Generative engine optimization services

How do GEO services work?

Whoever does it, the work follows the same loop, shown in the diagram at the top of this page.

1. Ask AI what buyers ask. The provider puts your customers' questions to the AI assistants they use, without naming your business, and records which businesses each answer names and which pages it cites. A question that names you only shows what AI says to someone who already knows you.
2. Make your facts easy to read. On your own website: access for AI crawlers, clear facts about what you sell, where and to whom, pages that answer a question in their first lines, and the same details everywhere your business appears.
3. Get mentioned where AI reads. Off your website: reviews, the lists and directories in your category, the forums where your customers ask for advice, and the press. Assistants that search the web build their answers from pages like these, so a business those pages leave out is less likely to be named.
4. Ask again and compare. The same questions, asked again every month, show whether more answers name your business and cite your pages. The trend across many answers is the result, because the same question gets different answers from one day to the next.

How much do GEO services cost?

There is no standard price. Providers sell very different amounts of work under the same name, from a one-off audit to a team writing and pitching every week. These are prices providers publish on their own pages, as read in October 2026:

• Marketplace freelancers. Gigs in Fiverr's generative engine optimization category started at between £12 and £2,091, and GEO offers on PeoplePerHour at £80 to £310. Fiverr's own guide on its page puts experienced specialists at $30 to $45 an hour.
• UK agencies, small-business packages. NeuralAdX from £450 a month plus VAT, for 5 tracked questions and one page improved a month; Footprint Digital from £1,250 a month; Buried £1,200 to £3,000 a month for a small business; MarGen £2,950 a month plus VAT, with a three-month minimum.
• Larger UK packages. Buried £3,000 to £8,000 a month for a medium-sized business and £8,000 or more for an enterprise; NeuralAdX up to £10,000 a month plus VAT; MarGen from £12,950 a month.
• Mentions only. Bubblegum Search sells outreach on its own at £550 to £1,800 a month plus VAT, for one to four mentions a month, and prices website work separately.
• One-off audits. MarGen charges £2,950 for an audit, credited against the first month, and Buried £2,000 to £12,000 for an audit and roadmap.
• US agencies. WebFX starts at $3,000 a month, KillerSEOx at $997 a month for a single location, and Omniscient Digital at $10,000 a month.
• A survey. In SE Ranking and Duda's survey of 260 agencies, published in December 2024, those that had priced AI Overview work charged about $937 a month on average.
• Software. AI visibility tracking tools check what assistants say about you and leave the work to you, for a monthly subscription. AI visibility tools for small businesses compares their prices.

What moves the price is how many websites, products or locations are covered, how many questions are tracked, how much writing and outreach is done each month, and whether paid listings or press fees are included. To compare quotes, ask each provider what it will deliver every month in numbers: pages written, pitches sent, listings submitted and questions tracked.

How do I choose a GEO agency?

Google's advice on hiring an SEO applies to GEO services too. It says no one can guarantee a first place in Google, and to be wary of firms that email you out of the blue. Its guidance on third-party services adds that "Third-party tools don't have access to our internal ranking data".

Ask each provider these questions, and compare the answers:

1. Which questions will you check? Ask to see the list of buyer questions the provider will put to AI, written the way your customers type them, and whether you can add your own.
2. How will you measure results? How many times each question is asked, on which assistants and how often. One screenshot of one answer proves little, because the same question gets different answers.
3. What will you do each month? Named work in numbers, such as pages written, pitches sent and listings submitted, and who does it.
4. Does your advice match Google's? Google suggests asking whether a provider's GEO advice matches its official guidance on AI features, and giving a new provider read access to Search Console only at first.
5. Who posts in my name? Whether anything is published, sent or posted in your name before you approve it, and whether forum posts say who they are from.
6. What do I keep if I leave? The question list, the answers collected, the content written and your logins, and the notice period and minimum term.
7. Can I see results for a client like me? Answers from before and after the work for a business of your size and type, rather than a headline percentage.

What a good GEO service will not do

• Buy or fake reviews
• Post anything without saying who it is from
• Publish anything in your name without your approval
• Promise that an AI assistant will name you

In the UK, fake reviews and reviews with hidden incentives are banned outright under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Google's spam policies cover attempts to manipulate its AI answers, and Bing's guidelines say such attempts can lead to reduced visibility or removal.

Does GEO work?

The research is mixed. The 2023 paper that named GEO found that adding citations, quotations and statistics to a page raised its visibility in AI answers by up to 40% in its tests, in which a model answered from five fixed search results. A 2025 benchmark that tested the same rewriting methods again found most of them ineffective, and often harmful to a page's ranking, while traditional SEO methods worked better.

A July 2026 review of 45 studies, not yet peer reviewed, found no technique with a proven, lasting effect across assistants. For a business owner, that means judging a provider by measured change in the answers about your own business, not by general claims.

Can I do GEO myself?

Much of it, yes. Google's advice on hiring an SEO says a small local business can "probably do much of the work yourself", and the same goes for GEO. These parts take time more than expertise:

• See where you stand. Ask the assistants your customers' questions in a private browser window, without your business's name, and note who is named.
• Let AI crawlers in. Check that your robots.txt file allows them. The AI crawler checker reads yours.
• Say the facts plainly. Put what you sell, where, to whom and at what price on your own pages, in words rather than images.
• Keep your listings complete. Fill in your Google Business Profile and the directories in your category, with the same name, address and phone number everywhere. Google says business profiles help businesses appear in its AI responses.
• Ask for reviews. Ask happy customers to review you on Google and on the review sites in your category.
• Get onto the lists. Find the "best" lists and directories AI cites for your category, and apply where they take submissions.

What is harder alone is measuring properly, since your own answers vary with your account, your location and the day, and outreach at volume. The guide to getting your business recommended by ChatGPT walks through each step.

Generative engine optimization in numbers

• ChatGPT: more than 1 billion weekly users, OpenAI said in August 2026.
• Google's AI features: AI Overviews have more than 2.5 billion users a month and AI Mode more than 1 billion, Google said in June 2026.
• In the UK: ChatGPT had 252 million UK visits in August 2025, up 156% on a year earlier, and is the second-largest search service after Google, Ofcom reported.
• Local recommendations: use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local business recommendations rose from 6% to 45% in a year, in BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults.
• Clicks: when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, against 15% when it did not, in Pew Research Center's study of 900 US adults' browsing.
• Being cited: pages cited in an AI Overview got 120% more organic clicks per impression than pages that were not, in Seer Interactive's April 2026 study.
• Search volume: Gartner forecast in February 2024 that traditional search engine volume would fall 25% by 2026. In June 2026, Google said its search queries had reached an all-time high.