The Top GEO | AEO Agencies in the US 2027

October 29, 2026

GEO | AEO · Agency Directory

27 agencies that sell generative engine optimization as a real practice, ranked and checked against their own sites: where they are, what they charge to start, which AI surfaces they track, and what they have actually proven. Sort it, filter it, shortlist it.

By Barron Rosborough · November 4, 2026

Every answer engine builds a shortlist before it answers. This page lets you build yours.

1B+

Monthly users of Google AI Mode, a year after its global launch

Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings remarks

900M

Weekly ChatGPT users as of February 2026

OpenAI, via TechCrunch

+393%

Year-over-year growth in AI-referred traffic to US retail sites, Q1 2026

Adobe Analytics, via TechCrunch

8% vs 15%

Share of visits with a click on a result when an AI summary appears, against when it does not

Pew Research Center, July 2025

Why Are Brands Hiring GEO Agencies Right Now?

Renata Vuković learned her brand had an AI problem from her mother-in-law. Somewhere between the turkey and the pie last Thanksgiving, the woman mentioned that she had asked ChatGPT which bone broth to buy for a slow-cooker recipe, and it had steered her to a competitor. That competitor sits two facings away from Fieldstone Pantry's cartons at Whole Foods, and Renata is Fieldstone's VP of Marketing.

She went home and ran the prompt herself. Then she ran forty more, the kind a shopper types when nobody is watching: best low-sodium broth, is bone broth worth the money, which brands use grass-fed bones. Fieldstone showed up in four answers. The competitor showed up in twenty-two.

Renata and Fieldstone Pantry are a composite drawn from several brand marketers we have worked with. Her numbers are illustrative. The industry numbers below are sourced and linked.

Her experience is now the normal one. Google said AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly users in its Q2 2026 earnings remarks, and OpenAI reported ChatGPT at 900 million weekly users in February 2026. Adobe Analytics, which watches more than a trillion visits to US retail sites, found AI-referred traffic up 393% year over year in the first quarter of 2026 and converting 42% better than non-AI traffic by March, per TechCrunch's report on the data.

The click side of the ledger moved the other way. Pew Research Center followed 900 US adults for a month and found they clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when one did not, per Pew Research Center. Ahrefs measured a 34.5% drop in click-through rate for the top-ranking page across 300,000 keywords once AI Overviews rolled out. Bain's consumer survey found about 60% of searches now end without a click to another site.

So Renata did what marketers do when the ground moves. She wrote an RFP. This page is the research she wished she'd had before sending it: who sells generative engine optimization as a real practice in the United States, what each agency actually does, what it costs to start, and how to tell the practitioners from the people who renamed their SEO page in March.

What Does a GEO Agency Actually Do?

Strip the acronyms and the job is simple. Get your brand named, cited, and described accurately when an AI system answers a buyer's question. GEO (generative engine optimization) is the term researchers coined; AEO (answer engine optimization) grew out of the featured-snippet era; a few shops say LLMO or AI visibility. The agencies below use the terms interchangeably, and the deliverables are what separate them. We covered the strategic side in GEO Is the New SEO: Year-End Learnings; here is the work itself.

It Starts With a Prompt Set, Not a Keyword List

Keyword volume tells you what people type into a box. A prompt set tells you what they ask a machine, which is longer, messier, and closer to the purchase. A competent agency builds 50 to 300 prompts that mirror your buyer's questions across the funnel, runs them on a schedule across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and Copilot, and logs four things for each: whether you were mentioned, whether you were cited, what the answer said about you, and who won instead.

Renata's first audit was forty prompts in a spreadsheet, run by hand on a Sunday. The agencies she later interviewed ran the same exercise with a few hundred prompts, monthly, and showed her the competitor's share of answers by funnel stage. That number became the one her CEO asked about in every Monday meeting.

Then It Fixes What the Machines Can't Read

Adobe's retail analysis found that roughly a quarter of homepage and category-page content was not optimized for large language models and that about 34% of product pages could not be properly accessed by AI at all, per TechCrunch's report on Adobe's findings. The technical half of GEO closes that gap: crawl access for AI user agents such as GPTBot and PerplexityBot, content that renders without JavaScript gymnastics, Organization, Product, and FAQ schema that states facts the engines can lift, and a consistent description of who you are across your site, LinkedIn, directories, and wherever else the models learned about you.

This is the unglamorous part, and it is where SEO-born agencies tend to be strongest. It is also where Renata found her first real gap: Fieldstone's product pages described flavors in beautiful prose and listed sodium per serving in an image.

Then It Writes for Extraction

Generative engines break one question into several, pull passages that answer each piece, and assemble a response. Content that wins is built for that: a direct answer in the first two sentences, question-led subheads, passages that make sense when lifted out of context, original numbers, and named sources. The research that gave GEO its name, a 2023 paper from a Princeton-led team, found that tactics like adding citations, statistics, and quotations could lift a source's visibility in generative answers by up to 40%, with results that varied by domain.

Content-born agencies on this list, the ones that came up through data journalism and digital PR, are usually the strongest here. They already know how to make a page worth citing.

Then It Earns Citations Off Your Site

Engines trust what other people say about you more than what you say about yourself. So the off-site half of GEO looks a lot like PR: original research that journalists quote, comparison articles on third-party sites, product reviews with substance, and honest participation in the Reddit and Quora threads where buyers already argue. The agencies with PR roots sell this as a package; the technical shops often partner for it.

Then It Proves It

The measurement stack is still young, and every agency on this list has had to build or buy one. The core report tracks your citation share across the prompt set, the accuracy and tone of what the engines say, AI-referred sessions in GA4 (a referrer rule that catches chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, and copilot.microsoft.com gets you most of the way), and the conversion rate of those sessions against organic. That last number is why CFOs have started paying attention: Adobe's July 2026 data showed AI-referred retail visits converting 60% higher than non-AI visits and producing 53% more revenue per visit, the eleventh straight month AI traffic outperformed, per Digital Commerce 360.

How Did We Choose These Agencies?

We started with more than 60 agencies that appear on "best GEO agency" lists, most of them written by the agencies themselves. Then we checked each one against its own website and its Clutch profile in October 2026, with trade press as a backstop where the two disagreed. To make the cut, an agency had to meet all five of these tests:

Headquartered in the United States.
A dedicated GEO, AEO, or AI search optimization service page on its own site, with named deliverables rather than a paragraph bolted onto an SEO page.
A named method, tool, or framework for AI search, or published research on it.
Enough public information (location, size, pricing signals) to be useful in a comparison.
Evidence of real work: a case study with a result, named clients, or primary research the industry cites.

We left out software vendors that do not run engagements, agencies headquartered outside the US, and agencies whose AI search page reads as a renamed SEO page. We also left out a few firms that rank themselves first on their own lists but publish nothing we could verify. One disclosure: Hawke Media is on this list at number one because we built the page and we think we belong there.

Every entry's facts carry a "checked" date. When a figure comes from Clutch (minimum project size, team band) we say so, because those bands are self-reported by agencies and can lag reality. When we could not verify something, the entry says "not disclosed" instead of guessing.

The 27 Top GEO and AEO Agencies in the US, Ranked

Ranked 1 to 27. Hawke Media holds the top spot as the publisher. Click a column heading or use the sort menu to reorder, filter by state, best fit, or team size, and open Details on any row for the sources behind every fact. Tick the box to build a shortlist you can copy into your RFP.

Shortlist						AI surfaces tracked	Method or tool
	1	Hawke Media Our entry Los Angeles, CA Also New York, Chicago Growth-stage consumer and ecommerce brands that want GEO run month to month inside an outsourced CMO model, starting from a free AI Visibility Audit Consumer / DTCFull-service growthSMB / mid-market	2014	250+ own site	Free audit to start	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityAI Overviews	Hawke AI benchmarking platform; a free AI Visibility Audit that tests 70-plus prompts per brand; early investor and first agency partner of Gumshoe AI
About Hawke Media is a Los Angeles performance marketing agency founded in 2014 by Erik Huberman that has worked with more than 6,000 brands on an à la carte, month-to-month model. Its GEO \| AEO practice launched publicly in December 2025 and starts every engagement with an audit of how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews currently describe the brand. What they do for AI search AI search footprint audit, delivered as a free AI Visibility Audit and report GEO content and schema strategy, with site and knowledge-graph optimization GEO content production and refreshes built for extraction Monitoring, reporting, and iteration alongside SEO, paid, and lifecycle teams Proof on their own site In a four-month fully managed engagement, traffic from AI discovery platforms converted at nearly double the rate of traditional organic search, per Hawke's December 2025 announcement of the practice. Source Clients named on their site Jacuzzi Group named Hawke agency of record in 2026; the case studies page covers ecommerce, DTC, consumer goods, SaaS, and wellness brands. Research and recognition "GEO Is the New SEO: Year-End Learnings" (December 2025), "What Should Brands Do When AI Overviews Cut Traffic?" (April 2026), and "AI Search Only Has Three Slots" (August 2026). First agency selected for Google's International Growth Certified Partner program; five-time Inc. 5000 honoree. Facts HQ: Los Angeles, CA (also New York, Chicago) Founded: 2014 by Erik Huberman Ownership: Founder-led Team: 250+ (own site) Budget signals: No published GEO prices; services are à la carte and month to month, and the AI Visibility Audit is free. Industries: Ecommerce and DTC, consumer goods, SaaS and technology, B2B, healthcare and wellness, food and beverage Method or tool: Hawke AI benchmarking platform; a free AI Visibility Audit that tests 70-plus prompts per brand; early investor and first agency partner of Gumshoe AI Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	2	iPullRank New York, NY Enterprise teams with complex sites that want GEO grounded in information retrieval, with the math shown EnterpriseTechnical / engineering-ledAI search specialist	2014	About 32 own team page	$30,000+ published program tiers	ChatGPTAI OverviewsAI ModePerplexityCopilotGeminiClaude	Relevance Engineering framework, the 24-chapter AI Search Manual, and free tools including Qforia, a query fan-out simulator
About iPullRank is a New York agency founded in 2014 by Michael King, the Search Engine Land 2025 Search Marketer of the Year, and it reorganized its whole practice around AI search in 2026. Its Relevance Engineering framework treats GEO as an information-retrieval problem, with metrics like information gain, entity density, and fan-out coverage instead of rankings. What they do for AI search AI search visibility baselines, prompt and topic strategy, and content gap analysis Omnimedia content audits across press, forums, review sites, video, and social Content engineering plus digital PR, with a measurement framework that attributes citations and AI referral traffic to revenue Relevance Engineering technical assessments and executive reporting Proof on their own site A self-storage brand's three-month AI search pilot produced a 278% increase in AI Overview visibility, 34% more AI-referred sessions, and 21% more AI-referred revenue. A telecom provider's AI Overview inclusions rose from 712 to 3,235 over twelve months. Source Clients named on their site Target, American Express, adidas, Under Armour, Nordstrom, and The Wall Street Journal appear as logos on its site; case studies are anonymized under NDA. Research and recognition The AI Search Manual (August 2025, expanded through October 2026), the Relevance Engineering framework (May 2025), and the Relevance conference, formerly SEO Week. Named to the 2026 Inc. 5000. Facts HQ: New York, NY Founded: 2014 by Michael King Ownership: Independent, Black-owned Team: About 32 (own team page) Budget signals: Published program tiers: Emerging $30,000 to $150,000, Growth $150,000 to $500,000, Elite $500,000 and up. Clutch lists a $50,000 minimum project. Industries: Financial services, telecom, ecommerce marketplaces, retail, automotive, media Method or tool: Relevance Engineering framework, the 24-chapter AI Search Manual, and free tools including Qforia, a query fan-out simulator Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	3	Siege Media San Diego, CA Also Austin, Chicago, New York, San Francisco Brands that want citations earned through original research, digital PR, and bottom-funnel content, with LLM share of voice as the headline KPI Content and digital PRB2B / SaaSConsumer / DTC	2012	120+ own site	$5,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTAI OverviewsAI ModePerplexityGeminiCopilot	BlueprintIQ content strategy engine, DataFlywheel for content refreshes, and a Three-Point Attribution Framework for GEO ROI
About Siege Media was founded in San Diego in 2012 by Ross Hudgens, runs a remote team of more than 120 with hubs in San Diego and Austin, and built its name on data-driven content and digital PR before GEO existed as a term. Hudgens's book on generative engine optimization was published by Wiley in October 2026, and the agency's research on where AI gets its buying advice is among the most cited in the field. What they do for AI search Digital PR and research reports built to be cited, plus affiliate and editorial roundup placements Bottom-funnel pricing and comparison pages, interactive assets, and Reddit and community presence Prompt-level citation mapping, freshness audits, and a baseline LLM share-of-voice benchmark in a foundation phase Content refreshes through DataFlywheel and attribution reporting on citations, AI referral traffic, and branded search lift Proof on their own site Instacart earned 46,500 LLM citations across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot with 94% visibility on relevant queries. Mentimeter drew 124,000 ChatGPT sessions in six months, and Grow Therapy's AI visibility rose from 11% to 43%, per Peec AI. Source Clients named on their site Zendesk, Zapier, Instacart, Mentimeter, Grow Therapy, and Asana appear on its GEO page. Research and recognition "Where AI Gets Its Buying Advice" (March 2026; about 1,000 prompts and 57,095 citations, with Reddit appearing in 62% of responses) and "CRO Is GEO" (October 2026; 585 brands). Six-time Inc. 5000 honoree per its Clutch profile. Facts HQ: San Diego, CA (also Austin, Chicago, New York, San Francisco) Founded: 2012 by Ross Hudgens Ownership: Independent Team: 120+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices; the GEO page sets a six-month-plus horizon for results. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum project and $100 to $149 per hour. Industries: SaaS, fintech, ecommerce, health, travel, education, real estate, cybersecurity Method or tool: BlueprintIQ content strategy engine, DataFlywheel for content refreshes, and a Three-Point Attribution Framework for GEO ROI Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	4	Go Fish Digital Raleigh, NC Also Washington DC, Burlington MA, Phoenix, San Diego, Jacksonville Brands that want GEO grounded in how the engines actually work, with patent-informed page scoring and semantic audits Technical / engineering-ledEnterpriseConsumer / DTC	2005	350+ own site and Clutch	$5,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTAI OverviewsAI ModeCopilotPerplexityClaudeGemini	Barracuda, an AI marketing intelligence platform that scores pages against 14 factors drawn from Google patents, plus a free AI Overview Analyzer and Similarity Score extension
About Go Fish Digital is a Raleigh agency founded in 2005, now the flagship search brand of the Trinity Hunt-backed Agital platform with offices from Washington to San Diego. Its team is known for reading Google patents and turning them into tooling, and its GEO practice reflects that: semantic content audits, vector similarity scoring against real AI answers, and passage-level optimization. What they do for AI search Semantic content audits for entity presence and topic coverage Page- and passage-level optimization for AI Overviews and ChatGPT, scored by vector similarity to live answers Technical foundations for AI discovery: schema, IndexNow, sitemaps, internal linking, and log-file benchmarking Digital PR for brand citations and query fan-out expansion pages Proof on their own site Its own site, run as a GEO case study, gained 43% more monthly AI-driven traffic and 83% more conversions from AI referrals in under 90 days, with AI-referred leads converting at 25 times the rate of traditional search. No client GEO case study with figures is published yet. Source Clients named on their site Lowe's, LegalZoom, Joybird, MoneyGeek, SimpleTexting, and Wayfair appear on its GEO and AI search pages. Research and recognition "Winning with GEO" whitepaper (citing a 200-company, five-million-query study), a six-part GEO Strategy Framework (August 2025), and the Barracuda launch (July 2025). Landy Award and US Search Awards winner in 2015 and 2016. Facts HQ: Raleigh, NC (also Washington DC, Burlington MA, Phoenix, San Diego, Jacksonville) Founded: 2005 by Dan Hinckley Ownership: Private-equity backed (Trinity Hunt Partners, via Agital) Team: 350+ (own site and Clutch) Budget signals: No published prices; Barracuda is priced custom and the AI visibility audit is free. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum project. Industries: Ecommerce, SaaS, B2B and enterprise, legal and professional services, higher education, healthcare, financial services Method or tool: Barracuda, an AI marketing intelligence platform that scores pages against 14 factors drawn from Google patents, plus a free AI Overview Analyzer and Similarity Score extension Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	5	Victorious San Francisco, CA Brands past $10M in revenue that want AEO run as a disciplined extension of enterprise SEO, backed by the agency's own quarterly research EnterpriseB2B / SaaSTechnical / engineering-led	2013	50 to 249 Clutch	$50,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTPerplexityAI OverviewsAI ModeGeminiClaudeCopilot	No branded software; measures Mention Rate and Citation Rate separately and publishes a Quarterly Search Report
About Victorious is a San Francisco SEO agency founded in 2013 by Michael Transon that has moved answer engine optimization into its main navigation, with a playbook for each AI surface. It claims more than 20,000 AI citations earned for clients and runs controlled experiments across 177 brands and 100,000-plus AI responses to inform its method. What they do for AI search AI visibility audits, query research from customer questions and forums, and competitive citation analysis Answer-first content, restructured pages, Q&A sections, and FAQ, HowTo, and product schema Technical work for AI bots, including Bing-side indexation, plus entity authority building Citation monitoring through spot checks, server logs, and test prompts, tied to an integrated SEO and AEO roadmap Proof on their own site Porte Brown, an accounting firm, earned 150 AI Overview citations alongside a 416% increase in top-three rankings and 105% more organic sessions. SimplyFun added 45 AI Overview citations with a 266% increase in organic revenue. Source Clients named on their site SoFi, GE Digital, Delta Dental, Wayfair, Bissell, and Salesforce appear on its homepage; Porte Brown and SimplyFun are its named AEO case studies. Research and recognition Quarterly Search Report, Q3 2026: 16,500 AI answers across 161 brands found that 94% of brands cited on research questions were later named on consideration questions, against 50% of uncited brands. Named Top GEO Company in the 2026 Clutch Global Awards. Facts HQ: San Francisco, CA Founded: 2013 by Michael Transon Ownership: Independent Team: 50 to 249 (Clutch) Budget signals: No published prices; its intake form starts at $5,000 to $10,000 a month. Clutch lists a $50,000 minimum project and $300-plus hourly rate, the highest on this list. Industries: SaaS, finance, healthcare, insurance, legal, higher education, ecommerce, private equity portfolios Method or tool: No branded software; measures Mention Rate and Citation Rate separately and publishes a Quarterly Search Report Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	6	Seer Interactive Philadelphia, PA Analytics-minded enterprise teams that want GEO treated as a series of measured experiments, with short engagements available EnterpriseTechnical / engineering-ledAI search specialist	2002	200+ own site	$10,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityAI OverviewsClaude	SeerSonar, a ChatGPT answer-volatility tracker across 625 buyer prompts; an AI Traffic Predictive Modeler; an Agent Readiness Audit
About Seer Interactive is a Philadelphia agency founded in 2002 by Wil Reynolds that has spent the AI search era publishing tests instead of promises. Its GEO page is organized around diagnostics and measurement, offers one-week and three-week engagements, and links to controlled studies on schema, content recency, and query fan-out. What they do for AI search Prompt development and tracking plans, with brand-attribute accuracy tracking across LLMs Query fan-out analysis and content refresh and recency analysis AI-driven traffic conversion analysis, AI analytics benchmarks, and predictive traffic modeling Strategy, education, and enablement for in-house teams, with Scrunch as a tracking partner Proof on their own site An anonymized outdoor-living manufacturer grew AI Overview ownership 344% with 414 new AI Overview citations. A schema test on a travel aggregator lifted ChatGPT-User bot hits 12% against a 3.5% decline in the control group, and refreshed pages on a SaaS HR site drew 300% more AI traffic. Source Clients named on their site No clients are named on its site; it cites 130-plus enterprise clients and a 92% retention rate, and its GEO case studies are anonymized. Research and recognition "AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update" (April 2026, 53 brands, 5.47 million queries), "The AI Search Landscape, Beyond the SEO vs GEO Hype" (September 2025), and "Re-imagining AI Visibility KPIs in a Query Fan-Out World" (October 2026). Facts HQ: Philadelphia, PA Founded: 2002 by Wil Reynolds Ownership: Independent, Certified B Corp Team: 200+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $10,000 minimum project and $200 to $300 per hour; the agency says no 12-month commitment is required. Industries: Finance, SaaS, education, healthcare and life sciences, industrial, real estate and hospitality Method or tool: SeerSonar, a ChatGPT answer-volatility tracker across 625 buyer prompts; an AI Traffic Predictive Modeler; an Agent Readiness Audit Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	7	Omniscient Digital Austin, TX Also Distributed team B2B SaaS marketing teams that want AEO modeled from buyer demand and measured against pipeline, with the research to back it B2B / SaaSContent and digital PRAI search specialist	2019	About 30 own team page	$120,000/yr published full-service minimum	ChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexityAI OverviewsAI Mode	No branded tool; a four-step AEO method (model demand, win the consideration set, shape the sources, measure against pipeline) with Peec AI for tracking
About Omniscient Digital is an Austin-based B2B content agency founded in 2019 by David Ly Khim, Alex Birkett, and Allie Konchar, and it says plainly that it does not take B2C or ecommerce clients. Its research hub has published eleven AI search studies, including an analysis of 23,000 citations showing that a brand's own content accounts for only about a quarter of its branded citations. What they do for AI search Prompt and buyer demand modeling from voice-of-customer and sales data, with prompt tracking Citation source identification and competitive source intelligence Digital PR, third-party mentions, original research, and expert contributions Technical foundations, messaging-gap monitoring, and pipeline measurement through analytics and CRM data Proof on their own site OnBoard's AI visibility rose from 73% in January 2026 to 88% in August, holding first in its category every month, with AI-referred sessions growing 58% month over month. Convert's prompt visibility went from 31% to 55% in 60 days. Source Clients named on their site Jasper, SAP, TikTok, Asana, Loom, and OnBoard appear on its site. Research and recognition "How LLMs Source Brand Information" (January 2026; 23,387 citations across five platforms), "Which Content Types LLMs Cite Most" (January 2026), and "From Prompt to Purchase" (October 2025; survey of 100 B2B SaaS buyers). Facts HQ: Austin, TX (also Distributed team) Founded: 2019 by David Ly Khim, Alex Birkett, and Allie Konchar Ownership: Independent Team: About 30 (own team page) Budget signals: Full-service engagements start at $120,000 a year, per its site. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum project and $100 to $149 per hour. Industries: B2B software and SaaS, venture-backed startups, mid-market and enterprise B2B marketing teams Method or tool: No branded tool; a four-step AEO method (model demand, win the consideration set, shape the sources, measure against pipeline) with Peec AI for tracking Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	8	First Page Sage Berkeley, CA Also Remote agency B2B and professional-services firms that want thought-leadership content and list placements to move AI recommendation share B2B / SaaSContent and digital PRAI search specialist	2009	50 to 249 Clutch	$10,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityClaudeAI OverviewsCopilot	No branded software; an Agentic Search Optimization model (retrieval, evaluation, action) and an AI Belief Correction method
About First Page Sage is a remote agency founded in 2009 by Evan Bailyn that says it launched the first GEO service offering in May 2023, a claim we could not independently confirm. Its approach is editorial: place the client in the lists and databases engines consult, publish authority content, and monitor what the models believe about the brand. What they do for AI search List creation and outreach so clients appear in highly ranked roundup articles and directories Authority building on Google and Bing, review management, and publicizing awards and usage data Full AEO audits with structured data implementation and continuous monitoring across answer engines Agentic Search Optimization: comparison content, AI belief correction, and agent-ready conversion surfaces Proof on their own site An anonymized New York plastic surgeon's AI recommendation share rose from 11% to 61% across a 31-query panel in twelve months, with an estimated $2.3M in incremental revenue. An anonymized AI writing assistant saw AI-referred sessions climb from 41,300 to 1.27 million a month between mid-2024 and the end of 2025. Source Clients named on their site Salesforce, Logitech, Cadence Design Systems, US Bank, Verizon, and Corcoran appear on its site; most GEO case studies are anonymized. Research and recognition A GEO algorithm breakdown updated October 2026 (13,604 commercial queries across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude) and a monthly generative AI chatbot market share report. Facts HQ: Berkeley, CA (also Remote agency) Founded: 2009 by Evan Bailyn Ownership: Independent Team: 50 to 249 (Clutch) Budget signals: Clutch lists a $10,000 minimum project. The agency publishes a market survey of GEO pricing ($2,000 to $12,000 a month across three tiers) but not its own rates. Industries: B2B SaaS, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare, law firms, manufacturing, ecommerce Method or tool: No branded software; an Agentic Search Optimization model (retrieval, evaluation, action) and an AI Belief Correction method Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	9	Directive Irvine, CA Also Austin, New York B2B software and industrial companies that want GEO measured against pipeline, with paid and SEO in the same operating model B2B / SaaSEnterprise	2013	150+ own site	Not disclosed	ChatGPTPerplexityGeminiClaudeCopilotAI OverviewsAI Mode	DiscoverabilityOS methodology and a published GEO KPI Stack (Mention Rate, Citation Rate, Share of Answers, Time-to-Citation, Entity Prominence)
About Directive is an Orange County B2B performance agency founded in 2013 by Garrett Mehrguth and Tanner Shaffer, with more than 150 people across US, Mexico, UK, and Canada offices. Its GEO practice sits inside a "Customer Generation" model that reports organic, AI, and paid against revenue rather than traffic. What they do for AI search Entity and topic mapping, AI-ready content architecture, and structured data deployment Content restructuring for summaries and citations, with Q&A formatting and dedicated LLM information pages Citation building and digital PR distribution, plus Reddit and third-party listicle presence Citation tracking, branded impression monitoring, and custom dashboards built on Scrunch, Ahrefs, and GA4 Proof on their own site Case Status, a legal-tech SaaS company, went from zero LLM presence to a leading position across 39 tracked prompts in nine months and booked 20% more demos than forecast. AxisCare grew LLM share of referral traffic from under 4% to 15% and logged 24 net-new LLM-sourced leads between March and August 2025. Source Clients named on their site Case Status, Registrar Corp, AxisCare, Placemakr, Seagate, and ZoomInfo appear across its success stories and GEO pages. Research and recognition "A Practical Framework for Generative Engine Optimization Success Metrics" (December 2025) and a January 2026 webinar recap on why AI search is hard to measure. Facts HQ: Irvine, CA (also Austin, New York) Founded: 2013 by Garrett Mehrguth and Tanner Shaffer Ownership: Independent, no outside funding Team: 150+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices, and Clutch lists no minimum. Its own site describes a $25M agency that spends about $2.2M a year on R&D. Industries: Technology, industrial, professional services, healthcare and pharma, finance and insurance, logistics Method or tool: DiscoverabilityOS methodology and a published GEO KPI Stack (Mention Rate, Citation Rate, Share of Answers, Time-to-Citation, Entity Prominence) Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	10	NoGood New York, NY Also Miami Venture-backed consumer and tech brands that want AEO from a team whose founder also built an AEO tracking platform, inside a paid-and-social growth program AI search specialistConsumer / DTCFull-service growth	2016	70+ own site	$20,000+/mo published average retainer	ChatGPTGeminiClaudePerplexityCopilotAI OverviewsAI Mode	Goodie AI, an AI visibility platform founded by NoGood's founder, as its tracking stack; an AEO Masterclass course
About NoGood is a New York growth agency founded by Mostafa ElBermawy that was among the first to brand its practice as answer engine optimization, and it sells AEO as its lead service rather than an SEO add-on. Its founder also started Goodie AI, the visibility platform NoGood uses to measure, which gives it unusual depth in prompt research and an obvious conflict it discloses on its own blog. What they do for AI search LLM visibility audits, prompt research and monitoring, and AEO competitive analysis AEO content development, schema and structured data, and technical AEO audits Social citation strategy, reputation management, and digital PR for earned mentions Agentic commerce optimization and multimodal and voice search work Proof on their own site SteelSeries' visibility scores rose from 44 to 77 on Perplexity, 51 to 73 on ChatGPT, and 62 to 85 on Gemini between January and October 2025, per NoGood's case study, which also reports multi-fold growth in AI search traffic and conversions (its headline and body give different multiples). The work won the 2026 Shorty Award in the GEO category, per NoGood's awards page. Source Clients named on their site Nike, TikTok, Intuit, MongoDB, SteelSeries, and Spring Health appear on its AEO page and results index. Research and recognition A technical AEO checklist (August 2026) and an AEO Masterclass (November 2026); the heavier research, including an AEO Periodic Table and a 2026 AI search traffic report, is published under the Goodie brand. Gold at The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas 2026 in Search. Facts HQ: New York, NY (also Miami) Founded: 2016 by Mostafa ElBermawy Ownership: Independent, founder-led Team: 70+ (own site) Budget signals: No published rate card; its homepage FAQ says the average retainer runs above $20,000 a month. Clutch lists no minimum. Industries: SaaS, healthcare, fintech, B2B, ecommerce, AI, crypto, startups Method or tool: Goodie AI, an AI visibility platform founded by NoGood's founder, as its tracking stack; an AEO Masterclass course Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	11	Amsive New York, NY Also Bolingbrook, IL (parent); Nashville, Hobart, Ridgeland, Greenville Enterprise brands in regulated or high-volume categories that want AEO led by a nationally known SEO research team EnterpriseFull-service growth	Not disclosed	250 to 999 Clutch	$25,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityCopilotAI OverviewsAI ModeClaude	AI Visibility Scorecard and AEO benchmarking, with Profound as its tracking partner
About Amsive is a performance marketing company owned by H.I.G. Capital whose digital practice grew out of Path Interactive in New York. Its AEO offering launched in June 2025 and is fronted by Lily Ray, one of the most cited voices in search, which gives it an unusual amount of public research for an agency its size. What they do for AI search Technical SEO for AI discoverability and AI-structured content built around question clusters Brand citation consistency and accuracy work across the open web LLM share-of-voice analysis, surface and query tracking by AI platform, and citation and sentiment monitoring Multimedia strategy (video, podcasts, UGC) and cross-channel alignment with paid and social Proof on their own site No named AEO case study yet. Its AEO guide reports anonymized conversion rates for LLM traffic: 3.76% against 1.19% for organic at an insurance client, and 5.53% against 3.7% at an ecommerce client. Source Clients named on their site No clients are named on its AEO page. MSN is named in its 2025 Search Engine Land Awards announcement, and Buoy Health and iCIMS appear in testimonials and reviews. Research and recognition "The Leading Brands and Domains in AI Search Across 10 Business Categories" (August 2025, data from Profound across six platforms) and a first-party study of 700,000 keywords showing a 15.49% average CTR decline on queries that trigger AI Overviews. Named Agency of the Year, SEO, in the 2025 Search Engine Land Awards. Facts HQ: New York, NY (also Bolingbrook, IL (parent); Nashville, Hobart, Ridgeland, Greenville) Founded: not disclosed Ownership: Private-equity backed (H.I.G. Capital) Team: 250 to 999 (Clutch) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $25,000 minimum project; the AEO page offers a free AI Readiness Assessment as the entry point. Industries: Healthcare, financial services, insurance, retail and consumer goods, education, publishing, B2B Method or tool: AI Visibility Scorecard and AEO benchmarking, with Profound as its tracking partner Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	12	WebFX Harrisburg, PA Also Lancaster, Fort Myers, St. Petersburg Mid-market B2B and service businesses that want a productized GEO program with published tiers and tracking across ten AI engines SMB / mid-marketFull-service growthTechnical / engineering-led	1996	750+ own site	$3,000/mo published GEO starting price	AI OverviewsAI ModeChatGPTPerplexityCopilotGeminiClaude	OmniSEO, an AI visibility tracker inside its RevenueCloudFX platform that follows up to five competitors across ten AI engines, plus Agent Analytics for AI attribution
About WebFX started in a Shippensburg University dorm in 1996 and is now a 750-person Harrisburg agency that owns SEO.com and the Nutshell CRM. It is the only agency on this list that publishes a full GEO rate card, from a $3,000-a-month tier covering 50 prompts to enterprise tiers, and its OmniSEO tracker ships with every program. What they do for AI search GEO audits of how AI models describe the brand and which sources they cite, plus prompt research and targeting On-site schema, seed content, and monthly content, PR, social, and video assets through FuelTankFX Citations and third-party mentions via digital PR, with llms.txt files and content refreshes in its case work Tracking of citations, brand mentions, sentiment, and AI-referred leads across ten platforms, with prompt query volume reporting Proof on their own site Thompson Tractor saw a 586% increase in traffic from generative AI sources and 500% more AI-platform leads after an AI strategy launched in January 2025. RC Mowers reported a 1,164% increase in AI-sourced traffic and 500% more core conversions from AI; baselines are not stated. Source Clients named on their site Thompson Tractor, The Roof Detective, IGX Solutions, URAC, RC Mowers, and Enabling Devices appear on its GEO page and case studies. Research and recognition A generative AI search trends page drawing on more than a billion sessions across 1,500 businesses, a GEO framework guide (February 2026), and a GEO cost study (May 2026). Stevie American Business Awards 2026 Silver for its GEO and OmniSEO work. Facts HQ: Harrisburg, PA (also Lancaster, Fort Myers, St. Petersburg) Founded: 1996 by Bill Craig and Karie Shearer Ownership: Independent, founder-run Team: 750+ (own site) Budget signals: Published tiers: GEO from $3,000 a month (50 prompts across ten LLMs, three assets) up to $34,500 for enterprise and $68,250 for enterprise-plus, on six-month terms. Clutch lists a $1,000 minimum project. Industries: Heavy equipment, home and facility services, SaaS, education, manufacturing, ecommerce Method or tool: OmniSEO, an AI visibility tracker inside its RevenueCloudFX platform that follows up to five competitors across ten AI engines, plus Agent Analytics for AI attribution Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	13	Avenue Z Miami, FL Also New York, Orlando Consumer, fintech, and hospitality brands that want AEO run through PR and earned media, with a public benchmark for their category Content and digital PRConsumer / DTCAI search specialist	2023	About 120 Built In and Clutch	$10,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityClaudeCopilotAI OverviewsAI Mode	Z-Score, a composite of AI visibility, share of voice, sentiment, and citation volume; sector AI Visibility Index (AIVx) reports; tracking on Peec and Profound
About Avenue Z was founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Herzog, who started iCrossing in 1998 and sold it to Hearst, and it has rebuilt the agency model around AI optimization and PR. Its AIVx reports benchmark entire sectors (digital banks, payments, beauty, B2B tech) and found that 85% to 96% of AI citations come from earned rather than owned sources, which is the thesis behind its PR-led approach. What they do for AI search AI visibility and prompt tracking, with prompt and journey mapping AEO strategy that assigns each prompt to content, PR, or technical work PR and AI authority building to earn placements in the sources engines cite, plus AI-ready FAQs, listicles, and thought leadership Entity, topic, and knowledge-graph analysis, schema, and AEO for ecommerce including Amazon Rufus Proof on their own site Its own AEO case study reports a 121% year-over-year gain in AI visibility, a 77% rise in share of voice, and 76% more AI-referred new leads. Orlando.org's multi-site AI search program is credited with a 1,100% increase in conversions. Source Clients named on their site Verizon, Adobe, Bank of America, Wyndham, Williams-Sonoma, and AdventHealth appear on its site. Research and recognition AI Visibility Index reports across fintech, beauty, health and wellness, and B2B tech (2025 to 2026). Winner of a 2025 AI Breakthrough Award; founder named to Adweek's 2026 AI Power 50; a founding Profound certified agency partner. Facts HQ: Miami, FL (also New York, Orlando) Founded: 2023 by Jeffrey Herzog Ownership: Private, founder-owned Team: About 120 (Built In and Clutch) Budget signals: No published prices; a complimentary AI share-of-voice audit is the entry point. Clutch lists a $10,000 minimum project and $150 to $199 per hour. Industries: Consumer brands and DTC, health and beauty, luxury and apparel, hospitality, fintech, emerging tech, Latin America Method or tool: Z-Score, a composite of AI visibility, share of voice, sentiment, and citation volume; sector AI Visibility Index (AIVx) reports; tracking on Peec and Profound Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	14	Optimist Des Moines, IA Also Distributed team B2B SaaS teams that want AEO built on editorial content and reported as pipeline B2B / SaaSContent and digital PRAI search specialist	2016	About 20 plus a freelance network own team page	$3,000/mo published consulting starting price	ChatGPTClaudeGeminiPerplexityAI Overviews	CORE Framework: 21 factors across seven layers, from technical foundations to proof
About Optimist is a distributed content agency founded in 2016 by Tyler Hakes that now sells AI search optimization as its lead offer. Its CORE Framework scores a site on 21 factors, and its fan-out research argues that ranking for a model's follow-up queries predicts citations far better than ranking for the original prompt. What they do for AI search AI search audits across 21 CORE factors, with citation-pattern review Fan-out query mapping, FAQ and page-structure analysis, and schema Entity and knowledge-graph support, digital PR, and original data for citations Weekly AI visibility tracking and reporting on recommendation rate, share of voice, and LLM-sourced revenue Proof on their own site An anonymized B2B technology client grew revenue from LLM referral traffic 4,900% and LLM referral traffic 2,622% over roughly 14 months, per Optimist's February 2026 case study. Source Clients named on their site Semrush, ZoomInfo, DreamHost, HelloSign, Stampli, and Glide appear on its site; AI case studies are anonymized. Research and recognition The CORE Framework (April 2026), an AEO metrics guide (April 2026), and a fan-out study of 199 buyer prompts across five AI surfaces. Facts HQ: Des Moines, IA (also Distributed team) Founded: 2016 by Tyler Hakes Ownership: Independent, founder-led Team: About 20 plus a freelance network (own team page) Budget signals: Strategy and roadmap projects from $2,500; AI search consulting and retainers from $3,000 per month, month-to-month, per its service pages. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum and $150 to $199 per hour. Industries: B2B technology and SaaS, fintech, retail tech, HR tech Method or tool: CORE Framework: 21 factors across seven layers, from technical foundations to proof Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	15	Terakeet Syracuse, NY Also Remote-first across 135+ US cities Fortune 1000 brands and executives who care as much about what AI says about them as whether it mentions them EnterpriseAI search specialist	2001	250+ own site	Not disclosed	ChatGPTGeminiAI ModeAI OverviewsPerplexityClaude	AIO Dashboard (AI Overviews presence, citation, and mention tracking) and patented TAM and performance-projection models
About Terakeet is a 25-year-old Syracuse company with more than 250 employees that sells owned-asset optimization to Fortune 500 brands, and its generative AI practice is framed as reputation and narrative control. Its three core metrics are brand presence, brand sentiment, and citation control, which makes it the most reputation-minded agency on this list. What they do for AI search Audit, build, and monitor process covering AI visibility, sentiment, and brand-owned citations Owned-asset optimization, claiming unowned content, and lower-funnel content pivots Brand-focused AI query monitoring and narrative management across ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Mode AI Overviews tracking through its AIO Dashboard Proof on their own site An anonymized financial-industry leader reached 94% average controllability of its narrative on priority terms, with ChatGPT control rising from 25% to 100% and Gemini from 52% to 96%. An anonymized insurer grew monthly AI Overview brand mentions 152% in six months and conversions 31% in twelve, with ChatGPT referrals converting at 3.9%. Source Clients named on their site No clients are named on its site; all case studies and testimonials are anonymized, and it describes its clients as Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 brands. Research and recognition "The AI Search Questions We're Solving for Global Brands" (September 2026) and "Terakeet's AIO Dashboard" (August 2025); no named external study. Facts HQ: Syracuse, NY (also Remote-first across 135+ US cities) Founded: 2001 by Mac Cummings and Patrick Danial Ownership: Private, self-funded Team: 250+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices and no Clutch profile located; engagements are enterprise-scale and custom. Industries: Financial services, insurance, media and entertainment, technology, public figures Method or tool: AIO Dashboard (AI Overviews presence, citation, and mention tracking) and patented TAM and performance-projection models Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	16	Single Grain Los Angeles, CA Also Remote-first; Austin SaaS and ecommerce marketers who want AEO folded into a full-funnel program and reported in citations and sales-qualified leads B2B / SaaSFull-service growthSMB / mid-market	2009	About 60 Built In; Clutch lists 10 to 49	$10,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTAI OverviewsAI ModeGeminiPerplexityClaudeCopilot	No GEO-specific platform; a Search Everywhere Optimization service line and a free AI Visibility Report
About Single Grain is a Los Angeles agency that CEO Eric Siu bought for two dollars in 2014 when it was a failing SEO shop, and it now runs GEO, AEO, and "search everywhere" programs for SaaS and ecommerce clients. Its case studies are among the few on this list that translate AI citations into a dollar estimate and a count of sales-qualified leads. What they do for AI search AI question and topic research, Q&A hubs, FAQ optimization, and citation-ready source pages Content refreshes on an evergreen cadence for AI Overviews, with author bios and E-E-A-T work Crawlability audits, Core Web Vitals, and Article, FAQ, Product, and Organization schema Digital PR, expert bylines, statistics pages, unlinked-mention reclamation, and AI citation dashboards Proof on their own site SmartRent gained 136 new AI citations in about a month, grew Google AI Overview citations from 64 to 96, and attributed ten monthly sales-qualified leads to LLMs. LS Building Products earned 424 AI citations over twelve months. Source Clients named on their site Nextiva, Lever, Amazon Alexa, Castlight Health, SmartRent, and LS Building Products appear on its GEO page and case studies. Research and recognition No named original study; thought leadership is guide- and listicle-format, including a GEO agency roundup updated October 2025. Facts HQ: Los Angeles, CA (also Remote-first; Austin) Founded: 2009 Ownership: Independent; owned by CEO Eric Siu since 2014 Team: About 60 (Built In; Clutch lists 10 to 49) Budget signals: No published prices; its intake form spans under $3,000 to $100,000-plus a month. Clutch lists a $10,000 minimum project. Industries: SaaS, ecommerce, education, crypto and blockchain, fintech Method or tool: No GEO-specific platform; a Search Everywhere Optimization service line and a free AI Visibility Report Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	17	GR0 Los Angeles, CA Consumer and DTC brands that want GEO reported in revenue, with Reddit and publisher placements in the plan Consumer / DTCFull-service growth	2020	75+ own site	$5,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTPerplexityClaude	No in-house tool; measures with Profound and publishes an llms.txt
About GR0 is a Los Angeles search agency founded in 2020 by Kevin Miller and Jon Zacharias, with more than 75 employees and a client list heavy on DTC and consumer brands. It launched a dedicated GEO service in November 2025 and reports results as AI-sourced revenue rather than mentions. What they do for AI search Crawlability work, robots.txt audits, and dedicated sitemaps for AI crawlers AI-ready "Answer Pages" and prompt optimization Reddit authority programs with activated contributors, plus citation-building publisher mentions Monthly dashboards tracking crawl health, AI referral traffic, and citations Proof on their own site TickPick's LLM-referred sessions rose from 1,807 to 35,146 and revenue from LLM traffic grew 843% after an engagement that began in December 2023. Mito Red Light reported a 465% increase in AI-attributed revenue between September 2025 and February 2026. Source Clients named on their site TickPick, AdQuick, Mito Red Light, Ritual, Ubisoft, and Litter-Robot appear in its case studies. Research and recognition No named research report. Press releases on its GEO launch (November 2025) and TickPick results (March 2026); won Best Large Integrated Search Agency at the 2024 US Search Awards. Facts HQ: Los Angeles, CA Founded: 2020 by Kevin Miller and Jon Zacharias Ownership: Independent, founder-led Team: 75+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum project, with its most common engagements in the $50,000 to $199,999 range. Industries: Health and wellness, beauty, apparel, food and beverage, finance, consumer goods Method or tool: No in-house tool; measures with Profound and publishes an llms.txt Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	18	Ignite Visibility San Diego, CA Also Irvine, Orlando, New York Franchise and multi-location brands that want AI search visibility across thousands of pages, with crawler access, llms.txt, and location schema handled at scale Consumer / DTCFull-service growthSMB / mid-market	2013	340+ own site; its pages cite 340+ and 700+	$2,000/mo published typical engagement floor	AI OverviewsAI ModeGeminiChatGPTClaudeCopilotPerplexity	Rallio platform with GEO integration, RevIntel closed-loop attribution, and a named AI SEO Framework
About Ignite Visibility is a San Diego agency founded in 2013 by John Lincoln and Krishnan Coughran, backed by Mountaingate Capital since 2023 and expanded through acquisitions of Outliant, Rallio, and EverConnect. It announced a GEO service in May 2024, early for the category, and hired a vice president of GEO and SEO from BrightEdge in 2025. What they do for AI search Passage-level content structure, structured data, semantic HTML, and an llms.txt index AI crawler access for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended, server-side rendering, and Bing crawlability Entity consistency across Wikipedia, Wikidata, and directories, plus mentions on review platforms, Reddit, and Quora AI share-of-voice, citation, and sentiment tracking, an AI Discovery analytics channel, and programmatic location schema for franchises Proof on their own site An anonymized home services franchise group with more than 5,500 locations grew AI Overview visibility 458% across 5,000-plus blog posts and lifted web leads 20%, work that won a 2025 OMMA Award. Source Clients named on their site Orangetheory, Jazzercise, ACAMS, Neighborly Brands, Experian, and Dun & Bradstreet appear on its site; most AI case studies are anonymized. Research and recognition "From Invisible to Indispensable: Dominating AI Search with Answer Engine Optimization" (November 2025) and a masterclass series; no named original study. Four-time Search Engine Land Agency of the Year, per its site. Facts HQ: San Diego, CA (also Irvine, Orlando, New York) Founded: 2013 by John Lincoln and Krishnan Coughran Ownership: Private-equity backed (Mountaingate Capital) Team: 340+ (own site; its pages cite 340+ and 700+) Budget signals: Most engagements run $2,000 to $10,000-plus a month with no long-term contracts, per its AI information page. Clutch lists a $1,000 minimum project and $100 to $149 per hour. Industries: Franchise and multi-location, home services, health and wellness, automotive, dental, financial services, hospitality Method or tool: Rallio platform with GEO integration, RevIntel closed-loop attribution, and a named AI SEO Framework Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	19	Marcel Digital Chicago, IL Mid-market B2B companies that want a structured AEO readiness program run by a technical, Google Premier Partner shop B2B / SaaSSMB / mid-marketTechnical / engineering-led	2003	About 35 own team page and Built In	$5,000+ Clutch minimum project	AI OverviewsAI ModeGeminiChatGPTPerplexityCopilotClaude	AEO Readiness Assessment with a four-phase engagement model; a Predictive Content Model appears in its case work
About Marcel Digital is a Chicago agency founded in 2003 by Ben Swartz, with about 35 people in one office and a reputation built on technical SEO. Its AEO practice is packaged as a readiness program that moves from assessment to an implementation sprint to monitoring, which makes it unusually legible for buyers who want to know what they are paying for. What they do for AI search AEO Readiness Assessment covering content, technical health, schema, entities, and AI-surface visibility Question and topic mapping with answer-first content optimization FAQ, HowTo, Organization, Product, and Service schema, plus entity and fact-structure fixes Monitoring of AI answer surfaces and an AEO consulting roadmap Proof on their own site An anonymized accounts-payable SaaS client grew AI prompt visibility from 33% to 73%, AI referral traffic 161% year over year, and AI-driven form submissions 240% since June 2025, per Marcel's case study. Source Clients named on their site Bethel University, Worldpoint, Absolute Software, Precision Medical, Medius, and Seko Logistics appear in testimonials and case studies. Research and recognition "AEO vs AIO: What Marketers Need to Know About AI-Driven Search" (August 2025) and a free AEO starter kit; no named quantitative study. Named a Clutch Top SEO Company for 2026. Facts HQ: Chicago, IL Founded: 2003 by Ben Swartz Ownership: Independent Team: About 35 (own team page and Built In) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum project and $200 to $300 per hour. Industries: Technology, associations, financial services, manufacturing, logistics, telecommunications Method or tool: AEO Readiness Assessment with a four-phase engagement model; a Predictive Content Model appears in its case work Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	20	Perrill Minneapolis, MN Mid-market brands that want a measurement-first GEO program with published pricing and a small senior team SMB / mid-marketTechnical / engineering-led	1998	25 own site	$6,000/mo published GEO starting price	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityClaudeAI OverviewsCopilot	PAVE, an AI search analytics engine; public AI Visibility Leaderboards across 25 industries
About Perrill is a 25-person Minneapolis agency founded in 1998 that has published more GEO methodology than most firms ten times its size. Its PAVE analytics engine segments branded and unbranded prompts and ties AI referrals to CRM and call data, and its public leaderboards run 1,450 buyer-intent queries across five engines every week. What they do for AI search AI readiness audits, prompt research, and content structured for extraction AI-specific technical SEO: schema, HTML cleanup, Markdown versions of pages, and GA4 LLM channel groups Brand mentions and listings in directories, top lists, and review sites Reporting through PAVE, with ROI pipeline measurement Proof on their own site No quantified GEO case study is published yet. Its GEO page cites unnamed clients reaching top ChatGPT mentions within two weeks, and a Clutch reviewer in water management reports improved LLM traffic and leads without figures. Source Clients named on their site Culligan, Park Dental, Dura Supreme, Jack Link's, Puma, and Valant appear on its site. Research and recognition "How to Measure the Success of Generative Engine Optimization Campaigns" (March 2025), "Why Markdown Matters for AI Visibility" (June 2026), and weekly AI Visibility Leaderboards. Facts HQ: Minneapolis, MN Founded: 1998 by Jay Perrill Ownership: Independent Team: 25 (own site) Budget signals: GEO engagements start at $6,000 per month, retainer or project, per its service page. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum and $150 to $199 per hour. Industries: Ecommerce, healthcare, financial services, real estate, education, professional services, manufacturing Method or tool: PAVE, an AI search analytics engine; public AI Visibility Leaderboards across 25 industries Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	21	Animalz New York, NY Also Remote-first B2B SaaS companies with complex products that want AEO done through expert-written content and citation outreach B2B / SaaSContent and digital PR	2015	About 130 own site	Not disclosed	ChatGPTPerplexityAI OverviewsGeminiClaude	A proprietary AI workflow for micro content refreshes, a public Content Refresh Tool, and a citations copilot built on AirOps
About Animalz is a B2B content agency that started in New York in 2015 and now runs a remote team of roughly 130 writers, strategists, and editors. Its AEO practice is an extension of what it already did well, subject-matter interviews and long-form editorial, adapted to the way answer engines lift passages. What they do for AI search AI visibility audits across AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, with a strategy roadmap Micro content refreshes that realign existing pages to what answer engines are currently saying Content creation for high-priority prompts, plus YouTube built for AEO Mention and citation outreach to the sources LLMs already trust, including Reddit engagement Proof on their own site An anonymized B2B SaaS client's share of voice rose from 12% to 54% across April and May 2026, with monthly citations growing from 21 to more than 700, per Animalz's post on its AirOps workflow. The Amplitude case study (7,000 to 150,000-plus monthly organic visits) is SEO rather than AEO. Source Clients named on their site Amplitude, Rilla, Preply, Unit21, 360Learning, and Frontify appear on its customers page; its AEO results are anonymized. Research and recognition "Animalz Runs AirOps" (May 2026) and an AEO/GEO agency buyer's guide (updated October 2025); no named quantitative study. Facts HQ: New York, NY (also Remote-first) Founded: 2015 Ownership: Not disclosed Team: About 130 (own site) Budget signals: No published prices and no Clutch profile located; engagements are custom. Industries: B2B SaaS, developer tools, venture-backed technology Method or tool: A proprietary AI workflow for micro content refreshes, a public Content Refresh Tool, and a citations copilot built on AirOps Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	22	NP Digital Las Vegas, NV Also Remote-first; 28 country markets Enterprise and mid-market brands that want AI search handled by a 1,000-person global agency with its own prompt-research tooling EnterpriseFull-service growth	2017	1,000+ own site	Not disclosed	ChatGPTAI Overviews	Ubersuggest's AI Search Optimization features (a 5,000-plus consumer prompt database, citation tracking, sentiment) and the AnswerThePublic AI dashboard
About NP Digital was founded in 2017 by Neil Patel and Mike Kamo, now runs more than 1,000 people across 28 countries, and lists its headquarters in Las Vegas. Its AI search page is an overview rather than a menu, but the agency owns Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic, which together serve 4.2 million users a month and now include prompt research and citation tracking. What they do for AI search Entity optimization: consistent structured data, third-party mentions, and a Wikipedia presence where warranted Content clarity and structure with semantic headers, FAQs, and schema Brand mentions through digital PR, guest contributions, and expert interviews Technical SEO, E-E-A-T, knowledge-graph development, and multimodal content Proof on their own site RefiJet's referral traffic from ChatGPT and other LLMs grew 2,012%, per NP Digital's India site; the US case page describes AI Overview gains and more than 60 high-value placements without percentages. The campaign won the OMMA 2025 Best SEO Campaign award. Source Clients named on their site RefiJet, ZAGG, Adobe, Claire's, Universal Technical Institute, and SoFi appear on its site. Research and recognition No named NP Digital report on AI search; product research ships through Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. Named Ad Age A-List Performance Marketing Agency of the Year for 2026 and a Google Premier Partner for eight straight years. Facts HQ: Las Vegas, NV (also Remote-first; 28 country markets) Founded: 2017 by Neil Patel and Mike Kamo Ownership: Private, minority-owned (NMSDC certified) Team: 1,000+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices, and its Clutch profile could not be reached for a minimum. Industries: Organized by enterprise, SMB, B2C, and B2B; case work spans auto finance, consumer electronics, software, retail, fintech, and education Method or tool: Ubersuggest's AI Search Optimization features (a 5,000-plus consumer prompt database, citation tracking, sentiment) and the AnswerThePublic AI dashboard Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	23	Thrive Internet Marketing Agency Arlington, TX Also San Antonio, Kansas City, Atlanta Small and mid-sized businesses that want AI search handled inside a broad, month-to-month digital program SMB / mid-marketFull-service growth	2005	160+ own site	$1,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTGeminiAI OverviewsAI ModePerplexityClaudeCopilot	ThriveAI: tracks brand mentions, citations, and sentiment across LLMs
About Thrive began in 2005 as a Texas web design shop and grew into a 160-person digital agency with staff in 34 states. Its AI search practice is sold as "AI SEO," with separate playbooks for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, and it keeps clients on month-to-month terms. What they do for AI search Platform-specific optimization pages for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, AI Overviews, and AI Mode AI visibility audits, passage-level and answer-first content, and schema markup Digital PR, directory and citation management, and review generation to build off-site trust Bing and Copilot optimization alongside Google Proof on their own site A multi-specialty medical group went from near zero to 331 Google AI Overview citations (a 2,658% increase) and 1,313 total AI citations within six months, per Thrive's anonymized case study. Source Clients named on their site Not named on its site; AI case studies are anonymized by industry (a multi-specialty medical group, a footwear brand, an industrial manufacturer). Research and recognition A seven-part AI Search Optimization Guide (updated August 2026) and a self-published GEO agency ranking that tracks 200 prompts and places Thrive first. Facts HQ: Arlington, TX (also San Antonio, Kansas City, Atlanta) Founded: 2005 by Matt Bowman Ownership: Independent Team: 160+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $1,000 minimum project and $100 to $149 per hour; Thrive's own intake form offers budget tiers from $2,500 to $5,000 a month up to $50,000+. Industries: Healthcare, ecommerce, technology, legal, manufacturing, financial services Method or tool: ThriveAI: tracks brand mentions, citations, and sentiment across LLMs Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	24	Wpromote El Segundo, CA Also New York, Chicago Retail and consumer brands that want paid and organic AI search planned together, with shopping feeds and AI ad placements in scope EnterpriseConsumer / DTCFull-service growth	2001	About 790 Built In	Not disclosed	ChatGPTGeminiAI Overviews	Polaris IQ for LLM visibility and share of voice; Profound as its monitoring partner; a free AI Page Scorecard
About Wpromote is a Los Angeles-area performance agency founded in 2001 that now has roughly 790 people and, since acquiring Giant Spoon in late 2025, a creative arm to match its media scale. Its AI search practice is one of the few on this list that plans paid AI placements and organic citations as a single program. What they do for AI search On-site optimization, content production, and structured data for AI surfaces A combined paid and organic AI search strategy covering shopping feeds and AI ad placements Off-site content, digital PR, and social proof to build LLM authority, including Reddit AI visibility tracking across roughly 300 prompts and 15 topics per client, with creative built for AI search Proof on their own site Travelpro grew its appearances in SERP features including Google AI Overviews by 154% year over year, alongside 23% more organic revenue, per Wpromote's case study. Source Clients named on their site Travelpro, POLYWOOD, Peacock, QuickBooks, Hibbett, and Klipsch appear across its AI search page and case studies. Research and recognition No named AI search report. Search Engine Land Agency of the Year in SEO and PPC (2023); Ad Age A-List Performance Agency of the Year. Facts HQ: El Segundo, CA (also New York, Chicago) Founded: 2001 by Michael Mothner Ownership: Private-equity backed (ZMC) Team: About 790 (Built In) Budget signals: No published prices and no Clutch profile located; the free AI Search Audit is the entry point. Industries: Retail and ecommerce, B2B, financial services, travel and hospitality, health and wellness Method or tool: Polaris IQ for LLM visibility and share of voice; Profound as its monitoring partner; a free AI Page Scorecard Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	25	Power Digital San Diego, CA Also New York, Atlanta DTC and consumer brands that want GEO scoped alongside SEO, paid, and lifecycle inside one large growth agency Consumer / DTCFull-service growth	2012	About 775 Built In	$5,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTPerplexityGeminiClaudeCopilotAI OverviewsAI Mode	nova data platform and the Omega growth operating system; GEO itself ships as an AI Readiness Audit
About Power Digital is a San Diego growth agency founded in 2012 by Grayson Lafrenz, now roughly 775 people, backed by Court Square Capital, and growing through acquisitions including Cardinal Digital Marketing in January 2026. Its GEO service is sold as an add-on to SEO for brands already running media through the agency. What they do for AI search AI Readiness Audit covering visibility, sentiment, structure, and trust Prompt and theme opportunity audits with conversational content optimization Structured data and schema enhancement, plus semantic HTML and crawlability work for AI agents Authority and mention building through digital PR, with AI visibility and citation-share monitoring Proof on their own site No quantified GEO case study is published yet; its case studies page carries no GEO entries, and its blog describes an unnamed footwear retailer audit without figures. Source Clients named on their site TomboyX, Mielle Organics, Victrola, Hayabusa, Catalina Crunch, and Casper appear in its case studies. Research and recognition A blog series including "How to Rank on ChatGPT" (January 2026) and "How to Audit Your Brand Visibility on LLMs" (October 2025); no named quantitative study. Facts HQ: San Diego, CA (also New York, Atlanta) Founded: 2012 by Grayson Lafrenz Ownership: Private-equity backed (Court Square Capital Partners) Team: About 775 (Built In) Budget signals: No published prices; GEO is scoped with SEO and a free audit is the entry point. Clutch lists a $5,000 minimum and $100 to $149 per hour. Industries: DTC and ecommerce, health and wellness, SaaS, finance and legal, real estate, higher education, B2B services Method or tool: nova data platform and the Omega growth operating system; GEO itself ships as an AI Readiness Audit Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	26	Intero Digital Colorado Springs, CO Also San Diego, Columbus Small and mid-sized businesses that want GEO scored and audited by proprietary tooling at an accessible entry price SMB / mid-marketFull-service growthTechnical / engineering-led	2003	200+ own site	$1,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTGeminiPerplexityCopilotAI OverviewsAI Mode	Intero GRO (Generative Response Optimization), the patented InteroBOT crawler, and a GRO Score that grades sites 1 to 100 across 11 areas
About Intero Digital is a Colorado Springs agency with more than 200 people, formed from six specialized shops and descended from SocialSEO, which dates to 1996. It was early to productize GEO, announcing Intero GRO in June 2024 and a scored AI audit tool that October, and its SEO lead Christina Adame writes the GEO columns Search Engine Land publishes. What they do for AI search Generative AI research, AI Overviews strategy, and competitive intelligence on the brands AI recommends Brand perception analysis and generative AI source tracking AI-friendly content structure, FAQ and Q&A formats, and semantic optimization Product, review, article, organization, FAQ, and service schema with ongoing technical SEO Proof on their own site No quantified GEO case study is published yet; its technology page reports SEO and Amazon results (512 first-page rankings in a month for Foard's, 44% year-over-year Amazon revenue growth for Maine Outdoor Solutions). Source Clients named on their site Zayo, Threadbird, Tamron Americas, Liaison, and Foard's Parts and Equipment appear in testimonials and results on its site. Research and recognition "From Ranking to Retrievability: A Strategic Guide to Generative Engine Optimization in the AI Search Era" by Christina Adame (March 2026), plus her GEO columns for Search Engine Land. The site claims a top Clutch GEO ranking for 2026 that we could not match on Clutch's directory. Facts HQ: Colorado Springs, CO (also San Diego, Columbus) Founded: 2003 Ownership: Private-equity backed (per third-party databases) Team: 200+ (own site) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $1,000 minimum project, the lowest entry point on this list. Industries: Describes 25-plus industries; Clutch lists automotive, business services, consumer products, financial services, manufacturing, retail, ecommerce Method or tool: Intero GRO (Generative Response Optimization), the patented InteroBOT crawler, and a GRO Score that grades sites 1 to 100 across 11 areas Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.
	27	Silverback Strategies Leesburg, VA Also Washington, DC metro; Charlotte Consumer brands past $100M in revenue that want AI search folded into a test-heavy performance program with Reddit and YouTube in scope Consumer / DTCFull-service growth	2007	About 65 Clutch and Built In	$10,000+ Clutch minimum project	ChatGPTPerplexityAI OverviewsGeminiClaudeCopilot	No branded tool; a three-step method (understand the customer, audit visibility, build and execute) and a free AI Search Audit with a 90-day roadmap
About Silverback Strategies is a Washington, DC-area performance agency founded in 2007 by Neil Welsh, with about 65 people and a B2C bent toward financial services, healthcare, higher education, and home services. Its AI search practice treats Reddit and YouTube as discovery surfaces on par with the engines themselves. What they do for AI search AI search audits and competitive visibility assessments, with persona research up front On-site content optimization for AI and off-site authority building Reddit and YouTube strategy as named service lines AI search visibility monitoring and reporting on top of traditional SEO foundations Proof on their own site An anonymized national services brand grew AI brand mentions 1,350% in four months alongside a 56% increase in total leads, per its audit landing page. Its named case studies do not yet report AI search metrics. Source Clients named on their site K12, Cornell, Apple Federal Credit Union, Ocean Conservancy, LexisNexis, and Johns Hopkins University appear in testimonials and lists on its site. Research and recognition Blog analysis arguing YouTube is the top source for Google AI Overviews, plus self-published GEO and AI search agency rankings (2026); no named quantitative study. Facts HQ: Leesburg, VA (also Washington, DC metro; Charlotte) Founded: 2007 by Neil Welsh Ownership: Private Team: About 65 (Clutch and Built In) Budget signals: No published prices. Clutch lists a $10,000 minimum project, and the agency positions itself for brands with $100M-plus in revenue. Industries: Financial services, healthcare, higher education, home services, legal, senior living Method or tool: No branded tool; a three-step method (understand the customer, audit visibility, build and execute) and a free AI Search Audit with a 90-day roadmap Verify it yourself Website GEO / AEO service page Case studies and work LinkedIn Facts checked October 2026 against the agency's own site and Clutch profile.

How Should You Compare GEO Agencies?

Renata sent her RFP to nine agencies and interviewed five. By the third call she had thrown out her scoring sheet, because every deck used the same three slides: a Gartner forecast, a screenshot of a ChatGPT answer, and a funnel. What separated the finalists was how they answered five questions she had not put in the RFP.

1. Show Me a Prompt Set You Built for Someone Else

Ask to see a real prompt set, with the client's name redacted if needed, and ask how they chose the prompts. The good answers come from sales call transcripts, support tickets, Reddit threads, and search console data, grouped by funnel stage. The weak answers come from a keyword tool with the word "best" prepended. One finalist showed Renata a set that included "is bone broth safe during pregnancy," a question her own content had never answered. She hired them.

2. Which Surfaces Do You Track, and How Often?

Nearly every agency on the list names ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. Fewer track AI Mode, Perplexity, Copilot, and Claude, and fewer still re-run the full set monthly rather than quarterly. Ask which tracking platform they use (Profound, Scrunch, Peec, Semrush's AI toolkit, or something they built) and whether you keep access to the data if you leave. The "AI surfaces tracked" column in the list above is a starting point, pulled from each agency's own pages.

3. Walk Me Through One Citation You Earned on Purpose

Any brand with a decent website picks up AI citations by accident. You are paying for the ones earned on purpose. Ask for a single example: the prompt, the page or placement that was built or pitched, the date it started getting cited, and what changed in traffic or leads afterward. Three of Renata's nine respondents answered this question with the same two case studies, which told her those results had been luck, or borrowed.

4. How Will This Show Up in My Analytics?

The answer should include a GA4 channel group for AI referrals, a conversion comparison against organic, and a plan for the traffic you will never see because the engine answered without a click. If the agency's only metric is "mentions," you will have a nice chart and no budget next year. The agencies that publish KPI frameworks (Directive's GEO KPI Stack, Seer's fan-out KPIs, Victorious's mention-versus-citation split) are a good sign because the measurement thinking is public and you can argue with it.

5. What Won't You Promise?

Nobody can guarantee a position in a generated answer, because the answers are probabilistic and change between sessions. An agency that promises "number one in ChatGPT" has either not tested its own claims or hopes you have not. The right answer is a range: expect first movement in citation share within a quarter, and expect measurable AI referral revenue after that, if the prompts you chose carry purchase intent. Our own GEO and AEO services page says "within a few months," and we mean it as a range too.

Red Flags Renata Learned to Spot

An llms.txt file presented as the strategy. It is a text file. Several agencies on this list implement it and say its effect is unproven.
A reseller markup on a tracking tool with no implementation work behind it.
"AI-proof content" as a phrase. Content built for extraction is a real thing; immunity is not.
No one on the team who can read a server log. Citation work without crawl diagnostics is guesswork.
A case study with percentages and no base numbers. A 1,000% increase from three sessions is thirty sessions.

If you are deciding between an agency and an in-house hire, we wrote about the broader trade-off in Fractional CMO vs. Outsourced CMO vs. Agency; the same logic applies to GEO, with one twist: the tooling is changing fast enough that an outside team amortizes the learning curve across many clients.

What Should a GEO Engagement Cost?

Agencies rarely publish GEO prices, so the "Starting budget" column leans on Clutch, where firms self-report a minimum project size and an hourly band. Of the 27 agencies here, 21 disclose a starting figure of some kind. Among Clutch minimums, the floor is $1,000+ (Thrive Internet Marketing Agency, Intero Digital) and the ceiling is $50,000+ (Victorious, which also lists the highest hourly rate on the list at $300-plus). The rest publish a figure on their own sites, which is rarer and worth rewarding: Ignite Visibility lists $2,000 a month (typical engagement floor); WebFX lists $3,000 a month (GEO starting price); Optimist lists $3,000 a month (consulting starting price); Perrill lists $6,000 a month (GEO starting price); NoGood lists $20,000+ a month (average retainer); iPullRank lists $30,000+ (program tiers); Omniscient Digital lists $120,000 a year (full-service minimum).

Renata's nine proposals clustered into three shapes, and the list above does too. Under $5,000 a month buys a scoped audit plus implementation support from a mid-market shop, usually alongside an existing SEO retainer. Between $5,000 and $20,000 a month buys a dedicated program: monthly prompt tracking, content production for priority prompts, schema and entity work, and some off-site citation building. Above $20,000 a month you are paying for enterprise scale, original research, digital PR, and a measurement stack the agency built or licenses, which is the tier Victorious, Amsive, and the large full-service firms sell into.

Three things change the price more than the agency's logo. Content production is the expensive part, so a brand with a strong library pays less than one starting from scratch. Digital PR for citations is priced like PR, by placement or by month. And measurement tooling is either bundled (ask whether you keep the data) or passed through at the platform's rate. Renata chose the middle tier at about $11,000 a month, with a 90-day exit clause; the clause mattered more to her CFO than the price.

How Do You Know It's Working?

Ninety days in, Renata's scorecard had four rows, and only one of them was traffic. The first row was citation share: Fieldstone now appeared in 17 of her 40 prompts, up from four, and the competitor had slipped to 19. The second was accuracy, the share of answers that described Fieldstone's sodium content and sourcing correctly, which had moved from mostly wrong to mostly right after the agency rebuilt the product pages and the Organization schema.

The third was AI referral sessions in GA4, small in absolute terms. The fourth was the conversion rate of those sessions, which ran at roughly twice her organic rate, the number that got her budget renewed. These figures are illustrative, but the shape of the scorecard is the point.

A workable measurement plan has leading and lagging indicators. Leading: citation share across the prompt set, mention share against named competitors, and answer accuracy. Lagging: AI referral sessions, their conversion rate and revenue per visit against organic, branded search growth, and assisted conversions where AI touched the path. Adobe's running series on retail traffic is the best public benchmark for the lagging side, with AI-referred visits converting 60% higher than non-AI visits in July 2026, per Digital Commerce 360. For leading indicators, several agencies on this list publish their own benchmarks, including Victorious's quarterly reports and Perrill's industry leaderboards, which you can use to sanity-check your agency's numbers.

Give it a quarter before judging the trend, and a second quarter before judging the agency. The engines themselves change monthly, and a good partner will show you which movements were theirs and which were the weather. We wrote about the one case where the weather wins, AI Overviews cutting traffic on informational queries, in What Should Brands Do When AI Overviews Cut Traffic?, and about why the answer box only has room for a few brands in AI Search Only Has Three Slots. Do You Hold Any of Them?.

See Where Your Brand Stands in AI Search

Before you send an RFP, get the baseline. Hawke's free AI Visibility Audit runs more than 70 buyer prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, scores your presence against competitors, and comes with a 20-minute review with a strategist. It is the same first step every engagement on our GEO | AEO team starts with.

Request My AI Visibility Audit

Or read how the practice works at hawkemedia.com/geo-aeo/.

Frequently Asked Questions About GEO Agencies

What is the difference between GEO, AEO, and SEO?

SEO earns a ranking on a results page. AEO (answer engine optimization) earns the direct answer, a practice that started with featured snippets and voice assistants. GEO (generative engine optimization) earns a mention or citation inside an answer that a model such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google AI Mode writes on the fly. In practice the agencies on this list use AEO and GEO interchangeably, and all three depend on the same foundation: crawlable pages, clear entity facts, and content that answers a question in its first two sentences.

How much does a GEO agency cost?

Clutch minimum project sizes on this list run from $1,000 (Thrive, Intero Digital, WebFX, Ignite Visibility) to $50,000-plus (Victorious). Published starting prices on the agencies' own sites include Ignite Visibility at $2,000 a month, WebFX and Optimist at $3,000 a month, Perrill at $6,000 a month, and Omniscient Digital at $120,000 a year; NoGood says its average retainer runs above $20,000 a month, and iPullRank's programs start at $30,000. Hourly rates disclosed on Clutch range from $100 to more than $300. Most mid-market programs land between $5,000 and $20,000 a month once content production and digital PR are included.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Expect the first movement in citation share within a quarter, because answer engines re-crawl and re-weight sources continuously, and expect measurable AI referral revenue in the quarter after that if your prompt set carries purchase intent. Several agencies on this list publish faster examples, such as top ChatGPT mentions within two weeks, but treat those as best cases. Judge the trend after one quarter and the agency after two.

Can an agency guarantee a placement in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?

No. Generated answers are probabilistic and change between sessions, models, and locations, so no agency can guarantee a position the way a paid ad guarantees an impression. An honest agency reports a citation rate across many prompts and many runs, not a single screenshot, and declines to promise a number one spot.

Do I still need SEO if I invest in GEO?

Yes. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode draw from Google's index, ChatGPT and Perplexity fetch live web results for most commercial questions, and every engine favors pages that are fast, crawlable, and well linked. GEO adds prompt research, entity work, extraction-friendly structure, and off-site citations on top of SEO; it does not replace the foundation. Most agencies on this list sell the two together.

What should an AI visibility audit include?

A prompt set of at least 50 buyer questions run across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, and Copilot; your mention and citation rate on each, with the competitors that win instead; a read on how accurately the engines describe your brand; a crawl check for AI user agents; a schema and entity review; and a prioritized list of fixes. Hawke's free AI Visibility Audit tests more than 70 prompts and includes a 20-minute review with a strategist.

Is an llms.txt file worth adding?

It costs almost nothing to add, so add it, but do not pay anyone to call it a strategy. No major engine has confirmed it uses the file, and the agencies on this list that implement it say the effect is unproven. Clean HTML, accurate schema, consistent entity facts, and citations on third-party sites carry far more weight.

How do I track AI search traffic in GA4?

Create a custom channel group with a referrer rule that matches chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, and claude.ai, then compare that channel's conversion rate and revenue per session against organic search. Add a second view for landing pages that gained AI referrals after your content changes. Traffic from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode arrives as organic search, so track those through citation monitoring and Search Console rather than referrers.

Sources

Agency facts were checked in October 2026 against each agency's own website and Clutch profile; the links inside every "Details" panel go to those pages. Industry figures come from the sources below.

Editor Notes (Remove This Block Before Publishing)

Permalink and schema URLs. The JSON-LD uses https://hawkemedia.com/insights/top-geo-aeo-agencies/ as the page URL and 2026-11-04 as the publish date. Update url, mainEntityOfPage, datePublished, and dateModified in the <script type="application/ld+json"> block if the slug or date changes, then validate at validator.schema.org and Google's Rich Results Test. The ItemList is ItemListOrderAscending: each ListItem's position is the rank, and its item is a full Organization (address, foundingDate, founder, numberOfEmployees, sameAs, makesOffer with the GEO service URL and price signal). Hawke sits at position 1 by editorial decision, which the page discloses.
CTA landing page. hawkemedia.com/ai-visibility-audit/ is live but shows "offer reserved through 9/30/2026," and several stat counters on it render as 0 before their animation runs. Refresh the date before this post sends traffic there.
Brand color. tokens follow the January 2023 Hawke Media Style Guide: red #C92323, near-black #242423, grey #DBDBDB, white. Gold and sky blue are reserved; sky blue appears only as the keyboard focus ring.
Fonts. Per the style guide, H1 and H2 are set in FreightBig Pro (Adobe Fonts name freight-big-pro) and everything else in Proxima Nova (proxima-nova). No font files are loaded by this page; it relies on the theme's Adobe Fonts kit. If headlines render in Georgia after upload, the kit is missing FreightBig Pro and needs it added.
Elementor. Use top-geo-aeo-agencies-us-elementor.html: paste its entire contents into one Elementor HTML widget on the post. It carries the styles (scoped to .hm-geo), the JSON-LD, the article, and the sort-and-filter script, with no dependencies. Set title, slug, meta description, and featured image in the page settings. --hm-sticky-top is set to 97px, the height of hawkemedia.com's fixed header, so the filter bar docks under it and jump links land below it. All styles are scoped to #hm-geo so they outrank the theme's .single--post .post__body rules for links, paragraphs, lists, and tables. The page is fixed to light mode. Shortlists persist per browser in localStorage. The CSV download button works on the live site; it is omitted from the preview artifact, where downloads are blocked.
Hero. The hero is an inline SVG with a title and description for screen readers. Replace with a hosted image if the theme requires one; suggested alt text: "Three stacked AI answer cards, each citing a brand, next to a sort control."
Agency facts. All 27 entries were checked in October 2026 against each agency's own site and Clutch. Items marked "Not disclosed" could not be verified on a primary source and should stay that way rather than be guessed. Known soft spots worth a second look before publishing: Amsive's founding year (not stated on its site), Intero Digital's claim of a top Clutch GEO ranking (not matched on Clutch), Wpromote's "independent" self-description (ZMC investment documented in trade press), NP Digital's October 29, 2026 press release naming it SEO Agency of the Year at the 2026 Search Engine Land Awards (headline seen, body not readable), and Graphite (graphite.io), a strong AEO name left off because its AEO service page could not be fetched for verification. Two source URLs in the Sources list could not be opened from the build environment and are included on the strength of the outlets that cite them: OpenAI's February 2026 post (linked by TechCrunch) and Ahrefs's AI Overviews study (cited by Search Engine Land).
Refresh cadence. Re-check "Min. project," "Team," and "AI surfaces tracked" every six months; update the "Facts checked" line in each Details panel and the byline when you do.
Internal links used (all confirmed live in October 2026): /geo-aeo/, /ai-visibility-audit/, /insights/geo-seo-year-end-learnings/, /insights/ai-search-visibility/, /insights/what-to-do-ai-overviews-lost-traffic/, /insights/fractional-outsourced-cmo-agency/, /insights/hawke-media-ai-search/, /case-studies/.
Meta. Title tag and meta description are in the file head. No Open Graph image is set; use the hero.