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How to Choose an AI SEO Agency in 2026: 7 Questions to Ask
An artificial intelligence (AI) SEO agency is a search marketing firm that works to get brands cited in AI-written answers, not only ranked in results. Google lists no additional requirements for its AI features beyond indexing and snippet eligibility, while OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic publish separate crawlers. Choose one by asking for proof, starting with how success is measured.
TL;DR
Google's documentation says AI Overviews and AI Mode have no additional requirements beyond a page being indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet.
OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic each document their own crawlers and robots.txt controls, so access is set engine by engine.
According to a preprint of four AI search engines, earned media (third-party sources) supplied 63.4% to 93.5% of the sources cited for well-known consumer brands.
Google's guidance on hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and found that rewording a question often changes which domains AI engines cite.
In our September 10, 2026 audit of AI visibility tools, neither the tool we tested nor Search Console data could connect one specific citation to one specific impression change.
What is an AI SEO agency, and how is it different from an SEO agency?
An AI SEO agency adds engine-specific work to classic SEO, and researchers call that discipline generative engine optimization (GEO). Three documented changes explain the extra work. First, answers can be built from several searches: Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use query fan-out, "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources." Second, access is set per crawler: OpenAI says, "Each setting is independent of the others." Third, clicks are lower when a summary appears. U.S. adults clicked a result link in 8% of visits with a Google AI summary and 15% without.
Classic SEO still matters. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet to be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, with no additional requirements.
What should an AI SEO agency do? Five skills to test
These five skills separate real AI SEO services from a relabeled SEO retainer, and each names the evidence to request before you sign. A proposal that offers keyword research, blog posts and link building but none of these five artifacts is the old retainer under a new name.
Crawler access, engine by engine.OpenAI says its search crawler surfaces sites in ChatGPT search, and Perplexity says its user-triggered fetcher generally ignores robots.txt. Ask for a table of every agent's status on your domain, with the date checked.
Entity clarity. Google says Organization markup helps it "disambiguate your organization in search results," yet also says AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special schema. OpenAI's, Perplexity's and Anthropic's crawler pages mention no markup. Request a name, product and author audit across your site and third-party profiles.
Citable page structure. Google's query fan-out means one answer can draw on several searches, so each priority page should answer the sub-questions around its target query. The authors of the 2025 arXiv preprint advise optimizing "not just for keywords, but for scannability and justification." Look for a sub-question map per page.
Third-party presence. In the 2025 arXiv preprint, earned media supplied 66.4% to 95.1% of the sources cited for niche brands, so edits to your own site are not a strategy by themselves. Ask for a target list of reviews, directories, press and expert sources, split by engine.
Measurement with declared limits. Expect a fixed prompt set, run dates, repeat counts and a citation rate per engine, with mentions kept apart from citations. Google's documentation says AI feature traffic is included in the Web search type in Search Console, so keep a separate baseline for target pages.
How do ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews cite differently?
Each engine publishes its own crawler rules, and their cited sources diverge. The domains cited by Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity overlapped only 0.088 to 0.251 pair by pair on the Jaccard index, where 1.0 means identical sets. Those queries covered automotive and consumer electronics. The table pairs the preprint's source mix for well-known consumer brands, collected in August 2025, with each vendor's documentation, read on October 16, 2026.
Engine
Source mix in the 2025 preprint
What its own documentation says
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
Not one of the four engines compared.
Indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, with no additional requirements.
ChatGPT
Earned media 93.5%, brand-owned 6.5%, social none.
OpenAI: search crawler surfaces sites in ChatGPT search; training crawler is a separate setting.
Perplexity
Earned media 67.4%, brand-owned 8.8%, social 23.8%.
Perplexity: crawler surfaces and links sites; not used for training.
Gemini
Earned media 63.4%, brand-owned 25.1%, social 11.5%.
Google: Google-Extended covers Gemini training and grounding; no effect on Search inclusion.
Claude
Earned media 87.3%, brand-owned 6.8%, social 5.9%.
Anthropic: blocking its search crawler "may reduce your site's visibility and accuracy in user search results."
What this means for strategy
Fix access per engine first. Four agents matter most for search visibility: OpenAI's search crawler, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and Googlebot, while GPTBot and ClaudeBot govern training. Then build third-party presence, because every engine in the preprint leaned on earned media. Tune each engine afterwards and re-measure after every model change: the preprint tested Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 5.5 on September 28, 2026. For Google's side, see our guide to AI Overviews and SEO in 2026.
The percentages come from a 2025 snapshot. The preprint lists no journal reference, and its authors say absolute percentages should be read as "illustrative of strong, relative trends." The preprint did not test Google's AI Overviews or AI Mode, and its brand questions were consumer-style ranking prompts with no query count stated in that section. Our audit covered one site and one monitoring tool tested hands-on.
How do I choose a GEO agency? Seven questions for the sales call
I have been the buyer on this call. About four years ago, when I launched my first business, I hired an SEO freelancer, and the work damaged the business instead of growing it, as my author page describes. Several questions below adapt the ones in Google's own guide to hiring a SEO, and the rest cover work specific to AI engines. They also work for an AI SEO company or a solo AI SEO consultant.
Which engines do you measure separately, and which crawler does each one use? A good answer names the search crawlers for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google and treats training crawlers as a separate decision.
What will you change in the first month, and who implements it? Google's guide asks whether an SEO will share every change. Expect a written change log and a named developer, not a slide deck.
How do you build and rerun your prompt set, and which tools do you use? Look for prompts drawn from your own sales calls, repeat runs and dated logs. Ignore lists of the best AI SEO tools and ask what each tool you are shown cannot measure.
What does Google say about schema and AI text files, and what do you do about it? Google says neither is required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. A good answer treats markup as entity hygiene and names the ambiguity it fixes.
What can you not attribute? A good answer separates citations from clicks and revenue, names the Search Console baseline and states which results it cannot tie to a cause.
What will you refuse to promise? Google's guide says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking. A good answer promises deliverables, reporting and access but declines to promise a citation, a ranking or a date.
Can I see a real report from last quarter and speak to a client? Google's guide suggests asking past clients whether the work was useful. The report should show the prompt set, run dates and repeat counts, not one screenshot.
Red flags: guaranteed citations, "ChatGPT top 1" and instant fixes
"Guaranteed AI citations."Google's guide says, "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Rewording a question often produced cited-domain sets that overlapped the original's by only 0.3 to 0.7 on the Jaccard index.
"ChatGPT top 1." One answer to one prompt on one day is a screenshot, not a ranking. Ask for the prompt, the date, the location and how many repeat runs agreed.
"Instant GEO fix." OpenAI says its systems can take about a day to adjust after a robots.txt change, and Perplexity says up to a day, so even the simplest access fix is not instant.
Markup or an AI text file sold as the lever.Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special schema, no AI text files and no other special optimizations.
What a 90-day AI SEO engagement should include
A 90-day engagement should end with a baseline, shipped fixes, a repeat measurement and a decision, not with a promise. Four phases get there, and each phase leaves an artifact you can inspect.
Days 1 to 14, baseline. The crawler-access table, the entity audit, a Search Console baseline for target pages and a fixed prompt set built from your sales calls, run on every engine with repeats.
Days 15 to 42, fixes. Access corrections, consistent entity data and restructured priority pages with definitions, dated figures and tables, shipped with a change log.
Days 43 to 70, third-party presence. A target list of reviews, directories, press and expert sources by engine, plus new content for the sub-questions your pages still miss.
Days 71 to 90, remeasure and decide. Rerun the same prompts on the same engines, compare each engine's citation rate with the baseline and with run-to-run noise, and write down what cannot be attributed.
Our GEO page says initial citations can appear within 4 to 8 weeks of content restructuring and schema deployment, and that consistent growth across engines takes 2 to 4 months. We publish those ranges without the data behind them, so treat them as a vendor's estimate. Price is the weakest comparison, so compare deliverables before totals.
How Mettevo approaches AI SEO
Our generative engine optimization service has five steps: an AI visibility scan, a citation roadmap, content changes, authority building and monthly monitoring. Our developers implement changes instead of only recommending them, and monthly tracking covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. Claude is part of the citation analysis but is not on the tracking list.
We ran the access check on ourselves. On October 16, 2026, our robots.txt named 16 AI user agents in one group, including those for ChatGPT search, Perplexity and ClaudeBot. That group allows the site root for all of them. Googlebot and Claude-SearchBot are not named, so they follow the wildcard group, which blocks only technical and archive paths. Our own crawler parsed the structured data of 58 pages, mostly blog posts, on October 13, 2026 and found FAQPage markup on 14 of them. We have not tested whether those pages earn more citations.
If you want a crawler-access table like this for your domain, our GEO page offers a free audit with a visibility report within 48 hours.
FAQ
How much does an AI SEO agency cost?
Our GEO page, read on October 16, 2026, lists GEO-focused retainers from $2,000 per month. Combined SEO and GEO programs run $3,000 to $8,000 per month, depending on content volume, competition and the number of topics. We set final scope after an initial AI visibility audit.
Is AI SEO worth it in 2026?
Worth a measured test: demand is documented, return is harder to show. Google said on May 19, 2026 that AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users. Adults clicked a result link in 8% of visits with an AI summary and 15% without. In our September 10, 2026 audit, the tool we tested could not tie a citation to an impression change.
Does AI SEO replace traditional SEO?
No. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet to be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
Can an AI SEO agency guarantee ChatGPT citations?
No. Google's guidance on hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking. Rewording a question often changed which domains ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini cited. Many overlaps between a question and its rewordings fell between 0.3 and 0.7, where 1.0 means identical sets.
