How much does GEO or AEO cost?

There's no standard rate, which is exactly why itemization matters more than the number: the $4,200 horror stories aren't about price, they're about paying a premium for unverifiable or rebadged work. Whatever the quote, demand the deliverable list (schema, entity fixes, content, citations, prompt-test log) and judge cost against it. As one public reference point, our own pricing is published openly — retainers from $999/month and a fixed-price project lane — because secret pricing is itself a soft red flag in this market.

What are the red flags when hiring an AI SEO agency?

Guaranteed placement in AI answers (nobody controls it), a proprietary visibility score as the only evidence, deliverables that stay vague after direct questions, claims about getting you into training data, long lock-in contracts, demo-gated pricing, and no stated disqualifications — a seller for whom everyone is a fit. Any one of these is a caution; two or more, walk.

Can an agency guarantee my business will be recommended by ChatGPT or Gemini?

No. Assistant answers are probabilistic and vary by user, session, and phrasing; nobody — agency, tool, or platform — controls the output. Legitimate providers work on inputs (entity consistency, schema, citable content, reviews and mentions) and measure with repeated real prompts over time, reporting honestly when movement is slow. Treat any guarantee as disqualifying.

Is hiring a GEO agency worth it for a real estate agent?

Only in the right order. If your foundation is weak — thin Google Business Profile, few reviews, a site AI can't read — fix that first, much of it yourself, because it's what AI systems actually read. If the foundation is solid and clients in your market ask AI for advice and recommendations, then paid help earns its keep through execution speed and consistency, and early movers face less competition for the answers. Test where you stand for free before spending anything.

Can I do GEO myself instead of hiring an agency?

A meaningful share of it, yes: consistent business data everywhere, an optimized Google Business Profile, steady reviews, question-first content, and basic schema are all documented, learnable work — our free guides cover each. What an agency adds is execution volume, structural depth (schema, content clusters at scale), and disciplined measurement. Do the DIY audit first; hire, if at all, for the layer you genuinely won't sustain yourself.

How to Hire a GEO/AEO Agency Without Getting Ripped Off

The $4,200 lesson

In July, a pool-company owner told r/SEO he'd paid $4,200 to an agency selling "answer engine optimization" — and that months in, the work product turned out to be backlinks and meta descriptions. The thread's replies filled with people who'd seen the same play. Note what the scam wasn't: backlinks and meta descriptions are ordinary, sometimes-useful SEO work. The rip-off was selling them as something new, at a premium, with no verifiable connection to AI answers at all.

That pattern — new vocabulary, old deliverables, unfalsifiable evidence — is the entire anatomy of the bad version of this industry. Every check below is designed to catch one of its three parts. (For the fuller argument about which parts of GEO are real at all, start with our honest answer to the snake-oil question.)

What "we do AEO" usually means

When a pitch says "we optimize you for AI," ask one decoding question: "Concretely, what changes?" What files on my site, what pages published, what profiles fixed, what would I point at afterward? Legitimate answers are specific: schema added to these pages, entity data corrected in these places, this content cluster built, these third-party profiles and citations established. Rebadged-SEO answers stay abstract: "we improve your AI visibility," "our platform tracks your share of voice," "we submit you to the engines."

To be clear, buying SEO is fine — most GEO is disciplined SEO aimed at a new surface, and an honest provider will say so unprompted. The tell isn't the overlap; it's whether the seller can decompose their own service and show you the piece that's genuinely aimed at AI answers. If they can't explain query fan-out or why assistants read what they read, the acronym is doing all the work.

The deliverables you should demand

Every item on this list is inspectable by you, with no dashboard and no trust required:

An entity audit with before/after. Your name, market, and business data made consistent across your site, Google Business Profile, portals, and directories — delivered as a list of what was wrong and what changed. Schema in your page source. Open view-source on your own pages; structured data is either there or it isn't (our schema walkthrough shows exactly what to look for). Published content you can read — with direct answers, FAQs, and real substance, not AI-generated filler. A clickable corroboration list: the profiles, citations, and mentions that were created or fixed, each one a URL you can visit. A prompt test log: the actual questions being tested ("best listing agent in [your market]", "should I hire X"), in which assistants, with dated screenshots — a log you can re-run yourself in any chat window.

An agency that balks at any of these is telling you something. All of it is the ordinary paper trail of work that actually happened.

Promises that can't be verified — walk away

"We guarantee you'll be recommended by ChatGPT." Nobody controls a probabilistic system's output. No honest guarantee of placement exists, at any price. "We'll get you into the AI's training data." Sellers who say this are confusing (or hoping you'll confuse) training with retrieval — the realistic lever is being retrieved and cited when the assistant searches, not being baked into the model. "Your visibility score went from 31 to 68." Scores built on vendor-invented prompt baskets through developer APIs are unfalsifiable — you can't audit them, and a rising score is compatible with zero real prospects ever seeing your name. "We're an official AI search partner." No such certification program exists for being recommended in answers.

One honest caveat so we're not overcorrecting: refusing to guarantee outcomes doesn't mean refusing to measure. The legitimate version measures with reproducible prompt tests and reports honestly, including when the needle hasn't moved yet.

What a legitimate scope looks like

A real engagement has a recognizable sequence: audit first (where you stand in real AI answers today — baseline screenshots, entity problems found), foundation fixes (site, Google Business Profile, reviews — the unglamorous layer AI systems actually read), structure (schema, citable content architecture), corroboration (profiles, citations, earned mentions), and honest measurement (the re-runnable prompt log, monthly). Expect months, not days — especially for a newer website; retrieval systems reward accumulated, corroborated presence, and anyone promising overnight AI placement is back in the previous section.

On price and terms, two structural tells. Public pricing correlates with sellers who don't need an information advantage — ours is on the website, retainers and a fixed-price project lane alike, and part of why is that a price an AI can quote is a price a buyer can trust. Month-to-month beats long lock-ins: a provider confident in the work doesn't need a 12-month cage. And since we sell this: that's our bias, disclosed. Use this checklist against us as hard as against anyone.

When you shouldn't hire anyone

The honest disqualifications, which most sales pages omit:

Your basics are broken. If your Google Business Profile is thin, your reviews are sparse, or your website is a portal template AI can't parse, fix those first — they're what assistants read, and much of it is free DIY work (start with our GBP guide and reviews playbook). The spend would strain you. Marketing retainers only make sense on top of a working business; if the budget is survival money, don't. You haven't tested where you stand. Run the DIY audit or our free checker first — if AI already names you, your money belongs elsewhere; if it doesn't, at least you now have a real baseline and you've lost nothing.

Seven questions for the sales call

1. "What exactly will change on my site and profiles?" Good answers name files, pages, and fixes. Bad answers name platforms and scores. 2. "Show me before/after AI answers for a current client." Anonymized is fine; dated and reproducible is the point. 3. "How will we measure this?" You want a prompt log you can re-run — not a proprietary dashboard. 4. "What can't you control?" The honest answer includes: the model's final output. Whoever claims to control it, disqualify. 5. "What happens when I cancel?" You should own the site, content, profiles, and citations outright — walking away intact is the test of who the work belonged to. 6. "Which parts of this are standard SEO?" The honest decomposition exists; make them give it. 7. "Who shouldn't buy this?" Every legitimate service has wrong-fit customers. A seller with no disqualifications is running a different business than the one you want to hire.