What is AEO, and how does it relate to GEO and SEO?
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is work intended to improve how a business appears in answers, recommendations and cited sources. Providers also use generative engine optimisation (GEO) and AI SEO for overlapping services. The label alone does not define the work you are buying.
Ask which surfaces the proposal covers: ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode or another named product. A result from one surface does not establish visibility in another. Agree the relevant country, language and business questions before comparing agencies.
SEO remains part of this work. A useful AEO programme combines accessible pages, accurate business information, relevant content and credible source coverage with measurement suited to the selected answer engines. It does not replace the need for a website that helps people decide and enquire.
Google says its existing SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google requires no special AI files or dedicated schema for these features, and eligibility does not guarantee inclusion. See Google's AI features guidance.
For this shortlist, compare the actual delivery gap: diagnosis, technical implementation, content, digital PR or an ongoing programme. A company selling only PR can help with one part without being the right owner of the entire engagement.
What should an AEO agency deliver?
An AEO proposal needs a baseline, a delivery plan and an agreed method for evaluating change. Request named outputs and implementation responsibilities across these five areas.
- Audience and prompt research: map real buying questions to products, services and stages of the customer journey. Separate branded questions from discovery and comparison questions.
- Technical access review: inspect relevant crawler permissions, page rendering, indexability, internal links and content availability. Distinguish search access from model-training controls.
- Content and business information: identify inaccurate claims, missing answers, weak product details and conflicting entity information. State who writes, checks and publishes changes.
- External source work: explain which publications, directories, communities or other sources matter in your market. Specify the proposed contribution and approval process.
- Measurement and handover: supply the prompt set, definitions, repeat-run method, observations and change log. Give the business access to its reports and agreed exports.
OpenAI's publisher guidance identifies OAI-SearchBot for discovery in ChatGPT search and treats GPTBot as a training control. These are different purposes. Ask the provider to explain a proposed crawler change before applying a blanket allow or block rule. See OpenAI's publisher guidance.
An audit can be useful without implementation. Make that boundary explicit: a report, a developer-ready task and a published fix are three different deliverables. Count the work your team must supply when comparing fees.
How should you measure AI-search visibility?
Measure a defined sample repeatedly and report each outcome separately. A screenshot establishes what appeared in that observation; it does not establish typical visibility, campaign impact or revenue.
Start with the buying questions your sales and support teams hear. For a payroll-software business, useful examples include "Which UK payroll tools support several legal entities?" and "How does this provider handle payroll migration?" Include questions where the business is absent as well as those where it already appears.
Record these details with every observation:
- Question: exact prompt, business intent and whether the brand was named.
- Conditions: engine, available model or mode, country, language and relevant account context.
- Date and repetition: collection time, number of runs, missing responses and changes to the method.
- Result: brand mention, linked source, factual accuracy, recommendation context and any relevant competitor.
- Business outcome: attributable referral visits, qualified enquiries or transactions, with the attribution limits stated.
Keep a consistent benchmark set when comparing periods. Add new questions separately so a changing sample cannot create the appearance of progress. Ask the agency to retain unsuccessful observations and report variation between runs.
What do the platform reports actually tell you?
Google includes AI-feature traffic within Search Console's Web reporting. A report for keywords that show AI Overviews is therefore not an isolated count of visits from AI Overview citations.
Microsoft's AI Performance reporting measures citations across supported Microsoft AI experiences. Citation counts do not establish ranking, prominence or customer actions. Use the Bing Webmaster Tools measurement definitions when interpreting a provider's dashboard.
Use referral analytics and your enquiry or sales records for downstream outcomes. Label uncertain attribution. Do not turn a rise in sampled mentions into a claim that revenue increased because of AEO.
How much do AEO agencies cost in the UK?
AEO prices depend on scope, implementation and measurement. Compare a written total for the engagement, including setup, recurring work and the resources your team supplies.
My AI Visibility Audit is published at £1,500 fixed fee. Ongoing fractional support starts at £1,500 per month. These are my offer prices, not a market average or a quote for the other providers.
The profiles above identify other published starting prices and quote-only services. A PR minimum, a GEO audit and an ongoing integrated programme are not interchangeable. Confirm VAT treatment, availability and the current commercial terms directly with each provider.
What belongs in a comparable quote?
Request the audit fee, monthly delivery allowance, minimum term, tool costs, content costs, development time and approval workload. Ask whether prompt tracking is included and what access or exports remain available after the engagement ends.
Separate the fee for advice from the fee for implementation. An inexpensive report can create substantial follow-up work, while a larger retainer might already include that work. Compare the final delivery responsibilities rather than the headline price alone.
Treat forecasting as a scenario with stated assumptions. No sampled visibility score supplies a reliable conversion forecast by itself. Set a budget you can justify against your buying cycle and agree the evidence that would support continuing, changing or stopping the programme.
What should happen in the first 90 days?
Use the first 90 days to establish measurement, deliver priority changes and review early evidence. This is a suggested project sequence, not a promised time to appear in an AI answer.
Days 1-30: establish the baseline
Agree the target market, buying questions, competitors and measurement definitions. Check relevant access and indexing issues. Review the sources already appearing in answers and separate factual errors from missing coverage.
Require a prioritised backlog with named owners. Identify legal, subject-matter or product approvals early so the delivery plan reflects the work your team can approve.
Days 31-60: implement the agreed work
Publish the priority content and information fixes. Complete approved technical changes and begin relevant external-source work. Keep a change log so later observations can be examined alongside actual activity.
Continue measuring the original prompt set. Record product or model changes that could affect comparisons. Confirm which delays come from the provider, your team or an external dependency.
Days 61-90: review evidence and choose the next step
Compare repeated observations against the baseline and inspect referral or enquiry data separately. Explain what changed, what remains uncertain and what work was completed.
Decide whether to extend delivery, narrow the prompt set or redirect budget. A satisfactory report explains disappointing results and recommends a next step instead of adding more unexplained visibility scores.
Which AEO claims should you question?
Question claims that promise control over answers, hide measurement or replace useful work with a label. Apply the same checks to every provider, including my consultancy.
- Guaranteed recommendations: request the contractual deliverable and remedy. An agency does not control every answer an external product generates.
- One impressive screenshot: request repeated observations, the prompt sample, dates and missing results. A selected answer can be real without being representative.
- Special schema as the entire service: ask what user-visible problem the markup solves. Google's guidance does not require dedicated AI schema for its AI search features.
- Traffic presented as citations: require separate definitions for mentions, links, sessions and conversions. A change in one metric does not measure the others.
- Unsupported competitor claims: ask for the comparison method before accepting assertions that every other agency lacks results or expertise.
- Manufactured authority: reject fabricated reviews, false expertise and undisclosed promotional placements presented as independent editorial evidence.
Challenge case studies politely and specifically. Ask whether other SEO, paid-media or PR campaigns ran during the same period. Check whether a percentage describes a small sample, a selected topic or a company-wide outcome.
A credible proposal can acknowledge uncertainty while committing to useful work. Prefer inspectable methods, clear responsibilities and agreed decision points over certainty about how every AI product will behave.
Do you need an AEO agency, a consultant or your existing team?
Choose the delivery model around the work and the capacity to implement it. Hiring another provider is not automatically the right first step.
Use an agency when the project needs coordinated technical, editorial, PR and measurement delivery. Confirm the people assigned to the account, their availability and what still falls to your developers or subject experts.
Use a consultant when a named specialist can diagnose the problem and work directly with your team. Ask who handles production work and how additional writing, development or PR capacity is arranged.
Use your existing SEO team when it can extend a sound programme with explicit AI-search measurement and source analysis. Compare the revised scope against the same checklist rather than paying twice for the same technical audit.
Start internally when the business first needs a clearer view of its buying questions and content gaps. Gather real customer questions, inspect a small set of answers and record observations consistently. Commission specialist help when you can describe the gap and the decision the work must support.
The broader SEO company guide helps when your primary need is a wider organic-search programme. This article focuses on choosing and assessing answer-engine work.
How was this AEO shortlist selected?
This is an editorial shortlist based on public services and evidence checked on 12 September 2026. Providers appear alphabetically, including the author's labelled consultancy. Position does not indicate a performance ranking.
The review checked current AEO, GEO or AI-search offers, relevant public case studies, published prices and the delivery scope a buyer would need to confirm. Aira is included specifically for off-site GEO and digital PR; the profile makes that limitation visible. The list is selective and does not cover every UK provider.
Evidence limits: linked case studies are published by the providers. No client analytics, contracts or campaign outcomes were independently audited. A service page establishes what a company offers; it does not prove that the service caused a result.
Commercial disclosure: I sell AI visibility services and wrote this guide. Sunny Patel is included in the main list with an author label. Tom Riley has also included me in his GEO and AI SEO consultant guides; that connection is disclosed in his profile lower down the comparison.
Check the current price, staffing and terms before hiring. Use the proposal scorecard below to rate the evidence supplied for your business. The scores are yours, not ratings assigned to these agencies by this article.
