Generative engine optimization companies: who to hire (and what to demand before you sign)

"How do you know what prompts are making LLMs mention your brand?"

That's the question a practitioner posted in r/bigseo. It got 63 comments. Most were some version of: "I don't."

If your GEO agency can't answer that question with specifics, you're buying vibes.

The stakes are real. Google reports that AI Overviews now reach more than 1 billion users every month. When AI summaries appear in search results, click-through rates to traditional links drop from 15% to 8%, according to Pew Research. And SparkToro's analysis of clickstream data found that for every 1,000 Google searches in the US, only 360 clicks make it to the open web.

The opportunity is also real. Princeton researchers found that GEO methods can boost source visibility in AI-generated responses by up to 40%, though results vary by domain.

So you're here to figure out which companies can actually help. This guide gives you:

1. What you're actually buying when you hire a GEO company
2. A 12-question rubric to evaluate any vendor
3. What deliverables you should own after 90 days
4. A shortlist of companies showing up in 2025 search results (with validation steps)
5. Red flags that signal "SEO with a new name"
6. A 30-day pilot plan to prove outcomes before you commit

Hiring a GEO company isn't about buying a dashboard or an llms.txt file. It's about building the system that makes you get cited when AI answers the money questions in your category.

Let's break down what that actually means.

Check if your brand appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews →

If you're hiring a GEO company, what are you actually buying?

The short answer: You're buying a visibility system, not a list of deliverables.

If the work doesn't include measurement and shipping changes, it's marketing. The deliverables (schema updates, llms.txt files, content rewrites) are inputs. The output you care about is whether AI systems cite you more often after the engagement than before.

Here's what Google's documentation on AI features says: AI Overviews and AI Mode use a "query fan-out" technique to gather information from multiple sources. There are no special technical requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for snippets.

That means schema and structured data are table stakes. They don't guarantee citations. What actually moves the needle is:

• Evidence density: Statistics, expert quotes, and citations that make your content more authoritative
• Omnipresence: Showing up everywhere AI looks for answers, not just on your own site (communities, comparison articles, directories, guest posts, reviews)
• Consistency: Sustained presence over time, not a one-time optimization sprint

The Princeton GEO paper tested specific tactics: adding citations, including statistics, using quotation marks around key claims. These tactics improved visibility. But they work because they make content more citable, not because they trick an algorithm.

When you hire a GEO company, you're hiring for a loop:

1. Measure where you currently appear (and where you don't)
2. Ship changes that make you more citable
3. Re-test to see if visibility improved
4. Repeat

If the company you're evaluating can't explain how they run that loop, they're selling tactics, not a system.

The buyer's rubric: 12 questions that make "GEO" measurable

If you can't inspect prompt coverage, rerun cadence, and citation capture, you can't verify anything. Use these questions in your next sales call.

Block 1: Measurement

1. What's your prompt set?

Ask them to show you the specific prompts they'll track. A serious vendor has a library of prompts for your category, organized by intent (informational, commercial, transactional). If they say "we track visibility" without showing you prompts, they're guessing.

2. Which AI engines do you monitor?

At minimum: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Bing Copilot. If they only track one or two, their data is incomplete. For context on what to expect, our GEO tools comparison covers the major monitoring platforms and their coverage gaps.

3. What's the rerun cadence?

Weekly is standard. Anything less frequent won't catch movement. Anything more frequent is probably overkill for most teams.

4. Do you establish baselines before the engagement starts?

You need a "before" snapshot to prove the "after." If they don't capture this on day one, you'll never know what changed.

5. What competitor set do you track?

Who are you benchmarking against? A good vendor will ask you for 3-5 direct competitors and add 2-3 "aspiration" brands that consistently get cited.

6. Can I export the raw data?

As one r/bigseo commenter put it: "Is there anything that can be embedded in a Looker Studio dashboard?" If you can't get the data out, you're locked in.

Block 2: Execution loop

7. How do you decide which pages to improve?

They should have a prioritization framework: maybe it's pages that rank well organically but don't get cited, or pages targeting high-value queries where competitors are cited.

8. What counts as a "shipped change"?

This could be evidence upgrades (adding statistics, citations, expert quotes), structure changes (FAQs, definition boxes, comparison tables), or distribution work (getting mentioned on a third-party list or earning a backlink). You want specifics, not "we'll optimize your content."

9. How often do you re-test after shipping?

The loop should be tight. Ship a change, wait for reindexing, rerun the prompts, log what moved. Weekly is reasonable.

Block 3: Omnipresence

10. What do you do beyond my website?

AI systems don't just cite websites. They cite Reddit threads, comparison articles, review sites, directories, and news mentions. Ask the vendor how they influence these surfaces. If the answer is only "on-site SEO," you're missing most of the picture.

For a deeper look at the omnipresence model, see our guide to GEO services.

Block 4: Trust and quality

11. Where does AI get used, and where do humans decide?

One r/marketing commenter put it bluntly: "Please stop running your agency's copy through ChatGPT." Ask how they handle SME input, who reviews before publishing, and what the accountability chain looks like.

Block 5: Ownership

12. What do I keep if we stop working together?

You should own the prompt library, the baseline reports, the scorecard template, and any SOPs they develop. If they can't hand you a system you can run without them, you're renting, not building.

What to demand as deliverables (so you own the system after 90 days)

If the only output is "content," you're renting labor. Demand the artifacts that make the work repeatable.

Here's what you should have in your hands at the end of a 90-day engagement:

Prompt library with definitions

A documented set of prompts, organized by category and intent. Each prompt should include:

• The exact query
• Which engines to run it on
• What counts as a "mention" vs a "citation" vs a "recommendation"

These definitions matter. Without them, you can't compare results week over week.

Baseline report and competitor gaps

A snapshot from day one showing:

• Which prompts mention your brand
• Which prompts mention competitors but not you
• Which prompts mention neither (opportunity gaps)

This is your before picture. Without it, progress is unprovable.

Weekly scorecard export

Not a dashboard you can't download from. An actual export (CSV, Google Sheets, whatever) that shows:

• Prompt
• Engine
• Date
• Result (mention, citation, recommendation, absent)
• Change from prior week

Per McKinsey's 2025 AI survey, 62% of enterprises are now experimenting with AI agents and 23% are scaling them. Teams are building workflows. Your GEO data needs to fit into those workflows.

Content standards document

A written guide that covers:

• Evidence requirements (every claim needs a source)
• Citation format (how to attribute stats, quotes, research)
• Review gates (who signs off before publishing)

This is how you maintain quality if you bring the work in-house later.

Distribution playbook

Where you need presence beyond your domain:

• Comparison sites targeting your category
• Community platforms (Reddit, Quora, industry forums)
• Directories and review sites
• Guest post and backlink targets

This is the omnipresence roadmap. It's not a one-time list; it's a living document you update as you ship.

Shortlist: GEO companies showing up in 2025 search results (and how to validate them)

Use this as a starting point. Your rubric decides.

The agencies below show up in current search results for "GEO agency" and related terms. I've included what they claim, what to verify, and what ownership deliverables to demand.

Omniscient Digital

Best for: B2B SaaS companies wanting "surround sound" visibility across third-party lists and reviews.

What they claim: Emphasis on intellectual honesty, measurement-first approach, and building brand ubiquity across the web.

What to verify: Ask about their prompt library and how they track AI citations specifically. Their positioning is more organic/SEO-adjacent than AI-native.

Demand: Prompt-level baselines, weekly export access, competitor citation gaps.

Source: Omniscient Digital's GEO agencies list

Go Fish Digital

Best for: Teams that want deep technical SEO combined with AI optimization.

What they claim: Patent-backed methodology, dashboarding, and measurement rigor.

What to verify: Ask how the patents translate into your engagement. Get specifics on what "dashboarding" means: are you getting raw exports or just access to their tool?

Demand: Exportable data, clear deliverables beyond "optimization," and a list of what you keep after the engagement ends.

Source: Go Fish Digital's GEO agency roundup

First Page Sage

Best for: Brands that want a reputation-heavy approach (reviews, PR, social signals).

What they claim: GEO = SEO + PR + technical optimization + review management.

What to verify: Their scoring rubric weights reputation signals heavily. Ask how they measure AI-specific outcomes (prompt coverage, citation capture) vs general SEO outcomes.

Demand: Separate reporting for AI visibility vs organic rankings. You want to know what's moving citations, not just traffic.

Source: First Page Sage GEO agency rankings

Stratabeat

Best for: Brands with complex B2B sales cycles looking for aggressive content positioning.

What they claim: Visibility engineering across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and AI Overviews.

What to verify: Ask for case study specifics: what prompts were tracked, what was the baseline, and how did they attribute changes to their work?

Demand: Full methodology documentation and an explanation of how they separate correlation from causation in their results.

Source: Stratabeat GEO service page

Brafton

Best for: Content-heavy engagements where you need volume with quality controls.

What they claim: GEO as an extension of technical SEO, with emphasis on brand mentions and citation-building.

What to verify: They explicitly warn that many agencies are "just doing SEO with a new name." Ask how they're different. Get specifics on AI-native measurement.

Demand: Prompt-level tracking, not just organic keyword rankings. Separate the AI metrics from the SEO metrics.

Source: Brafton GEO company guide

Comparison table

"Verify" means you need to ask in the sales call. "Ask" means it wasn't clear from public materials.

For tool options that complement any agency engagement, see our guide to AI visibility products with GEO.

Red flags: how GEO turns into "SEO with a new name"

The common failure mode is paying for inputs (schema, llms.txt, rewrites) without a measurable loop.

Here's what to watch for:

They won't share the prompt set

If you can't see the queries they're tracking, you can't verify results. Some vendors treat their prompt library as proprietary. That's a lock-in play.

Reporting is screenshots and a "visibility score" with no raw export

A score is a summary. You need the raw data to audit it. If they won't give you exports, ask why.

"GEO" is only schema and llms.txt

Google's documentation says there are "no additional technical requirements" beyond normal indexing for AI features. Schema and llms.txt can help with structure, but they're not the differentiator. If that's all the vendor offers, they're selling table stakes.

AI rewrites with no SME sign-off

One r/marketing commenter summarized it well: "Running finished copy through ChatGPT also breaks accountability."

Ask: where is AI used? Where do humans decide? Who signs off before publish?

No handoff artifacts

If you can't run the system without them, you're not buying a system. You're buying a subscription. That might be fine if you want a long-term retainer, but know what you're signing up for.

They can't explain what changed

As one practitioner admitted in r/TechSEO: "I can't tell what actually caused anything."

If your vendor can't either, that's a problem.

The operational reality: Understanding what makes a good GEO vendor is table stakes. The execution—tracking prompt coverage across AI engines, engineering presence in communities and comparisons, building systems that ship changes weekly—is where most internal teams get stuck. That's the Track → Engineer → Leverage → Own system we build for clients who need this done, not just understood.

How to run a 30-day pilot (measure → ship → re-test)

A pilot should produce four things: a baseline, shipped changes, rerun deltas, and reusable artifacts.

Here's the step-by-step:

Week 0: Lock the measurement contract

Before any work starts, agree on:

• Prompt set: 20-50 prompts covering your key topics and competitors
• Definitions: What counts as a mention, a citation, a recommendation?
• Competitor set: 3-5 direct competitors plus 2-3 aspirational brands
• Engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, and Bing Copilot at minimum
• Export format: CSV or Google Sheets you can access without the vendor

Run the baseline and share results as raw exports. This is your "before" snapshot.

Weeks 1-2: Pick targets and ship changes

Select:

• 3 pages on your site to improve (priority: pages that rank organically but aren't cited, or pages targeting queries where competitors get cited)
• 1 third-party surface to influence (comparison article, directory, community thread, guest post opportunity)

For each page, ship evidence upgrades:

• Add statistics with sources
• Include expert quotes with attribution
• Add comparison tables or FAQ sections where relevant
• Improve structure (headings, definition boxes, clear answers to common questions)

Log every change with dates and specifics. You need this change log for attribution.

Week 3: Rerun and measure

Rerun the full prompt set. Compare to baseline:

• Which prompts now mention you?
• Which citations moved from competitor to you?
• Which prompts stayed flat?

Log the deltas. Don't over-interpret week-over-week movement, but do track direction.

Week 4: Document and hand off

Even if you're continuing the engagement, complete the ownership deliverables:

• Prompt library (documented, exportable)
• Baseline + week 3 comparison
• Change log
• SOP for the measure → ship → re-test loop
• Distribution playbook (third-party targets)

You should be able to run this loop without the vendor if needed.

Attribution reality check

AI traffic attribution is messy. Pew's research shows AI summaries appeared in 18% of Google searches in March 2025. But LLMs don't pass referrers consistently. As one r/TechSEO user noted: "ChatGPT is clearly sending visits but analytics shows nothing."

Accept that clicks will be noisy. Focus on prompt coverage and citation capture as your primary metrics. Treat clicks as a lagging indicator.

For more on implementation, see our step-by-step GEO guide and optimization guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO actually different from SEO, or is it just hype?

Fair question. Reddit's full of practitioners asking the same thing.

Here's the difference: SEO optimizes your website for rankings. GEO optimizes your entire footprint for citations. That includes communities like Reddit and Quora, comparison articles, directories, and backlinks—everywhere AI looks for information.

The Princeton researchers who defined GEO found that specific tactics (citations, statistics, quotation marks) boost AI visibility by 30-40%. Traditional SEO doesn't prioritize these signals in the same way.

The overlap is real. But so is the distinction.

What prompts should I track for my industry?

Start with the questions your prospects actually ask. Run them through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Note who gets cited.

Build a library of 20-50 prompts covering:

• Definition queries ("What is [your category]?")
• Comparison queries ("[Your brand] vs [competitor]")
• Recommendation queries ("Best [solution] for [use case]")
• Problem queries ("How do I solve [pain point]?")

Your GEO vendor should help you build this, but you should own the final list.

How do I know if AI traffic is working if analytics doesn't show it?

You're not alone. One practitioner put it this way: "ChatGPT is clearly sending visits but analytics shows nothing."

Shift your measurement from clicks to visibility. Track:

• Prompt coverage (how often are you mentioned?)
• Citation quality (are you cited as a primary source or just mentioned in passing?)
• Competitor gaps (where are they cited and you aren't?)

Clicks will follow visibility, but the lag can be months.

How much do GEO agencies charge?

Ranges vary widely. Expect:

• Audit-only engagements: $2,000-$10,000 for a one-time visibility assessment
• Ongoing retainers: $5,000-$25,000/month depending on scope
• Project-based work: $15,000-$75,000 for a defined deliverable set

The price isn't the deciding factor. The rubric is. A cheap vendor with no measurement is expensive. An expensive vendor with clear outcomes and ownership artifacts might be worth it.

Can I do GEO in-house instead of hiring an agency?

Yes, if you have the capacity. You need:

• Someone to build and maintain the prompt library
• Tools to track visibility across multiple AI engines
• Content capacity to ship evidence upgrades
• Time to run the measure → ship → re-test loop weekly

For a guide to doing it yourself, see our definitive GEO guide.

What's the difference between GEO tools and GEO agencies?

Tools give you visibility data. Agencies give you visibility data plus execution.

If you have a content team that can ship changes, you might only need tools. If you need someone to run the full loop, you need an agency.

See our GEO tools comparison for platform options.

Conclusion: hire the company that makes measurement inevitable

The GEO market is new. The claims are everywhere. The measurement is inconsistent.

Cut through it with three requirements:

1. Demand a measurement contract: Prompt set, definitions, baseline, rerun cadence, and exportable data. If they won't show you the prompts, don't sign.

2. Demand ownership artifacts: After 90 days, you should have a prompt library, scorecard template, content standards, and distribution playbook. If you can't run the system without them, you're renting, not building.

3. Start with a pilot: 30 days, tight scope, clear deliverables. Prove the loop works before committing to a retainer.

"Generative AI solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines." — Alan Antin, VP Analyst at Gartner

This isn't going away. The question is whether you'll be visible when it matters.

No one can guarantee AI citations. What you can guarantee is doing the work that makes citations possible: measuring where you are, shipping changes, and re-testing until you show up.

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Related Articles

• GEO Services Guide
• GEO Tools Compared
• The Definitive Guide to GEO
• How to Do GEO: Step-by-Step Guide

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