How much does AI visibility work cost?

The measurement layer has published prices and costs tens of dollars a month, not thousands: Otterly.ai from $29 per month for 15 prompts, Peec AI from about $95 per month for 50 prompts, Profound from $99 per month for a ChatGPT-only tier up to $499 for the full plan, and GEONI pay-as-you-go at roughly $2 per scan across four engines (prices read August 2026). Agency retainers are not published, so read any proposal against that floor and ask for it split into three lines: measurement, analysis and implementation.

Who should I hire to improve my brand's visibility in AI search?

Three kinds of provider sell this work: established SEO and digital marketing agencies, independent consultants, and measurement tools. There is no single best name, because GEO/AEO is not yet a standardised service line. The defensible way to choose is by method rather than reputation: ask which questions they ask, on which engines, and how often. A provider who cannot answer that is working from guesswork.

Which company is best at AI visibility optimisation?

No published list can support that claim, because nobody runs comparative measurement across providers in this field yet. Judge on four things instead: how many AI engines they measure, how much the answer moves when they ask the same question twice, whether they report which sources the answers cite, and whether they check that AI crawlers can read your site at all. A provider who answers those four clearly is safer than one who ranks highly on a listicle but cannot explain the method.

Is AI visibility different from traditional SEO?

The foundations are shared: a crawlable page, a clear answer, being mentioned in sources the models trust. The outcome differs. In SEO, landing in the top ten works. In an AI answer there is no second place: you are in the answer or you are not. AI answers also shift between runs, so a single check means little and the trend is the real signal. This is why most companies do not need to replace their SEO agency, only to add a measurement layer on top.

Which promises are red flags?

Three are clear. First, promising to rank you first in ChatGPT: AI answers have no ranking, only presence. Second, guaranteeing a timeline: answers change with model updates and nobody controls that schedule. Third, selling a one-off report: a single measurement is noise, and only a repeated question set produces a trend you can act on.

What can I do myself before hiring anyone?

Two things, both free and both high return. Check that your robots.txt allows the AI crawlers, because blocked access is the most common reason a good site stays invisible and no amount of content editing fixes it. Then write one page per question you want to win, answering it in the first forty to sixty words, since buried conclusions rarely get quoted.

// GEONI Guides

Who Does AI Visibility Work — And How To Choose One

Last updated: 25 August 2026 · GEONI Team

Three kinds of provider sell AI visibility (GEO/AEO) work: established agencies, independent consultants and measurement tools. There is no single “best” name — this is not yet a standardised service line. The choice that holds up is made on method, not reputation.

Three provider types, three different jobs

Agencies. Established SEO and digital marketing agencies are experienced in technical foundations, content production and authority building — and most of AI visibility rests on exactly those. If you are hiring an agency, the question is not “do you do GEO?” but “how do you measure the result?”

Independent consultants. Cheaper and more focused, and often faster to start. The risk is that the method lives in one person's head and the reporting comes down to screenshots.

Measurement tools. They do not do the work; they show you what is actually happening: which questions you appear in, which engine drops you, which sources the answers cite. Keeping an independent measurement layer while an agency does the work is the only way to see whether you got what you paid for. Comparison of the tools themselves: AI visibility tracking tools.

Four questions to ask any provider

How many engines do you measure? ChatGPT alone is not enough. The same brand can appear in Perplexity and be absent from ChatGPT; the engines disagree far more than people expect.
How much does the answer move when you ask the same question twice? A provider who can answer this has actually measured. One who says “it doesn't move” has not.
Do you report which sources the answers cite? Who the model quotes is the data that tells you what to do next.
Did you check that AI crawlers can read my site? Bot protection, a WAF or JavaScript-only rendering is the most common cause of invisibility — and content edits will not fix it.

Three red flags

“We'll get you ranked first in ChatGPT.” AI answers have no ranking. You are in the answer or you are not. Anyone using this sentence does not know the field.

A guaranteed timeline. Answers move with model updates. Committing to a date is committing to something outside anyone's control.

A one-off report. A single measurement is noise. The signal is a repeated question set and its trend.

What this work costs

Nobody publishes agency retainers, so we will not invent a number for them. What we can give you is the floor: the measurement layer has published prices, and any provider quote should be read against it.

Published entry prices for measurement tools, read on 25 August 2026:

Otterly.ai — from $29/month for 15 tracked prompts; Gemini and Google AI Mode are paid add-ons; $189/month for 100 prompts.
Peec AI — from about $95/month for 50 prompts, engines included, unlimited seats; agency plans from about $245/month.
Profound — from $99/month for a ChatGPT-only single-seat tier; multi-platform plans reported around $399, full plan $499/month.
GEONI — pay-as-you-go, roughly $2 per scan across four engines, no subscription.

So the measurement itself costs tens of dollars a month, not thousands. That gives you a way to read any proposal: ask what share of the fee is measurement and what share is work done by a person. Tooling marked up several times over, with no named human deliverable behind it, is the thing to catch. Conversely, a low quote that is only a tool licence is not a service — you can buy that yourself in ten minutes.

Ask for the quote broken into three lines: measurement (which tool, which engines, how many prompts, how often), analysis (who reads it, how often, what they produce), and implementation (who changes the pages, and how many hours). A provider unwilling to split those three has not costed the work either.

What our own measurement says you should ask for

We measured 154 subjects across four engines in July–August 2026 and published the aggregates. Two findings change what a sensible brief looks like:

Nothing was blocking the crawlers. Across the 100 websites in that sample, none blocked AI search or training crawlers — but 45 had no robots.txt at all, 70 had no llms.txt, and 71 had no discoverable sitemap. If a provider's first deliverable is “we will unblock the AI bots”, they are selling you a fix for a problem you almost certainly do not have. The gap is not a locked door, it is an empty room.
Engines disagree far more than people expect. Only 63% of subjects were recognised by all four engines, and on 46 of 90 subjects the gap between the best and worst engine was 40 points or more. A provider reporting a single blended “AI visibility score” is averaging away the only thing you can act on. Insist on the engine-by-engine breakdown.

The full data, method and limits are in our measurement report.

Should I replace my SEO agency?

Probably not. The foundations are shared — a crawlable page, a clear answer, being mentioned in trusted sources. The difference is the outcome: in SEO the top ten works, in an AI answer there is no second place. For most companies, keeping the current agency and adding an independent measurement layer is both cheaper and faster than switching.

Does location matter?

Almost not at all. Every part of this work runs remotely: checking crawler access, building the question set, querying the engines on a schedule, editing content. Search results will naturally surface providers clustered in the largest cities, but a face-to-face meeting does not change the quality of the measurement. Judge transparency instead of postcode.

Frequently asked questions

Who do you recommend?

We do not publish a single name. Without comparative measurement, a “best provider” list cannot be defended. Ask the four questions above to three providers; the clarity of the answers will rank them for you.

Measurement first, or service first?

Measurement first. If you do not know where you stand at the start, you cannot tell later whether the service worked.

Can I do any of this myself?

Yes, and the free parts have the highest return: confirm your robots.txt allows the AI crawlers, and write one page per question you want to win, answering it in the first forty to sixty words.

Measure before you choose a provider

A GEONI scan shows where you stand across four AI engines, which sources those answers cite, and whether AI crawlers can read your site at all. Your first scan is free.

Run a free scan →