GEO Agency or AI Agency: how to choose? 15 questions and 7 warning signs

AI agency, GEO agency and AI consulting: three different services

These names cover three different services, and it is worth separating them before you start comparing offers. AI agency implements artificial intelligence in a company’s processes: in marketing, sales and reporting. GEO agency (from generative engine optimisation) is responsible for whether your company is mentioned in the answers of ChatGPT and Gemini, as well as Perplexity, Claude or Copilot. It is sometimes called an AI search agency.

The third name is AI consulting, i.e. advisory work that ends with a plan and recommendations rather than implementation. The large international consultancies that appear in “top AI consulting firms” lists usually work with corporations at strategy level, whereas a mid-sized Polish company more often needs someone who will both advise and implement.

Not sure yet whether you need SEO, GEO or AEO? Start with the article in which we explain the differences between these abbreviations. You will spare yourself conversations with contractors who sell something other than what you need, and if choosing an agency is part of a bigger plan for you, take a look at our guide to AI in business.

How does a GEO agency differ from an SEO agency?

An SEO agency works primarily on your website and its search engine rankings. A GEO agency has to go further, because models are also based on what the media and directories write about the company, as well as on customers themselves. That’s why competencies in public relations are so important in GEO, and the question „which SEO agency uses AI in positioning” is not enough. What matters is what happens outside the website. If you compare PR agencies for B2B companies, check whether they understand measurement beyond publications; what they measure on a daily basis the PR agency is involved, We describe them separately.

The market of providers currently looks roughly like this:

What really determines what a model says about your company

Before you choose a provider, find out what they are supposed to work on. The Muck Rack study “What Is AI Reading?” from May 2026, based on more than 25 million links from the answers of three models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini), showed that 84% of cited sources are earned media, i.e. publications the brand did not pay for. Paid content? 0.3%. Journalism alone accounts for 27% of citations. We take this mechanism apart in the article on how media coverage determines what ChatGPT says about a company.

The second reference point is Google. In its guide to optimising for generative features of 10 July 2026, Google states plainly that no special “GEO” tricks are needed, that the search engine ignores the llms.txt file and that artificially acquiring mentions does not work. What counts is solid content. We explain why the file alone is not enough in the article llms.txt: what it is and whether it works.

What does this mean for choosing an agency? A good GEO agency works on three fronts at once — your website, publications in other sources and tidy company data — and measures the results honestly.

Who an AI agency is for and when you need one

An AI agency or a GEO agency makes sense in a few specific situations. Outside them, a good SEO or PR agency is often enough.

Polskie firmy AI i agencje zajmujące się widocznością w AI search to dziś bardzo różne podmioty: od jednoosobowych konsultantów po zespoły, które łączą SEO z PR-em i analityką. Etykieta „marketing agency AI” mówi niewiele. Pytaj, co dokładnie robią i jak to mierzą.

• B2B customers begin their buying process by asking a model a question, and your company does not appear in the answers, or the model gives outdated information about it.
• Your industry is built on trust and reviews, e.g. medicine, law or hospitality. If you are looking for an SEO agency for AI in the medical sector or for hotels and guesthouses, ask about experience with regulations on advertising medical services and with review sites, as these largely shape the models’ answers.
• An IT company or software house competes with dozens of similar companies, and the model keeps recommending the same three names. Independent industry publications help here.
• The board wants AI solutions for the business, but doesn’t know where to start. In that case, you need an AI agency that implements solutions, not necessarily one focused on visibility; we describe the difference in the article AI software house or AI agency.

15 questions to ask an agency before signing a contract

The questions fall into three groups: measurement, content and sources, and finally team and contract. A good agency will answer most of them straight away, specifically and without hiding behind the word “algorithm”. If one of the questions triggers a long explanation that “it depends on many factors”, note it down and come back to it at the end of the conversation.

1. Measurement: on what list of questions will you measure our AI visibility at the start? Will we receive it?
2. Measurement: in how many models do you measure, and how often?
3. Measurement: how will you distinguish the effect of your work from changes that would have happened anyway? Do you keep control questions that you leave untouched?
4. Measurement: what will you show in the report? Mentions, citations with links, tone, accuracy of information?
5. Measurement: how do you measure the impact on enquiries from customers, not just on visibility?
6. Content: which of our pages do you want to improve first, and why those?
7. Content: where will you get mentions of us beyond our website? From which media, directories, platforms?
8. Content: who writes the texts and who checks them? Does a human sign each text?
9. Content: how will you ensure that figures in the texts have a source and a date?
10. Content: do you generate content at scale? If so, how much, and how do you control quality?
11. Team: who exactly will work on our project, and what experience do they have?
12. Team: what do you do when a model gives false information about us?
13. Contract: which decisions do you make yourselves, and what requires our approval?
14. Contract: what do we get to keep after the collaboration ends? The list of questions, measurement data, texts?
15. Contract: after how many months, and with what result, will we conclude that the collaboration isn’t working?

How to choose a GEO or AI agency step by step

You can complete the whole selection process in a month. No annual contract based on promises.

1. STEP 01List your customers’ questions

   Collect 20–30 questions from sales and customer service that customers really ask before buying. This will be your fixed list for measurement.

2. STEP 02Do your own mini-measurement

   Ask these questions in ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Note whether your company appears, which competitors are mentioned and which sources the model cites — this single hour of work will give you a reference point for all later conversations with agencies.

3. STEP 03Invite two or three agencies

   Give them the same list of questions and ask for a description of their measurement method and first actions. Compare the answers against the 15 questions from the previous section.

4. STEP 04Ask for a baseline measurement before signing

   A good agency will show you what your visibility looks like today, on your questions, not on a generic example.

5. STEP 05Agree a checkpoint in the contract

   Include the date of the first review (usually 60–90 days), the list of control questions and what you get to keep after the collaboration ends.

7 warning signs

If any of these signs come up in the conversation, stop and ask follow-up questions. Two or more? Keep looking.

1. A guaranteed place in ChatGPT. Nobody controls a model’s answers, so the chances can be increased, but they cannot be guaranteed.
2. A single screenshot as proof. Model answers can change within a day. The proof is a trend on a fixed list of questions.
3. No baseline measurement. Without a zero point, any result can be presented as a success.
4. An agency ranking in which the author takes first place. Some rankings are sponsored articles commissioned by one of the companies being assessed. Check for a “sponsored article” label.
5. A “secret algorithm”. Methods can be described in plain words. If someone can’t do it, there is usually nothing to describe.
6. Hundreds of texts a month. In its spam policies, Google explicitly lists the mass creation of pages to manipulate rankings, including with the help of generative AI. That is a risk, not an advantage.
7. Valuing the effect in zloty based on “what the advertising would have cost”. So-called advertising value equivalency does not measure business impact, and the industry standard for communication measurement (AMEC) rejects it. We explain why on the page why not advertising value equivalency.

How much does a GEO agency or an AI agency cost?

There is no market price list, and offers are hard to compare because each agency charges for something different. Instead of asking about the monthly price, ask what exactly you get. Below are the factors that have the greatest impact on the budget.

Which agencies rank in ChatGPT and how to check it yourself

The simplest test of an agency that does AI positioning? Check how it manages its own visibility. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity questions such as “which agency does AI positioning” or “recommend the best agencies for LLM visibility” (LLMs are the large language models that chatbots run on) and see who comes up and which sources are cited.

Treat this as a signal, not a verdict: a young agency may not have mentions yet, and an established one may have them from a time when it did something completely different. What matters more is whether it can show its method and measurement. We describe a proper audit step by step in the article on measuring brand visibility in AI, and you can read about how a model chooses which companies to recommend in the article on ranking in ChatGPT. A good GEO agency will show you this measurement as a repeatable process, not a one-time report. We do it that way. Commwork®AI system, who asks the same questions every week and records who models they cite.

If, after reading the cost table, you want to first see what a proper measurement looks like for your questions, and only then compare the offers, order from us. visibility measurement in AI. You will receive a list of questions and results that you can also show to other agencies.

Location matters less than it used to. If you search for “AI agency Wrocław” or the name of another city, look above all at the team and the method, because measurement and most of the work can be done remotely. We have also collected general principles for choosing a partner in our guide on how to choose a marketing agency.

Comparison chart of offers and example of the first 90 days

After talking with two or three agencies, you usually have a set of notes and the impression that everyone is speaking in the same way. Turn the notes into a simple card. Give each agency between 0 and 2 points for each item on the list. When asked „which GEO agency to choose,” the answer is the sum of the points, not the length of the presentation.

Set the decision threshold right from the start and include it in the contract. A reasonable arrangement would be something like this: after 90 days on the static list of questions, the brand appears more often than in the baseline measurement, and the control questions on which the agency had not worked have changed significantly less. If that is the case, you extend the contract. If nothing has changed and the agency cannot explain why, you use the starting point that was already set. Visibility in the LLM increases slowly, so do not judge the work after two weeks.

How to choose a PR agency for a B2B company, if visibility in AI responses is one of the goals? Add two questions to the card: in which industry media did the agency actually publish in the last year and how does this connect with the measurement in the models. Image activities in B2B are governed by their own laws, which we write about in the article B2B image activities.

1. The baseline measurement is on your list of questions before signing the contract.
2. Control questions that the agency deliberately does not address.
3. A concrete plan for publishing outside your site, with the names of the media types.
4. Texts signed by a human being, numbers from a source and a date.
5. The list of questions, measurement data and texts are kept by you after the cooperation ends.
6. A checkpoint after 60–90 days and clear conditions for ending the contract.

When to hire an agency, and when not yet

An agency makes sense when you already have a solid website and something to say (experts, data, case studies), but outside of your website, no one writes about it. Then an agency that combines PR and content has something to work on. Part of that work is just regular Image SEO, That is, taking care of what the search engine shows under the company name.

It is too early if the website has technical problems that nobody is fixing, or if the company does not yet have a clear message. First get the basics in order, then work on visibility in models. The first sensible checkpoint comes 60–90 days after the start, and as with any activity, you then compare the result with the baseline measurement and the control questions, not with a single screenshot.

How do we work at Commplace? We start with a diagnosis: a constant list of clients’ questions, measurement in eight AI engines, a review of websites and mentions in the media. Then a plan is created in four layers (technology, content, evidence, and measurement), and after 60–90 days we measure again, with control questions. Each text is signed by a human. The diagnosis and AI implementation strategy cost us PLN 8,000 net; the first conversation is free (pricing on the website) AI agency, (as of 24.09.2026). If you are looking for a GEO agency that starts with measurements, not promises, see how we operate AI search optimisation, i.e. GEO and AEO, and arrange the first interview.

The most expensive mistakes when choosing a GEO agency

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