls what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or any engine says, and that a provider can remove blockers, improve pages and measure, but cannot promise a ranking, a citation, traffic or revenue. If the answer is a guarantee, you have your answer.

6. Who will do the work, and how senior are they?

Some firms sell with a senior person and deliver with a junior. Ask who will work on your site, what experience they have and how often you will speak to them. A small team with senior delivery is not better by default, but you should know what you are buying.

7. What is in scope, what is out and what does it cost?

Ask for a written scope with deliverables, number of pages, number of prompts, markets and languages, reporting and review calls. Ask what is excluded, such as a new site build, digital PR, link building or paid media. If a price is given as a range, ask what moves it. Vague scopes lead to disputes.

8. Can you show real work, and what can you tell me about it?

Fair proof is specific, dated and honest about context. We discuss what that looks like in a later section. Ask what was changed, how long it took, what was measured and what the provider thinks was due to their work versus other causes.

9. How do you work with my existing team and vendors?

If you have an SEO agency, developer or in house marketer, ask how the provider avoids edits that collide. Good answers include one owner per page, a shared change log and advance notice before touching robots rules, canonicals or schema.

10. How do you handle compliance and accuracy?

If you work in law, health, finance or insurance, rules about advertising and claims apply. The provider should draft only what you can support, leave outcome promises out, and let your compliance owner approve copy. They should never invent facts, reviews or credentials. This is not legal advice; check your own regulator's current rules.

11. What do I own at the end, and how do I leave?

You should own the content, the fixes and the reports. Ask what happens if you stop: do you receive documentation, a handover and a list of the changes made? Can you reduce or pause the work? Providers who make leaving hard are selling dependency, not results.

12. What would make you tell me not to buy?

A good provider can name cases where they would advise against their own service: your site is already in good shape, you need basic SEO repair first, you only need a tool, or your budget fits a smaller step. A provider who cannot imagine such a case is selling, not advising.

What are the red flags when hiring a GEO agency?

Most red flags are variations on one theme: certainty about something nobody can be certain about. Others are about vagueness and lock in. Watch for these.

• A promise of rankings, citations, traffic, leads or revenue. No provider controls AI engines.
• A secret method that cannot be explained in plain words. Real methods are explainable and testable.
• Proof that is a single screenshot, an unnamed client or a big percentage with no timeframe, baseline or source.
• A fixed score that claims to measure your AI visibility on a scale of 100 with no method disclosed.
• Suggestions to buy mentions, fake reviews or low quality directory listings. These can harm trust and break platform rules.
• Mass produced pages, or AI written content published with no checking. Thin pages rarely earn citations and can damage your reputation.
• Asking for full admin access with no change log, no staging and no review step.
• Pressure to sign a long contract before any baseline or trial work is done.
• Disparaging every other provider by name instead of describing their own method.
• Claims about how a specific engine works that they cannot support with a documentation link or a test you can repeat.

How can you test a GEO agency's claims yourself?

You do not need special tools to check whether a provider is credible. Five tests take less than an hour and use free resources.

1. Run your own buyer prompts. Write ten questions a customer would ask, run them in at least three engines, and record whether you are named, cited or absent. Our AI Visibility Checker can give a first pass. Compare what you see to what the provider reports.
2. Check crawler access. Open your robots.txt file and use the AI Crawler Access Checker. If a provider says your site is blocked or open, verify it.
3. Ask for a documentation link. For any claim about an engine's behaviour, ask for the official source: Google Search Central, OpenAI documentation, Anthropic documentation, Perplexity documentation or Microsoft Bing Webmaster guidance. If there is no source, ask how they tested it.
4. Read their own site. A GEO agency's pages should be easy to read, answer questions directly and carry accurate structured data. Ask a few GEO questions about them in an assistant and see what is returned. This is a fair test, though a young firm may not yet appear.
5. Request a sample deliverable. A redacted audit, baseline or roadmap shows how they think. Compare it to our sample report if you wish.

None of these tests is perfect. An agency may do excellent work and still not appear in an assistant, and a firm that is easy to find may be weak. Use the tests as inputs to judgement, along with references and a small trial.

What does fair proof of GEO results look like?

Fair proof is specific, limited and open about what it does not show. Consider what you would want to see before believing that a change worked.

To show what we mean, here is our own proof and its limits. Emtech, a Dubai IT company selling IT AMC, is now cited for IT AMC queries in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Gemini. The details are in the Emtech case. Sudarshan Stoneix, a marble and granite company, saw in six months 1.48M Google impressions, 17.1K clicks, an average position of 4.9 and 909 AI mentions tracked by a third party tool, as described in the Sudarshan Stoneix case study.

Those are one client and one market each. Other factors, such as a site redesign, market conditions and the work of other parties, play a part, and neither result is a promise for your business. We include these limits on purpose. A provider who shows you only wins, with no context, is giving you marketing, not proof. Ask for the same honesty from everyone.

How do GEO agency pricing models work?

Four pricing models are common. Each suits a different stage. We do not know every provider's prices, so this describes the models, not the market.

On performance based pricing, think carefully. In GEO, mentions and citations vary by run and engine and are influenced by many factors, so it is hard to define a result that is fair to both sides. A provider who offers a performance fee should show exactly how it is measured and who decides.

For reference, our own structure is simple. The GEO Pilot is $999 USD, one time, delivered inside 30 days, done for you. After that, monthly plans are offered as from prices in USD, with scope confirmed in writing before work starts. Growth starts from $1,500 per month and covers one domain, up to 40 tracked buyer prompts across five engines, 4 pages written or refreshed per month, a monthly technical check, entity and profile upkeep, a monthly report and a 30 minute call. Scale starts from $3,000 per month and adds up to 100 tracked prompts, 10 pages per month, third party authority work (outreach for mentions and placements, never guaranteed), up to two markets or two languages and a fortnightly call. Enterprise is custom for several domains, markets or teams. Details are on the pricing page, and we compare the first two in GEO Pilot vs monthly retainer.

Should you hire an agency, a freelancer, an in house person or buy a tool?

An agency is only one of several routes. The right one depends on your scope, capacity and budget, and each has real strengths. We compare them at length in other guides, and the summary is below.

Read the detailed comparisons: GEO agency vs freelancer, GEO agency vs in house team, GEO Pilot vs AI visibility tools and GEO agency vs SEO agency. If your question is only about cost, start with how much GEO costs.

What should a contract or written scope include?

A good scope turns the conversation into something you can hold a provider to, and it protects the provider from misunderstandings too. Ask for these items in writing before work starts.

• Deliverables, listed in plain words, with numbers: how many prompts, engines, pages, markets and languages.
• Timeline, with the start date, key milestones and the end of the first phase.
• Measurement method: how the baseline is taken, which engines, how the retest is run and how the result is reported.
• Access terms: what access is needed, in what form (staging, Git, limited admin), who holds credentials and when access is removed.
• Approval process: who approves changes and copy, how fast, and what happens if approval is slow.
• Ownership: you own the content, fixes and reports at the end.
• Exclusions: for example a new site build, ongoing digital PR, link building or paid media.
• Limits statement: that rankings, citations, traffic, leads and revenue are not promised.
• Change and exit terms: how to pause, reduce or end the work, and what handover you receive.

If you are in a regulated field, add a clause that your compliance owner approves all copy before publication and that no outcome promises, unverifiable claims or banned testimonials are used. Rules differ by country and profession, so check your regulator's current guidance and take proper advice.

Example, hypothetical: how a buyer might run the process

Example, hypothetical: the owner of a UK commercial insurance brokerage hears from sales staff that prospects arrive having asked an assistant about brokers for construction firms. She is not named. She wants to hire help but does not know whom to trust.

She spends an hour on the five tests above. She writes ten buyer prompts, runs them in three assistants and notes that she is absent in all. She checks robots.txt and finds one AI crawler blocked by a security setting. She now has an independent picture before any call.

She speaks to three kinds of provider. Each is asked the twelve questions. One refuses to discuss limits and promises citations in 60 days, which she treats as a red flag. One offers a monthly retainer with vague deliverables and a twelve month term. One offers a fixed price project with a baseline, a retest and a written scope. She chooses the third as a first step, and agrees to decide on ongoing work after she sees the report. Because insurance is regulated, her compliance lead approves all page copy.

The story shows a process, not a result. Nothing in it implies she gets cited. The value is that she spends a small amount to learn, keeps control and avoids a long commitment made on promises.

What to do next

Start with evidence about your own position. Run the free AI Visibility Checker and the AI Crawler Access Checker, write ten buyer prompts and record what you see. Then use the twelve questions above on every provider you consider, including us.

If you want a second pair of eyes, send your website, work email, an optional competitor and your market through the free AI visibility report form. We prepare it by hand and reply within one working day. You can also email hello@thegrowingai.com.

If you then want the work done for you, the GEO Pilot is a fixed $999, delivered inside 30 days: a baseline across five engines on up to 20 buyer prompts, technical fixes, up to 10 priority pages rewritten, a retest and a 90 day roadmap, on one domain and one language. We run a small number of Pilots at a time so each one gets senior attention. It does not include a new site build, ongoing digital PR, link building or paid media, and we never promise rankings, citations or traffic.