Short answer
A GEO agency gets your business cited inside AI answers like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, then measures that movement across engines. The real deliverables are a citation audit, content and schema fixes, a source-building plan, and monthly tracking. Expect fixes shipped, not just dashboards. The clearest red flag is any guarantee of rankings inside ChatGPT, which no agency can control. US/UK pricing ranges from a few hundred dollars for a one-off audit to a few thousand per month for a full retainer. For a 10-100 employee company, buy first to learn the playbook, then bring the routine work in-house once the process is stable and repeatable.
What does a GEO agency do?
A GEO agency gets your brand cited inside AI answers — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini — when buyers ask questions your business should answer. Generative engine optimization is not classic SEO with a new label. The work targets how large language models retrieve, cite and paraphrase sources, not how a page ranks on a blue-link results page.
The job breaks into three moves: audit where you are cited today, fix the technical and content signals that make you quotable, and track movement across engines month over month. Good agencies ship changes. Weak ones sell dashboards. If you want the concept first, read our primer on what generative engine optimization is before you shop for a vendor.
The deliverables you should actually expect
Expect four concrete deliverables from a GEO agency, not a slide deck. Each one should be something you can point to and check.
- A citation audit: a list of the prompts your buyers use and where you are — or are not — cited across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews today.
- Content and schema fixes: rewrites that make pages quotable, plus structured data so engines can parse your claims cleanly.
- A source-building plan: the third-party pages, listings and citations that AI engines lean on when they answer.
- Ongoing measurement: a repeatable panel of prompts, run monthly, showing where your citations moved and why.
The content work has evidence behind it. A Princeton study (Aggarwal et al., arXiv 2311.09735, KDD 2024, checked 2026-08-09) found that adding citations and sources raised visibility in generative engines by roughly 30-40% on a position-adjusted basis, while readability and fluency improvements added another 15-30%. That is why a serious agency prioritizes sourced, well-structured content over keyword stuffing. For the hands-on version of this tactic, see how to get cited by ChatGPT.
Red flags: guaranteed rankings inside ChatGPT are a scam
Any guarantee of rankings inside ChatGPT is a scam. No agency controls how a model weights sources, and outputs shift with every model update, so a guarantee is a claim about something the vendor cannot touch. Walk away.
If a pitch guarantees a spot in AI answers, a fixed number of citations, or "page one of ChatGPT," treat it as a signal to leave. GEO influences probability, not a locked position.
Other warning signs: no measurement plan (they cannot show where you stand today or next month), private-blog-network link schemes recycled from grey-hat SEO, and reporting that never separates their work from normal brand growth. A credible agency shows its prompt panel, names the engines it tracks, and tells you plainly what it cannot deliver. Vagueness about method is itself the red flag.
GEO pricing models in the US/UK market
GEO pricing in the US/UK market spans one-off audits in the hundreds of dollars up to retainers of a few thousand per month. The model matters more than the sticker price.
Published examples give a real range. Marden SEO lists a fixed-price GEO audit at $500 (mardenseo.com/geo, checked 2026-08-09). Derivatex describes a $1,500/month retainer as a "cheap" GEO program and argues the math collapses for genuine ongoing work (derivatex.agency, checked 2026-08-09). Across agency-published pricing checked August 2026, packages ran from roughly $400-500 one-off setup plus about $200/month for small-studio offers, up to around $3,400/month for a full agency retainer (a Korean-market example). Treat these as examples, not industry benchmarks.
Three models dominate: a fixed-price audit (good for a first read), a monthly retainer (fixes plus tracking), and project pricing for a specific fix. In our experience running these engagements, the cheapest retainers quietly cut the ongoing work — the citation-building and monthly measurement — which is exactly where GEO earns its keep.
Build vs buy for a 10-100 employee company
For a 10-100 employee company, buy first, then bring the routine work in-house once the process is stable. Buying early gets you a working playbook fast; building early usually means months of trial and error while your competitors get cited.
Buy when you lack an in-house team fluent in AI retrieval, when you need results this quarter, or when you want an outside benchmark on where you actually stand. Build when GEO is core to your growth, you already run content and technical SEO internally, and you can dedicate someone to the monthly prompt panel and fixes.
The pragmatic path is hybrid: hire an agency to set the method, ship the first round of fixes, and hand over a documented process. Then your team runs the monthly cadence and calls the agency back for audits and hard problems. A structured AI SEO audit method is the artifact that makes this handover clean.
How to choose a GEO agency
Choose a GEO agency on evidence, not adjectives. Ask each vendor the same five questions and compare the answers side by side.
- Which engines do you track, and how? A real answer names ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews and describes a repeatable prompt panel.
- What will you actually ship? Look for schema, content and citation fixes — deliverables, not a monthly PDF.
- How do you measure movement? They should show a before/after on real prompts, not vanity traffic.
- What do you refuse to claim? The right answer includes "guaranteed rankings."
- Can I see the method documented? If they cannot hand it over, you cannot bring it in-house later.
Because AI Overviews behave differently from chat engines, confirm the agency handles both — our guide on how to appear in Google AI Overviews covers what that surface needs.
How LYVIA runs GEO
LYVIA is a Paris-based AI agency serving international clients, and we run GEO as a measured, shipped-fixes practice rather than a rankings guarantee. Every month we run a prompt panel that tracks where each client is cited across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, then we ship the fixes that move those citations — schema, content and source-building.
We do not sell guaranteed rankings, because they do not exist. We sell a documented method, a monthly cadence, and a clear before/after on the prompts your buyers actually type. If you want to bring the work in-house later, that is the point: we build the process so your team can run it. Serving clients across the US, UK and Europe from Paris keeps us close to how these engines behave in different markets, which is a practical advantage, not a footnote.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a GEO agency and an SEO agency?
An SEO agency works to rank your pages on search results, mostly Google's blue links. A GEO agency works to get your business cited inside AI answers — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Gemini — where users often never see a results page. The tactics overlap on technical health and content quality, but GEO adds a citation audit, structured data tuned for model retrieval, source-building on third-party pages, and a monthly prompt panel that tracks how models quote you. Many teams need both, since search and AI answers now share the same buyer journey.
How much does a GEO agency cost?
Published US/UK examples checked August 2026 range from a $500 fixed-price audit (Marden SEO) to retainers of a few thousand dollars per month. Derivatex frames a $1,500/month program as a "cheap" retainer. Across agency-published pricing, small-studio packages started near $400-500 setup plus about $200/month, rising to around $3,400/month for a full retainer in one Korean-market example. Treat these as examples, not benchmarks. In our experience running these engagements, the cheapest retainers cut the ongoing citation-building and measurement — the exact work that makes GEO pay off — so compare deliverables, not just price.
Can a GEO agency guarantee I will rank in ChatGPT?
No, and any agency that guarantees rankings inside ChatGPT is selling something it cannot deliver. No vendor controls how a model weights and cites sources, and outputs change with every model update, so a guaranteed position is a claim about something outside the agency's control. What a credible GEO agency can do is raise your probability of being cited: fix quotable content, add clean structured data, build the third-party sources engines rely on, and measure the movement monthly. If a pitch claims a locked spot or a fixed number of citations, treat it as a red flag and walk away.
How long does GEO take to show results?
In our experience running these engagements, the first citation movement usually appears within weeks of shipping content and schema fixes, but a stable pattern across engines takes a few months of consistent work. AI engines re-crawl and re-weight sources on their own cadence, and each model update reshuffles results, so GEO is a monthly practice rather than a one-time project. A credible agency shows early wins on specific prompts while setting the expectation that durable, compounding visibility comes from repeated audits, fixes and source-building — not a single sprint.
Should a 10-100 employee company build GEO in-house or hire an agency?
For most 10-100 employee companies, buy first, then build. Hiring a GEO agency early gets you a working method and the first round of fixes without months of trial and error. Once the monthly prompt panel and fixes are documented and stable, your team can run the routine work in-house and call the agency back for audits and hard problems. Build fully in-house only if GEO is core to your growth and you already run content and technical SEO internally. The hybrid path — agency sets the playbook, you run the cadence — gives the best speed-to-result for that company size.
LYVIA is a Paris-based AI agency that runs GEO for international clients as a measured, shipped-fixes practice — monthly prompt panels, real before/after on the prompts your buyers type, and a documented method you can bring in-house. No guaranteed rankings, because they do not exist. If you want to see where you are cited today and what to fix first, Book a call.
