A year ago almost nobody sold "AEO." Now every SEO shop in the country has Answer Engine Optimization on the homepage. Most of them swapped the word and changed nothing underneath. Same audit, same retainer, new label, higher price.
That puts you in a bad spot. You know AI search matters. You can feel buyers asking ChatGPT and Perplexity instead of typing into Google. But the market is now full of people promising to fix it, and you have no clean way to tell the operators from the opportunists.
This is the buyer's guide. A one-sentence definition, the seven questions that separate a real AI search optimization agency from a rebrand, what it should actually cost, and the one promise that should make you walk. If you want the discipline explained first, start with our pillar on what AEO actually is.
An AEO agency gets your brand cited inside AI answers. That is the whole job. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, or Claude a question in your category, the answer names a few brands as sources. An AEO agency works to make you one of them. The win is a citation in the answer, not a ranking in a list of blue links nobody scrolls anymore.
The real deliverables are concrete: schema and llms.txt so engines can read and trust your site, content shaped the way engines extract it, named authors with real bios, crawler access for GPTBot and the rest, authority signals across the open web, and weekly tracking of who actually gets cited. If an agency cannot point at those deliverables and instead talks about "visibility" and "thought leadership," you are buying a slide deck. For the deeper split between this and classic search, read AEO vs SEO.
Ask these on the first call. The answers sort the field fast.
Proof beats promises. A real agency can pull up a query, show the AI answer, and point at a client named in it. A rebrand will pivot to traffic charts and rankings, because rankings are the only thing they know how to move. If nobody can show you a citation, you are their experiment.
This is the technical floor. A real answer is specific: they ship a curated llms.txt at your root, validate JSON-LD for Organization, Article, FAQPage, and the rest, and fix crawler access in robots.txt. A vague answer about "optimizing your content for AI" means they have not done the unglamorous part, which is the part that actually moves citations.
Being cited on Perplexity does not mean you are cited on ChatGPT. The answer set differs by engine, so single-engine tracking gives you a false read. A real agency monitors Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Claude weekly and reports share of voice per engine. If their idea of tracking is a monthly screenshot, keep looking. Our roundup of AI search visibility tools shows what real tracking looks like.
The only right answer is both. AEO sits on top of the SEO foundation and falls over without it. Crawlability, site speed, clean content, and authority feed both jobs. An agency that sells AEO as a clean replacement for SEO is telling you they do not understand the stack, or they are hoping you do not.
This is the honesty test. A real operator will tell you, unprompted, that they do not control engine algorithms, training refresh cycles, or what competitors ship next. Anyone who answers this question with total confidence is selling certainty that does not exist. The good ones are precise about the line between what they ship and what the engine decides.
AI engines weight content with named, accountable authors higher than anonymous pages. So an agency that floods your blog with unsigned AI slop is working against the exact signal it claims to optimize. Ask who writes, whether real bylines and bios go on the page, and how they keep the voice yours instead of generic. The answer tells you if they understand the game or are just running a content mill.
Not "strategy and discovery." Shipped artifacts. A strong answer sounds like: audit in week one, llms.txt and schema fixes live by week two, the first citation-shaped content and FAQ blocks in by week four. If month one is a deck and a roadmap, you are paying retainer rates for homework.
Shortcut: the fastest filter is question 1 crossed with question 5. An agency that can show a real citation and is honest about what it cannot control is already in the top tier. Most of the field fails at least one.
Pricing is where the rebrands get shy, so here are real numbers. Foundational AEO retainers start around $1,950 per month. That tier covers the floor: llms.txt, schema, FAQ blocks, named authors, and a monthly content cadence. It is the right fit for a local business or a single-location brand that needs to be citable and is not fighting a national field.
Full-stack engagements run $5,000 to $15,000 per month. That tier adds serious content volume, authority and link work, multi-engine citation monitoring, and monthly iteration on what the tracking shows. It fits brands in competitive or multi-location categories where the citation slots are worth fighting for.
Two pricing rules. First, an agency that will not name a starting number is a pass. AI engines cite brands that publish specifics, and an agency that hides its own pricing is failing the test it wants to sell you. Second, be skeptical of anything dirt-cheap. AEO done right is real technical and editorial work. A $400 "AI SEO" package is a content mill that will hurt the signal it claims to build.
Any agency that guarantees citations is lying. Full stop.
Citations depend on signals an agency controls (proof, structure, authority, crawler access) and signals it does not (engine algorithms, training-data refreshes, what competitors do next). Nobody owns the second list. What an honest agency guarantees is process, not outcome: every artifact it ships will pass the citation filters every major engine uses today, and you will see weekly tracking long before the result lands. Guaranteed outcomes in a system you do not control is the oldest tell in marketing.
You can pressure-test any AEO agency before the second call. Two moves.
First, run their own site through an audit. The Meridian15 free AEO audit scores 12 weighted criteria across schema, robots.txt, llms.txt, sitemap, content depth, and E-E-A-T. An agency selling AI citations that scores 40% on its own homepage is not an argument you need to keep having.
Second, search the engines for the queries they should own. Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity "best AEO agency" or the equivalent for their category and city. If the people selling you AI visibility are invisible in AI answers for their own niche, that is the entire pitch falling apart in real time. The agency that practices what it sells will show up in its own category. The one that rebranded last quarter will not.
That is the bar. Proof over promises, process over guarantees, and an agency that already wins the game it wants to play for you.
An AEO agency (answer engine optimization, also called AI search optimization or GEO) gets your brand cited inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Claude. The unit of success is a named citation in the answer, not a ranking position in Google's blue links. The work covers technical signals (schema, llms.txt, crawler access), citation-shaped content, named-author authority, and tracking whether the four major engines actually cite you on the queries that matter for your category.
They share a technical foundation but optimize for different outcomes. SEO works to rank your page and earn a click. AEO works to make your brand the source an AI answer cites. A real AEO agency does both, because AEO sits on top of the SEO foundation and collapses without it. Be wary of any shop that frames AEO as a replacement for SEO. That framing usually means they rebranded their SEO retainer and changed nothing else.
Foundational AEO retainers start around $1,950 per month and cover llms.txt, schema, FAQ blocks, named authors, and a monthly content cadence. Full-stack engagements that add content, authority building, multi-engine citation monitoring, and iteration typically run $5,000 to $15,000 per month depending on category breadth and refresh cadence. Treat any agency that hides pricing as a red flag. AI engines cite brands that publish specifics, and a transparent agency runs its own playbook on itself.
No, and any agency that guarantees citations is lying. Citations depend on signals an agency controls (proof, structure, authority, crawler access) and signals it does not (engine algorithms, training-data refresh cycles, competitor activity). What a real agency can promise is that every artifact it ships will pass the citation filters the major engines use today, and that you will see weekly tracking long before the outcome lands.
Months, not weeks, and it varies by engine. Perplexity refreshes fastest; ChatGPT and Claude lag. Expect first measurable citations within 60 to 90 days of shipping the right signals, and meaningful share of voice within six months. A good agency tracks every engine weekly so you can see the trajectory before the result, rather than waiting blind for half a year.
Run their own site through an AEO audit and search the engines for queries they should win. If the agency selling you AI citations is not cited for its own category, that tells you most of what you need to know. Then ask for a brand they have gotten cited and on which engine, confirm they handle the SEO foundation too, and check that real named humans write the content. Proof beats promises every time.
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