How to Pick a Generative Engine Optimization Agency

To pick a generative engine optimization agency, choose one that can prove it changes what Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity say about your category, through answer-shaped content, earned mentions on the sources those engines cite and weekly citation tracking, and whose operating model and price match your team's size. Many agencies sell "GEO" as a renamed SEO retainer. Most of the work that moves AI answers happens off your site, in Reddit threads, review sites and comparison pages, so test agencies hardest there. This guide, current as of October 2026, gives you a weighted scoring model, the deliverables to demand, red flags, a 90-day plan and fit recommendations by company stage. It also compares four options enterprise buyers often weigh: a managed program (Tellr), an enterprise platform with vendor services (Conductor) and two self-serve trackers (Profound and Semrush).

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of making a brand's content and reputation discoverable, understandable and citable by AI systems, so that ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot include the brand when they generate answers. Classic SEO tries to rank a page. GEO tries to make the brand a source the engine pulls into a synthesized answer.

On your own site, content that engines cite tends to be:

• Clearly structured, with answer-first headings and concise summaries
• Topically focused and original
• Backed by data
• Technically accessible to AI crawlers

The harder part sits outside your website. When a buyer asks "best cloud security platform for a 500-person company," the engine leans on sources it already trusts: Reddit discussions, LinkedIn, YouTube, review platforms like G2, Crunchbase and news outlets. A brand absent from those sources is usually absent from the answer, however good its own blog is.

Agencies often blur five related disciplines. This matrix shows where each one stops, and where GEO claims tend to be overstated.

A credible GEO agency borrows from all five but organizes the work around one question: for each query that matters, which domains does the engine cite today, and how does your brand become one of them?

Generative engine optimization agency vs. in-house tools

Hire a generative engine optimization agency when you need the content, community and off-site work done for you under governance; use in-house tools when your team has the capacity to act on the data itself. Self-serve trackers show where you are missing. They do not write the comparison page, place the Reddit reply or earn the review-site mention. For more on how large companies make this call, see our guide on choosing an AI SEO agency or in-house team.

Tellr

Tellr is a premium earned-visibility agency that runs one governed program covering four jobs most companies buy from separate vendors: Reddit marketing, content built for AI search, AI and search visibility tracking, and paid-media creative. Each week it tracks the category's queries on Google, recording the organic results, the AI Overview and the discussions block, plus which domains each one cites. Its content is written to be quoted by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews.

Strengths

• Citation reporting labels each cited domain as your site, a competitor, Reddit, social, review sites or references, with week-over-week movement.
• Reddit work covers subreddit mapping, a daily thread radar and guideline-checked replies behind an approval gate, with reporting on whether each reply is still live.
• Governance includes a brand brief, claim guardrails, risk filtering, an audit trail of what was placed where, takedown support and read-only viewer roles.
• Articles publish directly to WordPress, with API access and "Tellr for Claude," an MCP server that lets teams query their program in plain language.

Best for: mid-market and enterprise B2B and consumer brands, particularly in cloud security, consumer security and AI software, whose buyers research on Reddit and in AI answers.

Conductor

Conductor is an enterprise website optimization and intelligence platform that pairs SEO with AI search visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, collected mainly through API-based methods. It integrates with GA4, Search Console, WordPress, Slack, BI tools and an API, and lists SSO, role-based access, approval workflows, audit trails, multi-brand workspaces and SOC 2 Type 2.

Strengths

• It shows SEO and AI visibility in one view.
• It includes a writing assistant for content briefs.
• Its enterprise controls are strong.
• Vendor consultants handle onboarding.

Tradeoffs

• Reviewers cite limited reporting customization and a learning curve.
• It has no native backlink tracking, and AI search credits restrict how much you can track.
• It remains software, so someone still has to produce the content and off-site work.

Conductor holds a 4.5/5 rating on G2 from 790 reviews as of October 2026. Reviewers single out its AI Search Performance reporting for tracking citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, though some want citation-share and sentiment comparisons against competitors.

Profound

Profound is an enterprise AI search visibility platform that tracks the same seven surfaces using a mix of API calls, browser sessions and panel data. It measures mentions, citations, share of voice, sentiment, position, AI referral traffic and AI crawler activity. It integrates with GA4, Search Console, WordPress, Sanity, Slack, BI tools, an API and an MCP server, and lists SOC 2 Type II.

Strengths

• It covers a broad set of engines and collects data by more than one method.
• It offers full enterprise governance.
• A 7-day trial includes 50 prompts per day across ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews.

Tradeoffs

• Reviewers report high pricing, with key features on the Enterprise plan.
• The data can overwhelm without clear next steps, and the reliability of scraping-based collection is open to question.
• It does not replace technical SEO or content production.

Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit

Semrush's AI Visibility Toolkit adds AI answer tracking to the wider Semrush SEO platform, covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, AI Overviews and AI Mode, mainly through API collection. Pricing is $99/month per domain billed annually, plus $45/month per extra user and $60/month per 50 prompts; Semrush One bundles run from $199 to $549 a month. The toolkit has no free trial.

Strengths

• It has the lowest entry price of the four options.
• Prompt rankings update daily.
• It offers GA4, Search Console, WordPress, API and MCP integrations.

Tradeoffs

• Regional and language coverage is limited, according to reviewers.
• Sentiment data is inconsistent.
• Costs climb with add-ons, and monitoring stops short of a content and implementation workflow.

Semrush is rated 4.5/5 on G2 across 3,945 reviews as of October 2026. Users call its AI Overview and AEO tracking increasingly valuable and name pricing as their most common complaint.

How to evaluate a generative engine optimization agency

Evaluate a GEO agency by scoring it against weighted criteria, testing its reviews and case studies for verifiable AI citations, and screening for red flags before you sign. The weights below reflect where AI answers come from, so off-site sources and measurable citation change count most. For a side-by-side method you can reuse in procurement, see how to compare AI search optimization agencies.

Score each criterion from 1 to 5, calculate (score ÷ 5) × weight, and add the results. For example, an agency scoring 4 on off-site coverage earns 16 of 20 points; one scoring 2 on proof earns 6 of 15. A total under 60 usually means repackaged SEO.

How to read agency reviews and case studies

• Prefer reviews backed by named clients, case studies or measurable outcomes over anonymous praise.
• Look for documented citations in ChatGPT or AI Overviews, not just traditional ranking gains.
• Check that reviews mention off-site authority building, such as community or industry publication mentions.
• Favor consistent feedback over time that references leads, revenue or AI visibility, not one-off launches.

Red flags

• The agency reports only traffic and rankings, with no week-over-week citation data for any named query.
• It guarantees AI Overview placements within a few weeks.
• It uses Reddit tactics such as upvote buying, aged accounts or fake reviews, which risk bans and lasting brand damage.
• Content or replies go live with no approval step.
• Its deliverables list is identical to the agency's existing SEO retainer.

Questions to ask before signing

1. Which queries will you track, on which engines, how often, and do you collect through API, browser sessions or panel data?
2. Can you show an anonymized week-over-week citation report from a current client?
3. What share of your work happens off our site, and on which platforms?
4. Who approves drafts and replies, and where is the record of what was placed?
5. Do you publish to our CMS directly?
6. Do you support SSO, and can you share a SOC 2 report?
7. What should be different in AI answers for our category by day 90?

What good generative engine optimization looks like

Good GEO work produces a measurable increase in how often trusted sources mention your brand and how often AI answers cite them, through a defined set of deliverables. Engines favor pages that answer a question directly, in clear structure, from a source with authority on the topic. Authority compounds. Each consistent mention on Reddit, G2, YouTube or a trade publication strengthens the link between your brand and the category, which makes the next citation more likely.

Off-site signals carry the most weight on commercial queries. A "best X for Y" query rarely gets answered from a vendor's own homepage; the engine synthesizes from comparisons, reviews and discussions written by others. If a competitor dominates those threads, it dominates the answer.

Deliverables to demand

• A category map of the queries, Reddit threads and AI answers that matter, delivered in the first weeks.
• A citation gap analysis showing which domains each engine cites per query, grouped as yours, competitors', Reddit, review sites and references.
• An entity plan covering consistent brand names and descriptions across G2, Crunchbase, LinkedIn and your own schema markup.
• Answer-shaped pages: comparison pages, reviews and question-led articles with clear headings and concise summaries.
• Off-site placements, such as guideline-checked Reddit replies and review-site presence, with a log of each one.
• Prompt testing that runs target questions, records what engines cite, and adjusts titles, headings and entity mentions.
• Weekly reporting and a monthly program review that re-prioritizes queries.

For a fuller breakdown of scope and cadence, read our overview of generative engine optimization services.

How to measure GEO performance and set a 90-day plan

Measure GEO by tracking citation share, answer inclusion and mention quality on a fixed query set every week, then tie those trends to pipeline signals over a quarter. Rankings and traffic still matter, but they lag and miss answers that never send a click.

What the first 90 days should look like

1. Before signing: agree the query set (for example, 60 to 150 category and comparison queries), the engines tracked, the approval owners on your side and the definition of success.
2. Days 1–30: category map, brand brief and claim guardrails, baseline citation report, first content and replies in approval.
3. Days 31–60: a steady weekly cadence of published pages and off-site placements, and the first reports showing which cited domains you now appear on.
4. Days 61–90: first citation movement on less contested queries, and a monthly review that drops dead-end queries and doubles down on winning formats.

Internally, plan for a marketing owner who steers priorities, a reviewer for brand and legal claims, and CMS access for publishing. Check technical readiness early. AI crawlers must reach your pages, key pages need clean HTML and schema, and robots.txt should not block the bots you want citing you.

Where Tellr fits in a GEO program

Tellr fits enterprise marketing teams that already run SEO and paid programs and need someone to do the earned-visibility work that moves AI answers. Your marketing owner sets priorities and your reviewers sign off on every reply and page, while Tellr's senior team does the mapping, writing, placement and reporting. Tellr needs a few weeks to map the category and agree the brief, so it does not suit a launch that needs results in three weeks.

• Week one: a category map of the threads, queries and AI answers that matter.
• Week two: an agreed brief and claim guardrails that every draft is checked against.
• Ongoing: replies and pages approved by your team before going live, with articles published to WordPress.
• Monthly: a program review that ties citation movement to the work shipped.

How to choose the right fit for your company stage

The right GEO partner depends on your size, category risk and internal capacity, and for many smaller teams the honest answer is a tool rather than an agency.

Use a simple decision rule. If nobody on your team can own GEO execution for several hours a week, a tracker will produce reports nobody acts on. If your category is crowded with competitors already present in Reddit threads and AI answers, you need someone to do the work as well as measure the gap.

Whichever route you take, insist on citation evidence, off-site coverage and governance you can audit. A generative engine optimization agency that can show you, query by query, which sources AI engines cite and how it will get your brand onto them deserves a place on your shortlist. One that cannot is selling SEO under a new name.

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