A few days ago I came across a question in an online forum that I hear in different versions all the time: how do you find a GEO agency that actually understands AI search? The person had noticed what many business owners notice right now. Suddenly every second agency offers GEO, AI visibility or LLM optimization, and it is hard to tell what they really do.
I have worked in SEO since 2009, in agencies, in-house and as a consultant. I have seen a few of these waves. So here is my honest take on how to choose, and the questions I would ask before signing anything.
My short answer: a good GEO agency explains its process in plain words, promises work rather than rankings, starts with the basics on your website and content, shows how it measures, and fits the size of your business.
What is GEO?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. Classic SEO is about ranking in a list of links. GEO is about making it easier for tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews to understand, quote and recommend you when someone asks them a question.
When these tools search the web for an answer, they rely on what they can find and understand about you: your website, your profiles, what others write about you, and how clearly all of that fits together. GEO is not magic and it is not a secret trick. A big part of it is solid SEO craft, plus a sharper focus on clear facts, quotable content and consistency across the web.
1. They can explain their process in plain words
This is the most important point, and the forum post got it right. GEO is still changing quickly. Nobody has a finished playbook. An agency that understands this will explain clearly what they do, why they do it and what they cannot control.
If you leave a call and still don’t know what will actually happen to your website and content, that is your answer. Terms like “LLM data layer” or “brand recall inside the models” sound impressive, but ask what they mean in practice. A good partner can translate every buzzword into a concrete task.
2. They don’t promise rankings in ChatGPT
Nobody can guarantee that a specific AI tool will name your brand. The answers change from person to person, from day to day and from model update to model update. Anyone who promises “you will be the top answer in ChatGPT” is selling hope.
What a serious agency can promise is the work: making your business as easy as possible to understand, verify and quote. That is honest, and I believe it is the work that pays off over time.
3. They start with the foundations
Before any fancy audit, look at whether they talk about the basics. In my experience these are the places to start, especially for smaller brands:
- Clear facts on your website: who you are, what you offer, for whom, where and at what price range
- Structured data (schema) that describes your business, your services and your people
- Content that answers the real questions your clients ask, in a form that can be quoted
- Consistent information on your profiles, directories and platforms
- Mentions and reviews on other trusted sites, not only on your own
- A website that loads quickly and that search engines and AI crawlers can actually read
If an agency skips all of this and goes straight to dashboards and tracking tools, be careful. Tracking is useful, but it does not change how well AI tools understand you.
4. They show you how they measure
Measuring AI visibility is harder than measuring Google rankings. Ask them directly how they track progress. Reasonable answers include a fixed set of test questions they check regularly across several AI tools, a count of how often your brand and pages are mentioned or cited, and the traffic that reaches you from AI tools in your analytics.
What matters is that they tell you honestly how reliable these numbers are. AI answers vary. A good partner looks at trends over months, not at a single screenshot.
5. They fit the size of your business
Many GEO offers are built for large brands with big budgets and many competitors. If you run a coaching practice, a retreat business or a small sustainable brand, you need something different: fewer reports, more real work on your content and website, and someone who understands your audience.
Ask who will actually work on your account, and whether they have worked with businesses like yours before.
Questions I would ask in a first call
- What exactly will you change on my website and in my content in the first three months?
- What can you not influence, and how do you deal with that?
- How do you measure whether it is working, and how reliable is that?
- Who does the work, and how much of it is automated?
- What do you need from me, and how much of my time will it take?
- What happens to my content and data if we stop working together?
Red flags
- Guaranteed placements in ChatGPT, Gemini or any other AI tool
- No clear answer to “what will you actually do?”
- Lots of proprietary tracking, very little work on your content
- Content mass-produced by AI without anyone checking it against your voice and your facts
- Long contracts before you have seen a single concrete result
What it comes down to
A good GEO partner is above all a good translator. They understand how search and AI tools work, they can explain it to you without jargon, and they stay honest about what nobody can control yet. The biggest list of services is rarely the best sign. Clarity is.
If you would like to see how I approach this for spiritual and sustainable brands, you can read about my offer, Visible, Without the Noise. You are also welcome to bring your questions to a free call.
