What are the ways to get this done, and what does each cost?
Four realistic options: do it yourself, buy a monitoring tool, ask your existing SEO agency, or hire someone who does this specifically. They differ mainly in who does the work and whether anybody measures whether it helped.
What are the options, side by side?
Doing it yourself is free and slow. Tools tell you where you stand and leave the work to you. A general agency will do the work but usually is not measuring the AI side. A specialist should do both -- and should show you the measurement.
| Yourself | A monitoring tool | General SEO agency | A GEO specialist | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | You | You | They do | They do |
| Measures your AI visibility | Roughly, by hand | Yes, continuously | Usually not | Yes, before and after |
| Shows uncertainty on the number | n/a | Rarely | n/a | It should -- ask |
| Fixes the site and listings | You | No | Yes | Yes |
| Typical monthly cost | Time only | $50-$500 | $500-$3,000 | Varies |
| Best for | Testing whether it matters | In-house teams who will act on it | Businesses already happy with their agency | Businesses who want it done and proved |
Why not just buy a tool?
A tool is genuinely useful if somebody is going to act on it. The common failure is buying a dashboard, watching a score move, and never doing the work -- because the recommendations are generic and the actual work is unglamorous.
Be wary of two things specifically. A single blended 'visibility score' across platforms hides the only useful information, because the platforms disagree. And a score with no margin of error will drift on its own and make you think something happened.
Why not ask my current SEO agency?
Often the right answer, and worth asking. The question to put to them is simply: what share of AI answers name us, and how do you know? If they have a number and a method, you are covered.
Much of the underlying work overlaps with good search work, so an agency that has looked after your site properly has done a lot of it already. The gap is usually measurement -- nobody was asking the questions, so nobody knew.
Where do we fit, and where would we not?
We measure it properly, do the work ourselves, and measure again with the uncertainty shown. We are the wrong choice if you want a dashboard, a guaranteed number, or the cheapest possible option.
We do not publish comparisons naming specific competitors. It is the same advice we give clients: those pages read badly, invite a reply, and rarely help the reader decide anything.
- We will not quote a guaranteed improvement. Nobody can predict one honestly.
- We report each platform separately and show the error bars, which sometimes makes our results look less impressive than a blended score would.
- We tell you when a re-scan came back flat, because the alternative is finding out later that the reporting was decorative.
- If your existing agency is already measuring this, keep them.
Common questions
What should I ask any GEO provider before signing?
How do you measure it, how many times do you ask, do you show a margin of error, will you tell me if it did not work, and what exactly will you do to my site and listings?
Is the cheapest option ever the right one?
Doing it yourself genuinely works for the basics -- claiming profiles, fixing the address, unblocking crawlers. Most people do not get round to it, which is the only reason this is a business.
If this answered one question, these answer the next ones.
What is generative engine optimisation?
Generative engine optimisation is the work of getting a business named in the answers AI assistants write. Where search returns a page of links to choose from, an assistant writes a paragraph and names a handful of businesses in it. GEO is about being one of them.
GEO vs SEO: what actually differs?
SEO competes for a position on a page of links. GEO competes to be quoted inside a written answer. They share the groundwork -- a readable, well-structured site -- and diverge on what is measured, which sources matter, and what counts as winning.
How can I check whether AI recommends my business?
Open ChatGPT, ask the questions your customers would ask, and write down who gets named. Do it several times, because the list changes. Ten minutes gets you an honest picture of whether this is a problem worth spending money on.