Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Agency: What You Should Get and How It's Priced

A year ago, almost nobody asked us for "GEO". Now it comes up in most sales calls, usually phrased as: "We rank fine on Google, but when I ask ChatGPT for the best company in our niche, it names our competitors." That is a real problem, and it is solvable. It is also a new enough service that the market is full of vague offers. This guide is what we tell buyers who want to know what a generative engine optimization agency should actually do, and how to tell a serious one from a rebranded SEO package.

If you want the do-it-yourself version first, read how to get recommended by ChatGPT. This page is about buying the service.

What is generative engine optimization, in plain terms?

Generative engine optimization (GEO), also called answer engine optimization (AEO) or AI search optimization, is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand, trust and cite. The assistants in question are ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Claude.

Most of these systems don't invent answers about businesses from memory alone. For commercial and local questions they run web searches, read a handful of pages and summarise them. So GEO has two halves: get your pages into the set they read, and make those pages and the wider web say clear, consistent things about you.

How is GEO different from SEO?

The overlap is large. If Google and Bing can't index you, no AI assistant will cite you. A GEO agency that ignores technical SEO is selling the roof without the walls. We wrote about the overlap in Romanian in GEO vs. SEO.

What should a GEO agency actually deliver?

1. Crawler access and technical foundations

• A robots.txt and firewall review so search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot are not blocked. Many CDNs and security plugins block AI crawlers by default.
• A clear decision on training crawlers (GPTBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot), which are separate from search crawlers. Blocking training does not have to mean disappearing from AI search.
• Content present in the HTML, not only rendered by JavaScript.
• Submission to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, IndexNow, and a clean sitemap.
• An llms.txt file is a cheap extra, not a strategy. Anyone who sells it as the main deliverable is overselling it.

2. Answer-first content

Every important service page should open with a 40–60 word answer to the question a buyer would ask, followed by question-shaped headings, comparison tables and real FAQs. The agency should map the actual prompts your customers use, which are longer and more conversational than classic keywords, and build or rewrite pages to answer them.

3. Entity building

AI systems need to be confident about who you are. That means identical name, address, phone and description across your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, industry directories and data sources such as Wikidata where you qualify; Organization and Service structured data with consistent identifiers; and an about page that states plainly what you do, where and for whom.

4. Digital PR and third-party mentions

When an assistant answers "best X in Y", it leans heavily on lists, reviews and articles from other sites. A serious GEO agency identifies which sources the assistants already cite in your niche, then works to get you onto them legitimately: earned coverage, expert quotes, partner pages, review platforms. This is the slowest part and usually the most valuable.

5. Citation tracking and reporting

You should get a fixed set of prompts, tested on a regular schedule across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google AI Mode, with a record of whether you appear, how you are described and which sources are cited. Add AI referral traffic from analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools' AI performance data. Answers vary between runs, so look at trends over weeks, not single screenshots.

How is GEO priced, and what drives the cost?

We don't publish price lists, and figures quoted online vary so much they are close to meaningless. What you can compare is the pricing model and what drives it:

• One-off audit: crawler access, indexation, entity consistency, a baseline prompt test and a prioritised action list. A good way to test an agency before committing.
• Monthly retainer: content, entity work, digital PR and tracking. This is where results come from, because mentions and citations build over months.
• Bundled with SEO: often the most efficient option, since the technical and content work overlaps.

The cost drivers are the number of markets and languages, how many services you need to be visible for, how competitive your niche is in AI answers, and how much digital PR is included. Outreach to real publications takes real hours.

What are the red flags?

• Guaranteed placement in ChatGPT. Nobody controls the output. Anyone who guarantees it is guessing or lying.
• Reporting based on one screenshot. AI answers change between sessions; a single result proves nothing.
• Mass-produced AI content pushed out at volume. Thin pages hurt indexation and rarely get cited.
• Fake reviews or paid "best of" lists on throwaway sites. They can backfire badly.
• No technical audit. If the agency never checks robots.txt, rendering and indexation, it is skipping the step that decides everything else.

Why work with a European GEO provider?

For businesses selling in the EU, it helps to work with an agency that understands multilingual markets, GDPR-compliant tracking and the fact that AI assistants answer differently in German, French or Romanian than in English. We are based in Romania and run SEO and GEO in Romanian and English for clients across Europe, the UK and the US. Our own work is verifiable: GrandParentsHouse ranks second on Google for "azil bătrâni Pitești" (care home), and Crysmar first or second for "confecții metalice Argeș" (metal fabrication), built on the same technical and content foundations that AI search depends on.

If you are comparing providers, start with an audit, ask to see the prompt set they would track, and insist on monthly trend reports. Our approach is on the SEO and AI visibility services page, and you can also read why we think a Romanian SEO agency can work for international brands.

Frequently asked questions