How to Choose an AEO/GEO Agency for Your B2B Business

More B2B buyers now start vendor research by asking ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Perplexity or Copilot for a shortlist. That has created a new kind of agency pitch: answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO). Some agencies offering it are doing careful, measurable work. Others have simply renamed an old SEO retainer.

Choosing the wrong partner can cost you a full budget cycle. This guide gives B2B marketing leaders a practical way to compare AEO/GEO agencies: what the work should include, the questions to ask, the red flags to avoid, and how to test a partner before signing a long contract.

What an AEO/GEO agency should actually do

AI search systems still depend on the open web. They retrieve pages, read them, and decide which sources are clear and trustworthy enough to mention or cite. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in its AI features beyond normal SEO best practices. So a credible agency builds on search fundamentals rather than replacing them. Expect the work to cover five areas:

• Technical access. Important pages can be crawled, rendered and indexed, and AI crawlers you want to allow are not blocked by mistake in robots.txt or a firewall.
• Entity clarity. Your company, products, use cases and experts are described consistently on your site and across trusted third-party profiles, so systems can tell who you are and what you do.
• Answer-ready content. Pages that answer the real questions buyers ask, with specifics, comparisons and evidence, instead of generic thought leadership.
• Third-party evidence. Earned mentions, reviews, analyst coverage, partner listings and community discussion that support your claims from outside your own website.
• Measurement. A repeatable way to track where your brand appears in AI answers and how that connects to pipeline.

Start with your goal, not the agency’s pitch

Before you take a single sales call, write down three things. First, the buyer questions that matter most to you, for example “best SOC 2 compliance software for mid-size fintech” or “alternatives to [competitor]”. Second, the platforms your buyers actually use. Third, the business outcome you want: more qualified demo requests, more inclusion in shortlists, or better accuracy when AI tools describe your product.

This turns every agency conversation into a test. A good agency will engage with your list, challenge it where needed, and explain how they would measure progress against it. A weak one will steer you back to a generic package.

Eight questions to ask every AEO/GEO agency

1. How do you measure AI visibility, and can I see a sample report?

AI answers change from run to run and vary by location, account and wording. Ask how the agency handles that. Look for a fixed prompt set, recorded dates and settings, repeated runs, and tracking of both brand mentions and linked citations. Be cautious with a single proprietary “AI score” that cannot be explained.

2. What will you change on our website, and what will you do off it?

You should get a clear split between on-site work (technical fixes, page structure, content updates, structured data where it fits the page) and off-site work (digital PR, review platforms, partner and directory listings, expert contributions). If the plan is only one or the other, ask why.

3. How will you connect visibility to pipeline?

Mentions are a leading indicator, not the goal. Ask how they will use your CRM, self-reported attribution (“How did you hear about us?”), branded search trends and sales feedback to judge whether AI visibility is turning into qualified opportunities.

4. What will you not promise?

No agency controls what ChatGPT or Google’s AI features say. An honest partner will tell you that clearly and promise process, quality and reporting instead of guaranteed placements. If you hear “we guarantee you’ll be recommended by ChatGPT”, treat it as a warning.

5. Who will do the work?

Ask for the names and roles of the people on your account, how senior they are, and whether any work is subcontracted or white-labelled. Subcontracting is common and can work well, but you should know who is accountable for quality.

6. How do you use AI to create content?

Using AI tools is not a problem in itself. Google’s guidance focuses on whether content is helpful and reliable, and its spam policies cover scaled content produced mainly to manipulate rankings. Ask how drafts are fact-checked, which subject-matter experts review them, and how the agency adds original insight.

7. What do you need from our team?

Good AEO/GEO work needs access to your product experts, customer stories and approval process. Ask for a realistic estimate of your team’s time each month. Projects often stall because nobody budgeted for internal reviews.

8. What happens if we part ways?

You should keep your prompt set, historical tracking data, content, reports and account access. Confirm in the contract that tools and logins are set up in your name or can be transferred.

Red flags to watch for

• Guaranteed rankings, citations or recommendations in any AI platform.
• One file, markup type or “secret” technique presented as the whole strategy.
• Visibility scores with no explanation of the prompts, dates or method behind them.
• Plans to publish large volumes of thin AI-generated pages.
• Tactics that fake third-party evidence, such as paid fake reviews or planted forum posts.
• No baseline review of your existing SEO, analytics and conversion tracking.
• Reporting that stops at mentions and never reaches leads or pipeline.

Compare agencies with a simple scorecard

Use the same criteria for every agency on your shortlist. Score each one from 1 to 5 after the proposal stage.

Criterion	What good looks like	Warning sign
Measurement method	Fixed prompt set, repeated runs, mentions and citations tracked separately	One unexplained score
SEO foundations	Technical and content baseline before AI-specific work	Skips SEO entirely
Business outcomes	Plan to connect visibility to CRM and sales feedback	Reports only on mentions
Content quality	Expert review, fact-checking, original insight	High-volume AI pages
Off-site evidence	Earned mentions, reviews and partner listings	Fake or paid reviews
Team transparency	Named roles, disclosed subcontracting	Unknown delivery team
Exit terms	You own data, content and access	Data locked in agency tools

Run a 90-day pilot before a long contract

A focused pilot shows how an agency thinks and works before you commit to a year. A typical structure looks like this:

• Weeks 1–2: baseline. Agree the prompt set and platforms, record current visibility, and audit technical access, key pages and tracking.
• Weeks 3–8: fix and build. Resolve priority technical issues, improve or create pages for a small group of high-value buyer questions, and start off-site work.
• Weeks 9–12: re-measure and review. Re-run the same prompts under the same conditions, review lead quality with sales, and decide whether to expand.

Ninety days is often too short for large visibility changes, so judge the pilot on quality of work, clarity of reporting and early signals, not only on final results.

What should an AEO/GEO agency cost?

Pricing depends on scope: how many products and markets you cover, how much content and digital PR is included, and how much of the technical work your team can do in-house. Compare proposals by deliverables and accountability, not by hours or by the length of the feature list. For a fuller breakdown of cost drivers, see our guide to B2B SEO and AI search optimization cost.

Checklist before you sign

• Your priority buyer questions and platforms are written into the scope.
• The measurement method is documented, including prompts, dates and settings.
• Reporting connects visibility to CRM data and sales feedback.
• The delivery team and any subcontractors are named.
• Content quality and expert review steps are agreed.
• You own the data, content and account access.
• A pilot or early review point comes before any long commitment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Next step

Want an independent view of where your brand appears in AI answers today? An AI visibility audit gives you a baseline you can use to compare agency proposals.

Start with an AI visibility audit →

Related guides

• SEO vs. GEO: Where Should B2B Companies Invest in 2027?
• How Much Does B2B SEO and AI Search Optimization Cost?
• How B2B Companies Can Measure Visibility in ChatGPT and Google AI
• Why Your B2B Brand Isn’t Appearing in ChatGPT Recommendations
• How to Connect B2B SEO, AI Search, and CRM Revenue Data

Sources and verification notes

The frameworks, checklists and examples in this article are operational recommendations, not survey data or audited client results. Any figures are illustrative calculations, labelled as such. The sources below support the search and platform guidance only.

1. Google: AI features and your website
2. Google: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
3. Google: Spam policies for Google web search
4. OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
5. Google: Introduction to structured data markup