Generative Engine Optimization Agency: What You Get, 9 Compared, and How to Vet One

Your pipeline report says fewer buyers arrive from Google, and your sales team keeps hearing "ChatGPT recommended you" or, worse, "ChatGPT recommended them." So you start looking for a generative engine optimization agency, and every list you find is written by an agency that ranked itself first. You need to know what you are actually buying, what it costs, and whether your own team could do it.

The short answer: a generative engine optimization agency tries to get your brand cited in AI answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews. The work that matters is earned mentions on sources AI engines trust, quotable content with real data, crawler access and honest measurement. Hire one only if you lack the people for off-site work; otherwise run it in-house.

On September 26, 2026, Ertiqah read the GEO service pages of nine agencies that appear in this search and its AI Overview. Only 2 of the 9 published a starting price, 5 of the 9 list schema markup as a core deliverable, and 2 still sell llms.txt files, two tactics the evidence says do not move citations. The details and a copyable vetting list are below.

What does a generative engine optimization agency actually deliver?

A GEO agency delivers four kinds of work, and they carry very different evidence behind them. Knowing which is which is the fastest way to read a proposal:

1. Off-site mentions (strongest evidence). Getting your brand named in listicles, reviews, communities and press that AI engines retrieve. Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands found branded web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, versus 0.218 for backlinks, roughly three times stronger.
2. Quotable content (controlled evidence). Rewriting pages to lead with direct answers, statistics and attributed quotes. The Princeton and Georgia Tech GEO paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues reports that GEO "can boost visibility by up to 40% in generative engine responses", with statistics and quotations among the strongest tactics.
3. Measurement (necessary, often oversold). Tracking prompts across engines and reporting mentions, sentiment and referral traffic. Useful, but AI visibility is not one number: Kevin Indig found 91% of citations appear in only one engine.
4. Technical markup (weakest evidence). Schema, llms.txt files and "AI-friendly" site versions. Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added schema and saw no measurable AI citation lift, and a 300,000-domain analysis found no clear effect from llms.txt.

"You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features." (Google Search Central, AI features and your website)

A good proposal spends most of its hours on the first two buckets. A weak one spends them on the fourth.

What do 9 GEO agency service pages actually show?

Most GEO agency pages hide the price, lean on schema, and show proof you cannot check. Each row below was read from the agency's own GEO service page on September 26, 2026; "Schema" and "llms.txt" mean the page lists it as a deliverable.

Two findings stand out. First, 4 of the 9 tie an AI-search result to a named client (Directive, Omnius, TripleDart and WebFX), and only Directive's is a pipeline metric, backed by its Case Status case study. Percepture's biggest number, a 3000% rise in AI mentions, is credited to an unnamed client. Second, Seer Interactive is the only page that shows its own research, finding that 72% of cited pages had been updated in the past year while only 42% had been published in that time, which says freshness beats newness. It is also the only page that states the limit plainly:

"You can't guarantee every output, but you can show up in enough places, with enough credibility, that you stay part of the answer no matter how the algorithms evolve." (Seer Interactive, generative engine optimization)

Ertiqah also read each agency's robots.txt. None blocks OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, the crawler that fetches pages for ChatGPT search. Onely blocks the training crawlers GPTBot and ClaudeBot while leaving search crawlers alone, the split OpenAI documents in its crawler guide. Ask any agency you hire to check yours the same way.

How much does a generative engine optimization agency cost?

A generative engine optimization agency costs roughly $3,000 to $10,000+ a month at the published and reported floors, usually with a multi-month commitment. The few public numbers, as checked on September 26, 2026:

• WebFX: GEO services start at $3,000 a month; its tier table on the same page runs from $3,000 to $68,250 a month on a 6-month commitment.
• TripleDart: plans start at $5,000 a month and "scale with scope", aimed at companies with an established SEO foundation and $5M+ ARR.
• Everyone else in the table: quote on request. Minuttia's own roundup of GEO agencies lists engagement minimums from $500 for hourly GEO work to $10,000+ a month at the top end, though it is an agency ranking itself first.

Budget one more line: tooling. Agencies often bill their own tracker into the retainer, while the same data costs $29 a month on Otterly.AI Lite (15 prompts, four engines) or nothing at all in Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report.

Which GEO agency fits which buyer?

The right GEO agency depends on your stage, your category and whether you need pipeline attribution or brand narrative. This decision table names one pick per buyer type, based on what each agency says about itself on its own page.

How do you vet a GEO agency? A copyable checklist

You vet a GEO agency by asking for proof you can check against your own data, not theirs. Paste these questions into your RFP or first call; a strong agency answers every one in writing.

1. Which AI engines will you track for us, and how many prompts per engine? Send the draft prompt list.
2. What share of your hours goes to off-site mentions, content, measurement and technical work?
3. Which of your case studies names the client, the engine, the baseline and the timeframe?
4. Will you report Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance citations and GA4 sessions from utm_source=chatgpt.com alongside your own tracker?
5. What do you expect schema and llms.txt to change, and what evidence is that based on?
6. Which third-party sites will you pursue mentions on, and are any of them paid placements? How are paid ones disclosed?
7. What will you change on our site, and will we approve every edit before it goes live?
8. What does month three look like if citations have not moved, and can we exit then?
9. Who does the work: named people, or a subcontracted team?
10. Do you use your own tool for tracking, and do we keep the data if we leave?
11. How do you handle an engine change, such as a sudden drop in one source's citation share?
12. What will you not promise us?

Red flags, each grounded in the evidence above:

• A guaranteed position in ChatGPT. No one controls model output; even Seer says so on its sales page.
• Schema or llms.txt as the headline deliverable. Good hygiene, no measured citation lift.
• One "AI visibility score" for all engines. Citations barely overlap across engines, so a blended score hides where you lose.
• Proof with no names. A 3,000% lift from an unnamed client is a claim, not a case study.
• Paid placements without disclosure. The FTC's endorsement guides apply to paid mentions too.
• Reporting only from their own tracker. Insist on first-party numbers you can see yourself.

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

Yes: most teams under about $5M ARR can run GEO in-house with one marketer's time and tools that cost between $0 and $29 a month, because the highest-evidence work is content and mentions, not proprietary technology. A 90-day plan:

1. Week 1: measure what is real. Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and open AI Performance for citations and grounding queries. In Search Console, AI Overview and AI Mode clicks sit inside the Performance report's "Web" totals, per Google's documentation. Tag ChatGPT referrals in GA4 by source.
2. Week 1: check access. Confirm robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Bingbot, even if you block training crawlers.
3. Weeks 2 to 6: fix your ten money pages. Lead each with a 40 to 60 word direct answer, add sourced statistics and one attributed quote, and date the page. Before you publish each rewrite, run it through a no-login checker that scores 14 SEO and 10 GEO signals in the browser and fix what it flags.
4. Weeks 2 to 12: earn mentions. Ask the authors of the top "best X" lists in your category to review you, collect reviews on the platforms your buyers read, and answer real threads where your product fits. Mentions, not links, carry the strongest correlation in Ahrefs' brand study.
5. Weeks 4 to 12: track a small prompt set. Pick 15 buyer questions and track them on a budget tracker; Ertiqah's roundup of AI SEO tools for startups covers the wider stack.
6. Week 12: decide. If citations and referrals moved, keep going. If off-site work stalled for lack of people, that is the moment an agency earns its fee.

A worked example: a 12-person B2B SaaS team spends one marketer's Fridays on this plan, reviews Bing grounding queries monthly, and rewrites two pages a week. Its total tool spend is $29 a month, and the same team can still hire a PR-led agency later for the one bucket it cannot staff.

Where Murkuz fits (and where it does not)

Murkuz is not a GEO agency or an AI citation tracker: it does not run prompts, earn mentions or edit your site. It covers one job in both the agency and in-house routes, which is checking results against your own first-party data.

Murkuz is a read-only connector that brings Google Search Console, Google Analytics 4 and Bing Webmaster Tools into Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client. Connect the sources once through their official APIs, paste one URL into your assistant, and ask in plain language: which landing pages gained sessions from chatgpt.com since the engagement started, which queries those pages now rank for, or how Bing compares with Google for the same site. That makes an agency's monthly report something you can verify in a conversation rather than take on trust. One connection covers every site on the account, with nothing to install and no Google Cloud project; the tools it exposes are listed on the Murkuz MCP tools page. The Copilot citation report itself stays inside Bing Webmaster Tools. For how it compares with the open-source options, see Ertiqah's guide to Google Search Console MCP servers.

FAQ

What is a generative engine optimization agency?

A generative engine optimization agency is a marketing firm that works to get a brand cited and recommended inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Typical work covers earned mentions, content restructuring, AI visibility tracking and technical markup.

What is the difference between GEO and SEO?

SEO aims to rank pages in search results; GEO aims to be quoted inside AI answers. They share a foundation, since AI engines retrieve from search indexes, and Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews. GEO adds per-engine citation tracking and a heavier focus on off-site mentions.

Is an answer engine optimization agency the same as a GEO agency?

In practice, yes. AEO (answer engine optimization), GEO and "LLM SEO" agencies sell the same services under different labels, and several agencies in the table run separate pages for each term.

How much does a GEO agency cost?

Published floors checked on September 26, 2026 start at $3,000 a month (WebFX) and $5,000 a month (TripleDart), and one agency-written roundup lists minimums up to $10,000+ a month. Most agencies quote on request, often with a multi-month commitment.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Percepture's page says three to six months is typical. Plan a 90-day review: first-party citations in Bing AI Performance and ChatGPT referrals in GA4 should show movement on your priority pages by then if the work is landing.

Can a GEO agency guarantee ChatGPT will recommend us?

No. No agency controls model output, and AI citations shift quickly across engines. Treat any guarantee of a position as a red flag.

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