How to choose a GEO agency when almost nobody has a track record

GEO, or generative engine optimization, is the work of getting your brand named and cited in the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s AI Overviews. Choosing an agency for it is harder than choosing one for SEO for a simple reason: almost none has years of history you can check. The cases are recent, the results are measured with new tools, and anyone can say they “rank in ChatGPT” without anyone contradicting them in the meeting.

The short answer: pick the agency that can tell you how it measures, what it will touch inside and outside your site, and what it cannot promise. If it guarantees you will show up in ChatGPT, it has not understood how these systems work.

How is choosing a GEO agency different from choosing an SEO agency?

SEO has decades of shared metrics (rankings, traffic, links) and GEO does not yet. With an SEO agency you can ask for a rankings report and check it yourself. With a GEO agency, the report depends on how that agency decided to measure.

That is why the questions matter more here. If you want the list for SEO, it is in how to choose an SEO agency. The ones below are specific to GEO.

How does the agency measure whether you show up in AI answers?

It is the first question and the one that separates agencies most. A GEO agency should be able to show you, before it starts, a snapshot of your current presence: what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and AI Overviews answer when a customer asks about what you sell, and whether your brand or your competitor’s comes up.

Ask how many queries it runs, how many times it repeats each one, and how it avoids being misled by a single day’s answer. A screenshot with your brand in one answer proves nothing, because the same model can give you a different answer on the next try. What counts is the percentage of times you appear over many repetitions. We walk through the method in how to check if your business shows up in ChatGPT.

At SEOCOM we measure with Ahrefs, Sistrix, SE Ranking and DinoRANK, and with Mirvel, our own technology. Ask any agency which tools it uses and whether it can show you a figure taken from them, not a screenshot.

Does it tell a mention from a citation?

A mention is the model naming you inside the answer. A citation is the model linking to your site as a source. They look alike on screen and are worked differently: if you are not mentioned, the problem is usually authority and presence in other sources; if you are mentioned but not cited, meaning there is no link to you, it is usually down to how your content is structured.

If the agency does not make that distinction, it cannot tell you what to work on first. It is a two-minute question and the answer shows quickly.

What will the agency work on inside your site, and what outside it?

GEO is not done only on your site. Part of the work is internal: content that answers your sector’s questions directly, structured data, visible authorship. The other part is outside your site: the sources the models read to decide whom to recommend.

An agency that only talks about “optimizing your content” is describing half the project. One that only talks about winning press mentions and does not review your site is describing the other half. On our GEO page we cover six areas: presence audit, semantic optimization, schema, authority, content built for extraction, and monthly monitoring. Use it as a checklist to compare with any proposal you receive, ours included.

What happens to your SEO?

Ask what the agency does with your Google rankings, because GEO and SEO share a base: authority, content, technical. A site with serious crawling or authority problems is unlikely to be cited, so an agency that sells you GEO without looking at how your SEO is doing is solving only part of the project and will get little out of it.

Does the agency promise specific results?

If the answer is yes, be suspicious. The models can answer the same question differently, and there is no fixed ranking to guarantee, as there was on Google. An honest agency talks about frequency of appearance, about which queries, and about timelines as ranges.

Our own service page says technical improvements can show in 4 to 8 weeks, content and authority improvements in 8 to 16, and a consolidated presence as a cited source takes 6 to 12 months. If someone promises results in two weeks, they either do not know how it works or hope you will not ask them a month later.

Can the agency show you a case with numbers?

Ask for one, and ask for three things with it: what was measured, when and with which tool. “We increased mentions by X%” without those three answers is brochure copy. With them, you can compare with another agency or repeat the measurement yourself.

Here is an example with our own answers. We have worked with RACE for more than 10 years, SEO and GEO together today, and this is what Sistrix measures for race.es in its AI module today: 19,291 prompts in Google AI Overviews, 1,361 in Google AI Mode and 493 in OpenAI ChatGPT. What we measured: in how many prompts of each model Sistrix detects the domain. When: 4 October 2026. With which tool: Sistrix. It is a snapshot of today, not a comparison with earlier months.

You can see the rest of our work in case studies.

How much does a GEO agency cost?

Price depends on scope, and you should distrust anyone who will not give you even a range. At SEOCOM we do not work GEO separately: we always do it inside SEO, as a single project, because the two layers share a base (authority, content, technical) and splitting them means paying twice for the same thing. Monthly execution starts at €1,500 a month and is adjusted after a first diagnosis meeting. The breakdown by project type is in how much an SEO agency costs in Spain.

We have no verified comparison of what other agencies charge, so we do not quote anyone else’s figures. What you can do is ask for three proposals and compare what each includes: how many engines are monitored, how often, and what deliverables you get each month. Also ask who does the technical implementation and the content production.

Questions to bring to the meeting

If you only have five minutes, these are the ones that separate agencies most:

1. How do you measure my presence today, and how will you measure it every month?
2. Do you tell a mention from a citation? What would you do differently in each case?
3. What is done inside my site and what outside it?
4. What happens to my SEO in the meantime?
5. What can you not promise me?
6. Can you show me a case, with what you measured, when and with which tool?

The answers matter more for how they are given than for what they say. If they answer precisely and with some caveats, that is a good sign. If everything sounds like a guarantee, it is not.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a GEO agency, or is my SEO agency enough?

It depends on whether your SEO agency knows how to measure and work visibility in generative engines. Ask it the questions above. If it answers precisely, you may not need another one. If it tells you it is the same as SEO, that is a sign it does not work it.

How long does GEO take to show results?

According to our service page, 4 to 8 weeks for technical improvements, 8 to 16 for content and authority, and 6 to 12 months to consolidate as a cited source.

Can an agency guarantee I will show up in ChatGPT?

No. The models can give different answers to the same question, so what can be agreed is what gets measured and what gets worked on, not a position.

How much does a GEO agency cost?

At SEOCOM it is not bought on its own: GEO goes inside the SEO project, whose monthly execution starts at €1,500 a month, with a tailored proposal after a diagnosis. We have no verified data on what other agencies charge.

If you are at the stage of comparing proposals and want to ask us these questions, tell us about your project. We will answer all of them, the uncomfortable ones included.