What does a GEO agency do? A sample month and when to hire
In short
A GEO agency makes sure ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name your company, and describe it correctly, when your buyers ask them for a provider. scaile, a platform that works like an agency, built by computer scientists, tracks your brand in AI answers, builds the strategy with a human strategist and makes the changes on your site. The test for any agency is who does that work every month, you or them.
Key takeaways
GEO work has three layers: tracking, strategy and execution. Only execution changes what AI answers say.
A good month with an agency ends with pages changed on your own site and a report on what moved, not with a slide deck.
Google's AI features need no special markup. The technical work is crawling, indexing and pages AI can quote.
Hire an agency when AI answers name competitors instead of you and nobody on your team has the hours to fix it.
What does a GEO agency do?
A GEO agency makes your company discoverable and trustworthy for AI models, so that AI answers name and cite it when buyers ask about your category. GEO stands for generative engine optimization: getting a brand into the answers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews write, not only into a list of links.
The term comes from research. Aggarwal and colleagues introduced generative engine optimization in a 2023 paper and reported visibility gains of up to 40% in generative engine responses on their own benchmark. The paper is a preprint, not peer reviewed, and a benchmark is no forecast for one company. It does show that what a page says, and how, changes whether an AI answer uses it.
scaile does this work end to end. It tracks the questions your buyers ask in its own platform, and a human strategist decides which ones to win. Then scaile makes the changes on your site: rewritten and new pages, published into your CMS and kept current. You supply the expertise and the approvals. For a small business without a marketing team, scaile can run the whole job.
Tracking, strategy and execution: the three layers of GEO work
What separates GEO agencies is how many of these three layers they actually deliver.
| Layer | What the agency does | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking | Asks AI platforms the questions your buyers ask and records who is named or cited | A baseline: the questions you win, the ones you lose, the competitors in your place |
| Strategy | Picks the questions worth winning, usually the ones asked right before a buyer chooses | A ranked list of questions and the pages that will answer them |
| Execution | Writes and restructures content, adds structured data and adjusts the site architecture | Changed and new pages, published and kept current |
Strategy is mostly about saying no. A tax firm gains little from being named for “what is inheritance tax” and a lot from being named for “inheritance tax advisor in Munich”.
Execution is where most of the hours go. Some agencies deliver an audit and leave the rewriting, the schema work and the monitoring with your team. Without the hours to act on it, the audit stays a document.
What does a month with a GEO agency look like?
The example below follows how scaile’s fully managed service works. It is an example, not a fixed package.
| Week | What happens | Your part |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Baseline of the buyer questions you want to win; check that AI crawlers reach your site and key pages are indexed | Answer questions about your offer and customers |
| 2 | Strategy session: which questions first, which pages to fix, which to write | Agree the plan in the weekly check-in |
| 3 | New and rewritten pages, drafted from your own documentation and checked against sources | Review and approve |
| 4 | Pages published into your CMS, an older page refreshed, a report on what changed and what comes next | Decide on next month |
One person is accountable: an Organic Growth Manager who coordinates the work, with a weekly check-in. The pages land on your own site, and the Brand Kit, Knowledge Base and published content stay yours.
The baseline is concrete. For the Munich law firm Braun & Kollegen, scaile put 32 of the questions the firm’s clients ask into continuous measurement on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode, scored against the other Munich firms in the answers.
How is a GEO agency different from an SEO agency?
A GEO agency is measured on whether AI answers name and cite your brand; an SEO agency on where your pages rank in a list. The technical foundation is shared.
Google states that appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode needs no additional requirements, no special optimizations and no special schema.org markup. A page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. An agency that sells a hidden markup trick for AI Overviews sells something Google says is not needed.
The differences sit around that foundation:
- Crawlers. OpenAI uses its OAI-SearchBot crawler to surface websites in ChatGPT search, and sites that opt out of it are not shown in ChatGPT search answers.
- Measurement. AI answers have no positions on page one, so the agency asks the questions itself and records who is named.
- Content. AI answers are built from passages that answer one question clearly, with evidence next to the claim. A page written around a keyword list can rank and still offer no such passage.
GEO agency, GEO tool or in-house team: which fits?
The right choice depends on who in your company can do the execution.
| Option | Who does the work | Fits when |
|---|---|---|
| GEO tool or tracker | You; the tool shows where you are named and missing | Your team can act on the data every week |
| In-house team | Your marketing or SEO people | They already produce good content and have room for a new channel |
| GEO agency | The agency, with your approvals | Nobody on your side has the hours, or you want results before you build a team |
An in-house SEO team can handle parts of generative search in the early stages, especially with strong content on a sound technical base. Without a marketing team, that option rarely exists.
scaile maps the three set-ups to three ways to work. Track covers the tracking only. Strategy with you fits companies with an in-house team: your team keeps strategy, review and approval, and scaile takes the research, writing, publishing, refresh and reporting work. We run it hands scaile the whole job.
When should you hire a GEO agency?
The clearest warning sign is that your brand does not appear in AI answers at all. Three more:
- A competitor is named when a buyer asks ChatGPT or Gemini for the best provider in your city or category.
- AI answers describe your company, services or prices wrongly, and nobody owns the fix.
- You know what should change, but no one has the hours to rewrite pages every month.
The results are measurable. On 21 September 2026, Braun & Kollegen was the firm AI answers named most often, first of 25 Munich law firms. For an enterprise, see how beurer.com became the source AI answers use most. To compare providers, see the scored list of GEO agencies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and what GEO costs.
What a GEO agency cannot promise
A GEO agency cannot guarantee that a specific AI answer will name you. The engines change their models, sources and answers without notice, and no agency controls them. What it can show is a measured share of answers over time, on questions agreed in advance.
Attribution has limits too. A buyer who reads an AI answer may call or visit days later, without a click from the answer. Good reporting shows what changed in the answers, in traffic and in enquiries, and says where the link between them is uncertain.
So the useful question is not what an agency promises but what it does each month: which questions it measures, which pages it changes and what it reports. An agency that owns tracking, strategy and execution, on your site and with your approval, is the one that can move AI answers. If you want that done for you, book a call about We run it.
FAQ
What are AI SEO services?
AI SEO services are usually GEO services under another name. Compare what an agency delivers each month, not the label.
Which are the best GEO agencies?
That depends on your market and on how much execution you need. The best fit is the agency that delivers all three layers for the questions your buyers ask.
What are SEO services and what do they do?
SEO services make pages rank in search results: technical fixes, content and links, measured by rankings and clicks. GEO builds on the same technical base and is measured by mentions and citations in AI answers.
Sources
- Synscribe: What is a GEO agency?. What a GEO agency does, and agencies that stop at the audit.
- Aggarwal et al.: GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, arXiv preprint, 2023. The term and the up-to-40% benchmark result.
- co:listic: GEO-Agentur. The services an agency covers, from tracking to structured data and site architecture.
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website. No special requirements or markup for AI Overviews and AI Mode.
- OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers. OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT search.
- Digital Agency Network: Do you need a GEO agency?. In-house teams in the early stages, and the warning signs.
