Questions to Ask a GEO Agency Before You Sign
Nine specific questions that separate a GEO agency with a real process from one selling a rebadged SEO retainer, and what a good answer sounds like.
Ask what they track, how they prove it, and what happens when citations don't move — a GEO agency with a real process answers all three specifically, with URLs and numbers, not with reassurance. Vague answers to any of the nine questions below are the clearest signal you'll get before signing anything.
This list is the interview version of how to choose a GEO agency, which covers the fuller buying process. Use these nine questions on the call itself.
On this page
How many AI engines do they actually track?
Not "all the major ones" — name them. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google's AI features and Copilot each surface citations differently, and a study tracking over 13,000 citations found real gaps between them: ChatGPT cited about 4.5 sources per answer against Perplexity's roughly nineteen [3]. An agency should know that difference cold and tell you which engines your budget actually covers.
If the answer is a single number for "AI search" with no engine named, that's a guess dressed up as a metric. Ask them to name the engines, and ask which ones they are not tracking and why.
Can they show you a real citation report, not a mockup?
This is the question that separates a working process from a sales deck. Ask to see an anonymized report from an active client: specific URLs cited, specific prompts run, a date range. A template with placeholder numbers is not the same thing, and most agencies will tell you outright which one they're showing you if you ask directly.
Pay attention to what the report actually contains, not just whether one exists. A citation rate with no URLs behind it is a claim you can't check. A report that names the exact pages cited, week by week, is one you can verify yourself the next time you open the same assistant and ask the same question.
What exactly is included in the monthly retainer?
Get a written list, not a paragraph of adjectives. A real GEO retainer usually includes page-level fixes, crawler and technical checks, a fixed prompt set tracked on a schedule, and outreach to the third-party pages assistants actually cite. What a GEO retainer includes breaks down what a normal scope looks like month to month, so you have something to compare a proposal against.
| You ask | Vague answer | Specific answer |
|---|---|---|
| Which engines do you track? | "All the AI platforms" | "ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini — Copilot on request" |
| Can I see a report? | "We'll send a sample after signing" | An anonymized report, shown live on the call |
| What's in the retainer? | "Full-service AI optimization" | A written list of deliverables and cadence |
| What if it doesn't work? | "We guarantee results" | A clear explanation of what's measurable and what isn't |
How do they handle crawler access and robots.txt?
This should be a five-minute technical answer, and it should come with a caution: a firewall or CDN rule can silently block an AI crawler with no visible error, which is a common and invisible cause of a brand never appearing in answers [2]. Ask whether checking this is step one of onboarding or an afterthought.
What's their plan for citations that don't come from your own site?
A large share of what an assistant cites when it recommends a vendor comes from pages you don't control — review platforms, comparison posts, professional directories [1]. Ask specifically what the agency does about that. "We'll optimize your website" is not an answer to this question; it's an answer to a different one.
Who signs off on page changes, and how fast?
Ask who on the agency's side approves a rewrite before it goes live, and how many days that usually takes. A slow or informal approval process is the most common reason a GEO engagement stalls in its first month, quietly, with nobody flagging it until a client asks why nothing has shipped.
Can they point to a real, verifiable example of their own work?
Not a client logo with no detail — a specific, checkable claim. If they can't, ask what they can show instead, such as a documented before-and-after on their own site or a published, honestly framed comparison. An agency with nothing verifiable to point to is not automatically dishonest, but it is a reason to ask more of the other questions here rather than fewer.
What should make you walk away entirely?
A handful of answers are worth treating as disqualifying rather than merely disappointing. A flat guarantee of specific AI mentions, a refusal to name which engines are in scope, and an unwillingness to show any report at all — anonymized or otherwise — are three answers that tell you more than a dozen good ones would offset. None of these require you to be a technical buyer to spot; they're all about whether the agency will be specific with you before you've paid them anything.
It's also fair to walk away from an agency that answers every question perfectly and offers no caveats at all. GEO is still a young discipline with real limits on what can be measured and guaranteed, and an agency that never says "we don't know yet" about anything is either inexperienced or not being straight with you.
What happens if citations don't move in 90 days?
There's no honest way to guarantee a citation in someone else's AI-generated answer — guaranteed ChatGPT mentions explains why that promise is itself worth treating as a warning sign. What a good agency should offer instead is a clear account of what was tried, what the data showed, and what changes next. Watch for anyone who answers this question with certainty rather than a process — that kind of overconfidence is exactly the pattern covered in GEO agency red flags.
Ask for the report first
Before discussing price, ask to see a real citation report. Everything else is easier to evaluate once you know the measurement is real.
Name the engines out loud
Get a spoken list of which AI engines are in scope, not a written phrase like 'AI search' that could mean almost anything.
Ask the 90-day question directly
Watch for certainty versus process. A confident guarantee is a bigger red flag than an honest 'here's what we'll know by then.'
How do they report progress, and how often?
Ask for the format and the cadence before you sign, not after. A monthly report tied to a fixed prompt set, with named URLs and a trend line, is the minimum bar. A report that only lists activity — pages rewritten, pitches sent — without tying any of it back to a citation number is telling you the agency was busy, not that anything moved.
The questions that matter most are the ones with a boring, specific answer. If someone answers a technical question about crawler access with confidence and no detail, that's the moment to slow down.
Run through all nine on a single call if you can, and write down the answers rather than trusting memory. If you're building a shortlist first, the best GEO agencies and the best AI SEO agencies are reasonable starting points before you get anyone on the phone. A free audit of your current crawler access and citation baseline is also a fast way to know what questions actually matter for your site specifically.
Questions people also ask
What's the single most revealing question to ask a GEO agency?
Ask them to show a real, current citation report from an existing client, with the URLs and the engines named. A vendor with a real process can produce this in the call; one that can't is selling something else.
Should a GEO agency be willing to name which AI engines it tracks?
Yes, specifically. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google's AI features and Copilot behave differently and are tracked differently, so a vague answer like 'all the major ones' usually means none of them are being measured properly.
Is it a bad sign if an agency can't explain robots.txt or crawler access?
Yes. Checking whether AI crawlers can actually reach your site is one of the first things a competent GEO engagement does, and an agency that can't speak to it plainly hasn't done this work before.
How many questions should I plan to ask in a first call?
Six to nine is enough to cover process, reporting, and honesty about limits without turning the call into an audit. The questions in this guide are a good starting set.
Sources
- AI features and your website — Google Search Central (checked 23 September 2026)
- Overview of OpenAI crawlers — OpenAI (checked 23 September 2026)
- I tracked 13,184 AI citations across 4 LLMs: here's what I learned — Orbit Media Studios (checked 23 September 2026)
Want a second opinion before you sign a GEO contract?
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
Ibrahem HelalCo-founder
Leads strategy and delivery.
Works on: SEO, GEO
Reviewed before publishing by Jeremy Zava, Co-founder.
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