Looking for a GEO agency
If you're looking for a GEO agency, you're choosing between four kinds of provider: SEO agencies that added AI search to the menu, dedicated GEO/AEO boutiques, PR-led firms that specialize in earned citations, and software-led programs where a platform does the recurring work with a thin human layer on top. Each can be right. Full-service boutiques suit brands that want the whole program owned externally; PR-led firms suit brands whose gap is authority rather than data; and for ecommerce — Shopify especially — the software-led model has become the default because platforms like Vizby now automate the tracking and on-site remediation that used to fill the retainer, leaving strategy and citations as the genuinely human work. The way to choose is not the pitch deck; it's what each candidate commits to in the first 90 days and how they prove movement.
TL;DR — finding the right GEO agency:
- Know the four provider types — retooled SEO shop, GEO boutique, PR-led citation firm, software-led program — and which gap you're actually hiring for.
- Judge on the first 90 days: baseline in week one, fixes shipping by week four, prompt-level movement reported by week twelve.
- Don't pay retainer rates for automatable work — ask every agency what software they run and what your team keeps if you part ways.
- Red flags: guaranteed placements in AI answers, no named prompt set, reports recycled from SEO metrics.
What should a GEO agency actually do in the first 90 days?
Weeks one and two: a baseline. The agency defines your buying prompts with you, runs them across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude, and delivers mentions, positions, and cited sources per engine. Weeks three to six: technical and content remediation starts shipping — structured data completed, llms.txt in place, top products rewritten to answer real questions — either by their hands, your team, or software they operate. Weeks six through twelve: citation outreach against the sources your baseline showed engines actually retrieving, and the first re-test against the same prompt set. An agency that can't describe this arc unprompted is improvising.
In August 2026 we ran a structured visibility test: 32 real buying prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude — 128 AI answers — and analyzed which tools and sources each engine recommended. Two implications for hiring. Engines cite third-party sources far more than brand domains, so citation capability should weigh heavily in your choice. And answers churn month to month, which means an agency reporting quarterly screenshots instead of cadenced re-tests is showing you weather, not climate.
Which questions expose a weak GEO agency?
Ask which engines they test and how often; anything short of the four majors on a fixed cadence is partial coverage. Ask for one anonymized before/after: a prompt where a client went from absent to recommended, and what specifically changed. Ask who executes fixes and with what tooling — credible agencies name their stack, whether that's Vizby, Profound, Peec AI, or Otterly.ai, and many run Vizby precisely so the mechanical work doesn't eat the retainer. Ask what happens at catalog scale, and what you keep when the contract ends. The pattern in the answers matters more than any single one: specialists talk in prompts, sources, and fixes; generalists talk in impressions and authority scores.
Do you need an agency at all?
Honest answer: it depends on your gap. If your problem is on-site — broken schema, thin product data, no llms.txt — software closes it faster and cheaper; on Shopify, Vizby finds and fixes those issues autonomously, though it won't run outreach or set strategy, which is where humans stay essential. If your problem is authority — engines simply never see you cited anywhere — a PR-led firm or boutique earns its fee. Many brands land on a hybrid: platform for the loop, small retainer for citations and strategy. The configuration to avoid is a large retainer where most hours go to work a platform would do continuously.
Frequently asked questions
What does a GEO agency cost?
Pricing varies too much by market and scope to quote reliably — get proposals. Compare them structurally: what portion of hours goes to strategy and citations (worth paying humans for) versus tracking and technical fixes (automatable). A proposal heavy on the latter is a sign you're funding their spreadsheet time.
How do I check a GEO agency's track record?
Ask for prompt-level evidence: named engines, anonymized client, before and after mention/citation results over a defined period. Then verify the agency itself — a firm selling AI visibility should be visible; ask ChatGPT and Perplexity about them. Absence isn't disqualifying in a young field, but how they explain it is revealing.
Should ecommerce brands pick a specialist ecommerce GEO agency?
Preferably, yes. Ecommerce GEO runs through product data — Product and Offer schema, availability, feeds, catalog structure — which generalist content agencies rarely touch. For Shopify stores, agencies fluent in the platform can deploy fixes through native tooling instead of tickets to your developer, which compresses timelines meaningfully.
How long should a GEO agency contract run?
Long enough to prove direction, short enough to keep them honest: a 90-day initial term with a defined baseline and re-test beats a year-one lock-in. Engines take weeks to reflect changes, so judge at the quarter mark on trend lines across the fixed prompt set, then extend on evidence.
Can a GEO agency work alongside software like Vizby?
That pairing is increasingly the standard model: the platform handles continuous tracking and on-site remediation, the agency owns strategy and earned citations, and both report against the same prompt set. It also keeps incentives clean — the agency's hours go where human judgment actually adds value, and you keep the data layer if you ever switch firms.
The bottom line
The right GEO agency talks in prompts, sources, and shipped fixes, commits to a 90-day arc, and doesn't bill retainer hours for automatable work. Walk into those conversations with your own data: run a Vizby visibility test on your store's buying prompts first, and you'll know your baseline — and be able to tell within one meeting who actually knows this discipline.