What GEO agency results look like
A realistic, clearly hypothetical example of how GEO citation numbers move over 90 days, and how to judge whether your own results are on track.
GEO results move in two speeds: on-page fixes can shift a citation rate within weeks, while third-party placements — the bigger driver — take a quarter or more because they depend on other sites saying yes. A realistic 90-day result is a documented trend with real movement, not a headline citation count.
This follows how to choose a GEO agency: once you've picked one and started, this is roughly the shape and pace of what "working" should look like.
On this page
Why don't we publish real client numbers here?
Because we don't have enough finished engagements to publish honestly yet, and a made-up statistic dressed as a real result is exactly the kind of claim we'd tell you to question in a proposal. So the example below is a clearly hypothetical, illustrative worked example — not a real client, not real data — built only to show the method and the normal pace of change.
Plenty of agencies in this category publish results anyway, often as a percentage lift with no baseline, no date range and no named business behind it. A number like that is unfalsifiable — there is no way for you to check it, and no consequence for the agency if it turns out to be optimistic. We would rather show you exactly how we would measure your own results, using a labeled example, than add one more unverifiable chart to a category that already has too many.
What does a realistic first-90-days trend actually look like?
A mid-market B2B software company — call it Northfield Analytics, population: made up — starts with GPTBot partially blocked at its CDN, no fixed prompt set, and zero tracked citations because nobody had measured before. Day one is a baseline: the crawler block gets found and fixed, and twenty-five real buyer questions, sourced from the sales team's actual call notes, get run across four engines for the first time.
Nothing about Northfield's starting point is unusual. A silent crawler block is one of the most common findings in a first-week audit, because it produces no visible symptom on its own — traffic looks normal, the site loads fine for a human visitor, and the only sign anything is wrong is a citation rate that never moves. Finding and fixing it is typically the fastest, cheapest win of the entire engagement, and it is also why every serious proposal should start there rather than with content.
| Milestone | Day 1 | Day 30 | Day 90 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crawler access | GPTBot blocked at CDN | Fixed and verified | Stable |
| Pages rewritten for citation | 0 | 6 priority pages | 14 pages |
| Third-party pitches sent | 0 | 10 | 34, 3 replies |
| Citation rate (25 fixed questions) | 2 of 25 | 5 of 25 | 9 of 25 |
| Confirmed placements live | 0 | 0 | 2 |
The pattern worth noticing is not the specific numbers — they're invented — but the shape: the crawler fix and the first page rewrites move the citation rate a little by day 30, while the third-party placements that move it more don't land until closer to day 90, because they depend on someone else saying yes on their own schedule.
3 tracked readings
How do you judge whether your own results are on track?
Against your own day-one baseline, not against Northfield's invented numbers or anyone else's published example. If your crawler access got confirmed and fixed in week one, your prompt set has been running weekly since, and your citation rate by day 90 is higher than day 30 even if only slightly, that is a normal trajectory — the same shape the hypothetical example above shows, whatever the actual numbers are for your category.
Watch the two speeds separately rather than blending them into one number. If pages are getting rewritten on schedule but the third-party pitch count is stuck at zero past week four, that is worth raising directly — the on-page work being on track does not mean the slower, higher-leverage half of the engagement is happening too. A monthly report that only shows a single blended citation score can hide exactly this kind of gap.
If you're comparing this against a proposal you already signed, read it the way our guide to evaluating a GEO proposal describes: specific deliverables you can check off, not a vague sense of progress. And if this work was added onto an existing SEO retainer rather than bought as its own engagement, expect a similar early curve — see adding GEO to an SEO retainer for what that scope should include from day one.
What would actually make a result worth publishing?
A named company willing to be named, a real baseline taken before any work started, and a trend across at least a full quarter rather than a single good week. Until an engagement clears that bar honestly, an invented example that says so plainly is more useful than a real-sounding number that isn't. If you're shortlisting vendors and want to see which ones hold themselves to that same standard, our guide to the best GEO agencies is a reasonable next read.
Questions people also ask
Does RankPearl publish real client GEO results?
Not yet, and we'd rather say that plainly than dress up a made-up number as a real one. The example on this page is explicitly hypothetical, built to show the shape and pace of a normal trend, not a specific client's outcome.
What's a realistic citation rate after 90 days?
There's no single industry-wide figure, because it depends on category, starting crawler status and how competitive your third-party landscape already is. What is consistent is the shape: on-page fixes move faster than third-party placements do.
How do I know if my own results are actually on track?
Compare against your own baseline, not a headline number from someone else's case study. If crawler access is fixed, pages are rewritten and outreach has started by day 30, and a citation rate trend exists by day 90, that is on track regardless of the absolute number.
Why do citation numbers move so unevenly month to month?
Because the underlying engines return different results for the same question on different days. A single week's dip or spike is normal noise, not a verdict — judge a trend across a full quarter, not any single reading.
Sources
- I tracked 13,184 AI citations across 4 LLMs: here's what I learned — Orbit Media Studios (checked 23 September 2026)
- Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools — Bing Webmaster Blog (checked 23 September 2026)
- AI features and your website — Google Search Central (checked 23 September 2026)
Want a real baseline instead of someone else's example?
Book a free 30-minute consultation with Ibrahem and Jeremy. We look at your site while we talk, and you leave with a prioritised plan.
Who wrote this
Jeremy ZavaCo-founder
Leads growth and client partnerships.
Works on: CRO, SEO
Reviewed before publishing by Ibrahem Helal, Co-founder.
- How to choose a GEO agency in 2026A buyer's guide to hiring a GEO agency: what the work is, what it should cost, how AI citations are measured, and the questions that separate two proposals.
- How to evaluate a GEO proposalScore a GEO proposal on five things before you compare price: baseline, engines named, deliverables, third-party targets and how citations get measured.
- Adding GEO to an SEO retainerWhether to ask your current SEO agency to add GEO work or hire a specialist, what to check they can do, and how the scope should be priced.
- Best GEO agencies in 2026Six agencies built specifically around generative engine optimization, reviewed on published price, proof and platform scope — including us, bias disclosed.