Choose a GEO or AI search agency that starts by measuring you: it asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google a fixed set of real buyer questions, records who gets named, and shows you that baseline before it changes anything. Then it fixes crawler access, structured data, answer-first pages and your reviews and listings elsewhere, and re-runs the same questions every month. As of October 2026, published guides put small-business GEO retainers at $1,500 to $5,000 a month, while Project 66 Studio sets up SEO, AEO and GEO together for $990 once and runs all three for $299/mo after the setup. Walk away from anyone who guarantees rankings or AI mentions.

This guide covers what the work should include, the red flags, the questions to ask before you sign, and what it should cost.

What does a good AI search agency actually do?

The work is mostly ordinary, careful website and reputation work, done with AI answers in mind. A good agency should be able to show you each of these six things in plain words.

1. A baseline of real questions. Before any changes, it writes 20 to 50 questions your buyers would ask, in their words ("best bridal makeup artist in Austin who comes to your home"), asks them in each assistant, and records who is named and which sites are cited. Without this, nobody can tell you later whether anything worked.
2. Crawler access. It opens your robots.txt and checks that the search crawlers for each assistant are allowed. OpenAI says "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers", and that robots.txt changes take about 24 hours to reach its systems. Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot can reduce your visibility in Claude's search results, and Perplexity says PerplexityBot is the crawler that surfaces sites in its results. A good agency also explains the difference between search crawlers and training crawlers such as GPTBot, so you can decide on training separately.
3. Structured data that matches the page. It adds schema.org markup for your business, services, products, events or FAQs, usually in JSON-LD, which Google recommends, and tests it in the Rich Results Test. It should also tell you the truth: Google says there is "no special schema.org structured data that you need to add" to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Markup helps machines read your facts; it is not a switch.
4. Answer-first pages. It rewrites your key pages so the first lines answer what buyers ask: what you do, for whom, where, what it costs and how to book. "Private chef dinners for 6 to 20 guests in Miami, from $95 a person" can be quoted. "Crafting unforgettable moments" cannot.
5. Mentions, reviews and listings elsewhere. AI answers cite other websites, not just yours. A good agency gets your Google Business Profile, directories, industry lists and press saying the same thing your site says, and helps you ask real customers for reviews. It never buys reviews or writes them; the FTC's 2024 rule bans fake reviews, including AI-generated ones, and buying reviews, and lets the FTC seek civil penalties.
6. Measurement, every month. It re-asks the same questions and reports counts against the baseline, plus Google Search Console (where Google says AI feature traffic is included in the Performance report under "Web") and Bing's AI Performance report, which shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI summaries.

What about llms.txt?

Ask every agency about llms.txt, because the answer tells you how honest they are. It is a proposal by Jeremy Howard from September 2024 for a Markdown file that gives AI tools a short guide to your site. It is still a proposal, not an adopted standard. Google says you "don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup" to appear in its AI features. Adding one is cheap and does no harm. An agency that sells it as the main reason you will start showing up in ChatGPT is selling something no AI company has said it relies on.

What are the red flags?

• Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed AI mentions. Google's own hiring advice says "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google", and that if someone guarantees first place, "find someone else." The same applies to "we guarantee ChatGPT will recommend you." No agency controls what an AI company's assistant says.
• No baseline. If the proposal has no list of test questions and no record of where you stand today, any later report is a story, not a measurement.
• Vanity reports. Pages of "AI visibility scores", impressions or keyword counts with no link to the questions your buyers ask, or to enquiries and bookings. Ask what each number means for sales.
• Mass AI-written content. Hundreds of thin pages produced fast. Google's guidance on helpful content says using AI or automation mainly to manipulate rankings is a violation of its spam policies.
• Secret methods or a "special relationship." Google lists claims of a special relationship with Google and offers of "priority submit" as warning signs, along with secrecy about what the firm will do.
• Asking for full control on day one. For an audit, Google advises giving an SEO read access to Search Console only.
• Fake or paid reviews. Any offer to "seed" reviews is a legal risk to you, not just to them.

What should you ask before you sign?

1. Which questions will you test, in which assistants, and can I add my own?
2. Can I see my baseline before I pay for the monthly work?
3. Which crawlers will you allow or block in my robots.txt, and why?
4. What will you change on my site in the first month, page by page?
5. What is your view on llms.txt, and what evidence is that based on?
6. How will you get me mentioned on other sites, and will any of it be paid or undisclosed?
7. What does the monthly report contain, and how does it connect to enquiries?
8. What results can you realistically show, in what time frame? (Google suggests asking this too.)
9. Who owns the content, the accounts and the reports if we stop working together?
10. What exactly does the price include, and is it fixed before work starts?

A good agency answers all ten without hedging. If the answer to question 2 is no, stop there.

How do a good agency and a risky one compare?

What should a GEO agency cost a small business?

Public price data for GEO is thin, and most of it comes from agencies that sell the service, so treat it as a rough guide. As of October 2026:

• WebFX's 2026 GEO pricing guide, published October 15, 2026, puts agency retainers for small businesses at $1,500 to $5,000 a month, project work at $5,000 to $50,000, and hourly consulting at $50 to $300. It lists AI visibility tracking tools at $50 to $1,000+ a month. Nutshell's 2026 guide, last updated September 28, 2026, gives the same retainer, project and hourly ranges.
• For classic SEO, Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers (last updated August 2024). The most common answers were $501 to $1,000 a month on retainer, $75 to $100 an hour, and $2,501 to $5,000 per project.

Our prices for Google & AI search are public:

We confirm the final price before any work begins. Whoever you hire, ask for the setup price and the monthly price separately, so you can stop the monthly work without losing what the setup fixed.

What do real results look like?

Results should be counts over many questions, not one lucky answer. In our research across 7 AI assistants, 41 buyer questions and 276 answers, a brand was named in 47% of answers when the question used its category and 7% when it did not. ChatGPT named the client in 34 of the 41 questions and Claude in 10. Assistants differ a lot, which is why a single test in one tool tells you little.

For Young Fashion Show, a youth fashion show in Chicago, New York, Miami and Los Angeles, the site went live 13 days after the contract. ChatGPT names the show in 34 of 41 real buyer questions (29 before launch), and Google AI Overviews in 16 of 41 (9 before). Google visitors who applied went from 1 in 74 to 1 in 12. That last number matters most: being named only counts if the people who arrive can act.

If you want to run a first check yourself before talking to anyone, our ChatGPT readiness check covers the technical side, and GEO, AEO and SEO explained covers which of the three you need first.

What can't any agency promise?

No one, including us, can guarantee a Google ranking, an AI Overview link or a mention in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity. Google says indexing and serving "isn't guaranteed", and each AI company decides what its assistant says. Answers change from day to day and from person to person, and a competitor with years of reviews and press will often be named first. What good work does is remove the reasons you are left out, make your pages easy to quote, and give you a dated record of whether it is working.

How can Project 66 Studio help?

We set up one of SEO, AEO or GEO for $490 once, all three for $990 once, and run all three for $299/mo after the setup, starting with a baseline of your real buyer questions; we confirm the final price before any work begins. See the details on what we do, then start here and tell us which questions you want to be the answer to.

Get your exact price Start a project

Questions people ask

How much does a GEO agency cost for a small business?

As of October 2026, WebFX's published GEO pricing guide puts small-business agency retainers at $1,500 to $5,000 a month, with project work from $5,000 to $50,000 and consulting at $50 to $300 an hour. Project 66 Studio sets up one of SEO, AEO or GEO for $490 once, all three for $990 once, and runs all three for $299/mo after the setup. The final price is confirmed before any work begins.

Can a GEO agency guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend my business?

No. Each AI company decides what its assistant says, and answers change from day to day and from person to person. Google's own hiring advice says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, and the same logic applies to AI mentions. An agency that guarantees either is a reason to keep looking.

Do I need an llms.txt file to show up in AI search?

No. llms.txt is a proposal by Jeremy Howard from September 2024, not an adopted standard, and Google says you don't need new machine-readable files or AI text files to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Adding one is cheap and harmless, but it should not be the main thing an agency sells you.

Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?

Block training crawlers if you want, but allow the search crawlers if you want to be named. OpenAI says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot can reduce visibility in Claude's search results. GPTBot, by contrast, is OpenAI's training crawler and can be blocked separately.

How do I know if a GEO agency is working?

Ask for a dated baseline before work starts: a fixed list of real buyer questions asked in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google, with who was named. Each month the same questions should be re-asked and counted against that baseline, alongside Search Console and Bing's AI Performance report. Enquiries and bookings from search are the number that matters most.

How long does it take to see results from GEO?

Technical fixes can register quickly; OpenAI says robots.txt changes reach its search systems in about 24 hours. Being named more often usually takes weeks to months, because it depends on reviews, listings and mentions on other sites building up. Judge progress by counts over many questions, not one answer.

Read next

• One studio or separate agencies for a small business?
• GEO, AEO and SEO: what's the difference and which do you need?
• We asked 7 AI assistants 41 buyer questions. Here's what decides who gets named

Sources

1. AI features and your website, Google Search Central (read 29 Oct 2026).
2. Do You Need an SEO? Tips for Hiring an SEO, Google Search Central (read 29 Oct 2026).
3. Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search, Google Search Central (read 29 Oct 2026).
4. Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content, Google Search Central (read 29 Oct 2026).
5. Overview of OpenAI Crawlers, OpenAI (read 29 Oct 2026).
6. Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?, Claude Help Center (Anthropic) (read 29 Oct 2026).
7. Perplexity Crawlers, Perplexity (read 29 Oct 2026).
8. The /llms.txt file, llmstxt.org (read 29 Oct 2026).
9. Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials, Federal Trade Commission (read 29 Oct 2026).
10. Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview, Bing Webmaster Blog (read 29 Oct 2026).
11. How Much Does Generative Engine Optimization Cost in 2026?, WebFX (read 29 Oct 2026).
12. How Much Does GEO Cost in 2026?, Nutshell (read 29 Oct 2026).
13. SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost? 439 People Polled, Ahrefs (read 29 Oct 2026).