How do I choose a generative engine optimization agency?
Author: AnswerBuild desk · Updated: September 2026
Choosing a generative engine optimization agency is like choosing any specialized writer: look at their method, their samples, and what they refuse to promise. The right agency will show you the exact questions they run, how they score the answers, and what pages you get. The wrong one will sell placement inside ChatGPT as if it were ad inventory.
Five questions to ask
- What is the prompt list? A real agency has one. It should be based on your customer questions, not a generic keyword list.
- How do you score the answers? Look for a 0–2 scale: not mentioned, cited, or named. Anything fuzzier is not measurement.
- What do I actually receive? You want published pages with schema, not just a PDF report.
- How often do you rerun the prompts? Monthly is standard. One-time snapshots are incomplete.
- What happens if nothing moves? The honest answer is that some questions do not move, especially broad ones dominated by national brands.
Red flags
- — Guaranteed mentions in ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, or AI Overviews.
- — "AI recommended" badges or "as seen in" claims.
- — No visible author or date on their own guides.
- — A platform seat fee with no clear page count.
- — Refusal to share the prompt list or the scoring method.
What a good proposal looks like
A good proposal names the deliverables, the measurement, and the limits. For example: fifteen prompts across four engines, a baseline score, five answer pages with FAQ schema, one revision, and a 30-day rerun. It also states explicitly that placement is not guaranteed and that the work is the pages and the snapshot.
Who this is for
- — Owners who have been pitched "AI SEO" but cannot tell what is actually being bought.
- — Marketing teams that need an outside pair of eyes on what AI engines say about the brand.
- — Small businesses that want pages built once and then maintained, not a dashboard subscription.
Sources
Claims about engine behavior should be verified against OpenAI, xAI, Perplexity, and Google Search Central documentation. Claims about agency pricing should come from written proposals, not industry averages.
FAQ
- Should I hire a GEO agency or do this in-house?
- In-house works if you have a clear writer who can also add schema and the hours to maintain it. An agency buys speed, an outside perspective, and a fixed scope. That is what AnswerBuild sells — contact us to talk through fit.
- Do agencies need access to my website?
- Yes, to publish pages. If you prefer, they can write pages and your team can publish them.
- Can a GEO agency also do my SEO?
- Some can. GEO and SEO overlap on crawlability and structure, but they are different disciplines. Ask which they are actually delivering.
- What is a fair price?
- $750–$1,500 for a small build and $300–$500 a month for monitoring is typical. Enterprise platforms cost more.