Evaluating AEO agencies
Best AEO Agencies: What to Look For
Most AEO agency pages are SEO copy with the acronym changed. The checks below tell you more than the pitch does.
Written by Younus Fardeen, Marketing Manager at Masai School.
Last reviewed · 5 sources
What you are buying
An agency sells process and capacity. AEO work is mostly decisions about structure and content, a smaller unit than agencies are built around.
- Capacity across many contributors
- Process that survives staff turnover
- A named practitioner who does the thinking
- Reporting that separates citation, ranking and traffic
7 criteria I would actually use
- 01
You can meet the person doing the work
Pitches are staffed by the best communicator. Speak to whoever holds the account in month three.
- 02
The AEO offer is not recycled SEO copy
If every mention of AEO could read SEO, they have not thought about the surface.
- 03
They name what they do not do
Agencies claiming every channel sell a roster. Useful ones say where they add nothing.
- 04
Ratings are context, not proof
Directory scores are marketing assets. Ask for one engagement that went badly.
- 05
Their own site is evidence
An agency selling AI visibility that is invisible in AI answers has told you something.
- 06
Reporting has a baseline
Ask what they capture before starting. Otherwise improvement is measured against nothing.
- 07
The contract lets you leave
Twelve-month lock-ins protect revenue while results are hardest to show.
Questions to ask before hiring one
Tick them off as you ask. Copy the list into your brief.
0 of 5 done
0%
Claims to doubt
Claims I would be skeptical of.
Includes claims I could make myself. Flip a card for the reason.
Claim
Award-winning AEO agency
Claim
Rated 4.9 from 250+ reviews
Claim
Proprietary AEO framework
Claim
We will get you into ChatGPT
Claim
Full-service, so it is all joined up
Worth evaluating alongside me
An independent consultant
Better when the constraint is judgement, and considerably cheaper for the same decisions.
Your existing SEO agency
The overlap is large, so adding this to an existing relationship is often the cheapest correct answer.
In-house with an external advisor
A few senior days a month beside a team that already publishes often beats outsourcing the thinking.
Nobody, yet
If the site is not crawlable or the content is thin, a retainer buys a report on problems you already know.
Where I fit
The part where I make a caseI am not an agency. For production capacity across many contributors, one of the options above fits better.
An individual fits when the work is decisions: what pages should be, how the entity is described, what to stop publishing, how to tell whether it moved.
If you already have an agency, the most useful thing I can do is often an audit you take to them. No change of supplier needed.
Questions
Asked most.
Agency or individual for AEO?
Individual for judgement, agency for capacity. Small teams usually need the first and are sold the second.
What should an AEO engagement include?
A baseline of current AI answers, an entity and structure review, a content decision list including removals, and reporting that separates citation from ranking.
How do I compare two proposals?
Ignore deliverable counts and compare the diagnosis. Whoever describes the problem more specifically understood the site.
Do you take agency subcontracts?
Sometimes, where the agency wants the structural thinking and keeps delivery in house.
Evidence, labelled
What is confirmed, what is reported, what is a hunch.
Each claim is labelled and sourced. Google rows speak only for Google.
Last reviewed · 5 sources
- Confirmed
- Stated in the platform's own documentation or measured in published data.
- Not required
- The platform says you do not need it. It may still be harmless.
- Reported
- Third-party study or vendor data. Method and conflicts noted.
No outside tool can see inside Google's AI systems.
Confirmed
Google says so. Ask any agency what its data actually is.
A dashboard can give your exact position in AI answers.
Reported
Same prompt, same brand list in under 1 in 100 runs. Ask how many runs sit behind a number.
A per-page programme is low risk.
Not required
Google warns that pages made per query variation may breach its scaled content abuse policy.
Google, AI optimization guide (opens in a new tab) source 1Google, spam policies (opens in a new tab) source 2
AI sessions alone justify a large retainer.
Reported
AI platforms sent 0.32% to 1.08% of site traffic in two studies. Judge the work on pipeline and baseline movement.
SE Ranking traffic study (opens in a new tab) source 1Conductor benchmarks (opens in a new tab) source 2
Sources, fetched 19 October 2026
- 01Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search (opens in a new tab)Google Search Central · Updated 10 Jul 2026
- 02AI recommendations change with nearly every query (SparkToro and Gumshoe study) (opens in a new tab)Search Engine Journal · 30 Jan 2026
- 03Spam policies for Google web search (opens in a new tab)Google Search Central · Updated 28 Aug 2026
- 04AI traffic grew 16x from 2024 to 2026 (opens in a new tab)SE Ranking · 18 Jun 2026
- 05The 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report (opens in a new tab)Conductor · Updated 6 Jul 2026, 2025 data
By market
- BangaloreSEO and AEO for startups and engineering-led companies.Learn more
- IndiaVernacular and Hinglish retrieval, DPDP, and a market where agencies sell the category.Learn more
- UAEBilingual structure, GCC regulation and a live page-one hospitality build.Learn more
Worked with
- Masai School
- Sparkling Sandset
- Under 25
- Snapchat India
Next step
Put these questions to me.
Use the questions above on me too. Send any in writing and I will answer plainly, including where someone else is the better hire for "best AEO agency".