GEO Agency: how to choose and what to ask before signing a contract

Below, we have compiled a list of questions, warning signs and ways to check the results. We explain the concept itself on the page What is GEO?.

What does the GEO agency do?

In other words, what the term GEO refers to: working on the brand’s presence in AI chatbot responses. In practice, this involves a combination of three areas of expertise: analytics (measurement and diagnosis), content (a website that answers customers’ questions, i.e. AEO) and off-site activities similar to PR. Some agencies offer this as a separate service, whilst others treat it as an extension of their existing services SEO. We describe the differences between these approaches in the text SEO, GEO and AEO.

The service is often marketed under the name SEO in ChatGPT or SEO using AI. The name doesn’t matter; what counts is the scope and the billing method.

What should GEO’s services include?

A pre-launch assessment, an action plan and regular reports. If any of these elements are missing from the proposal, it will be difficult to assess what you are paying for.

The questions in the survey must not mention your brand name. When asked about a company by name, a test subject will usually say something about it, but what matters is whether they mention it of their own accord when a customer asks about a category. That’s the rule a neutral scan. The set of questions should remain the same throughout the entire period of cooperation, that is to say frozen, because only then can subsequent reports be compared.

What should you ask GEO about before signing the contract?

It’s about how it measures its performance, what it does and what it doesn’t promise. A good GEO agency will provide specific answers to each of these questions:

• Which models do you measure, and are the questions in Polish?
• How many questions are there in the survey, and will I be given a list of them?
• How often do you take measurements, and how do you distinguish between fluctuations and genuine changes?
• What do you do on my website, and what do you do outside it? Who creates the content and who publishes it?
• What results have you seen in other clients, and how long did it take?
• What does the report look like, and does it show how I compare with the competition?
• How long is the contract for, and what happens to the content once it ends?

The answer to the question about fluctuations is particularly important. AI chatbots respond slightly differently each time, so a single dip means nothing, as we explain in the text A drop in AI visibility: a temporary fluctuation or a real problem?.

What are the warning signs in GEO’s range of services?

Each of these promises is a reason to ask GEO for further details. We explain how long each change takes on the website Why do changes take time?. In a study by SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai from January 2026, ChatGPT and Google’s AI provided the same list of brands in fewer than 1 in 100 repetitions of the same question. Read more about this in the article Why does AI give a different answer every time?.

How much does GEO charge?

According to price lists published by Polish agencies, basic GEO services start at around 1,500–2,000 PLN net per month, whilst comprehensive services cost 8,000–10,000 PLN or more. A one-off initial audit usually costs from 2,000–3,000 PLN. When comparing offers from GEO agencies, don’t just look at the rate itself, but at what you get: how many questions in the analysis, how many pages optimised and how many mentions generated per month. A more comprehensive comparison of costs, including tools, can be found in the article How much does visibility monitoring cost in AI?.

How can you tell if the GEO agency is delivering results?

Measuring the same thing, regardless of the GEO agency. All you need to do is check the same set of questions once a month and compare three figures: how many responses mention your brand (reference), how often do models cite your website as a source (citation index) and what’s yours? proportion of responses compared to the competition. We explain how often to measure this in the text How often should visibility be measured?.

This is how it works in practice at a lime producer in the Łódź region: in June 2026, the models did not mention it in any of the 18 questions; in July, in 17 of them; and in October, in all 18. Citations of its website rose during this period from 6% to 100%. Details are provided in the text Website citation in AI: lime manufacturer.

GEO Agency or working independently with the tool?

It depends on how much time your team has. Using GEO makes sense if no one in the company is going to handle content and activities outside the website. Working with the tool yourself makes sense if you have a marketing person who only needs performance metrics and a to-do list. Many companies combine both approaches: they handle the analytics themselves but outsource the implementation. That way, you also have independent data to discuss with the agency.

In the Aelo module Visibility in AI It evaluates ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity on a frozen set of questions, and the result is converted into tasks in Tickets, organised by impact. You will prepare the content for the vulnerabilities found in Studio and either send it to an agency or publish it yourself. Agencies wishing to manage this many clients can find out more on the website Aelo for agencies, and companies without a marketing team on their website Aelo for small businesses. You can take your first measurement on the Free account, without a card.

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Sources

• Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation (KDD 2024): https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735
• SparkToro and Gumshoe.ai, a study into the consistency of brand recommendations in AI (January 2026): https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-ais-are-highly-inconsistent-when-recommending-brands-or-products-marketers-should-take-care-when-tracking-ai-visibility/
• Aelo reports for Wapiennik „Węże” dated 24 June, 27 July and 14 October 2026 (published with the client’s consent)