How to Choose an AEO Agency: Questions to Ask, Evidence to Request and a Scorecard

Updated October 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

How to choose an AEO agency comes down to a five-step process: write a one-page brief, build a short list, request the same evidence from each candidate, score the answers against weighted criteria, and check the contract before signing. This guide is for marketing leads and owners hiring help with answer engine optimization, the work of getting named and cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Google AI Overviews. It is written by Progression Agency, which is based in New York City and works with clients across the United States and worldwide, and it is meant to be usable whichever agency you hire.

How to choose an AEO agency, step by step

Run it as a small procurement exercise: a brief, a short list, an evidence request, a scorecard and a contract check. Five steps, about four weeks, and every candidate answers the same questions.

The structure is there because AEO proposals are hard to compare by reading them. The field is young, vocabulary travels faster than practice, and two agencies can use identical words for very different work. Asking every candidate for the same documents, and scoring them the same way, turns a comparison of sales material into a comparison of method.

This guide covers the selection process only. For what an AEO agency does once hired, see our AEO agency page; for the skills behind the job title, see AEO experts; for selecting a general marketing partner, see how to choose a digital marketing agency; and for the search equivalent of this guide, see how to choose an SEO company.

Who this guide is for

Marketing directors, founders and procurement leads comparing two or more providers of AEO, GEO, AI SEO or AI search optimization. It also works for re-tendering an existing contract, because the scorecard can be applied to the incumbent.

What it deliberately leaves out

Rankings of agencies. No provider is named or rated here, including us. A list of the best agencies goes stale quickly and tells you nothing about fit with your site, your market or your budget.

Who inside your company should be involved in choosing an AEO agency?

Four people at minimum: the marketing lead who owns the outcome, whoever can change the website, someone from sales or customer service who hears buyer questions firsthand, and whoever signs contracts. If the person who controls the site is left out, the fixes an agency recommends have nobody to release them.

• Marketing lead: writes the brief, owns the scorecard and holds the budget.
• Developer, IT contact or web vendor: explains how changes are released and reads the technical findings.
• Sales or service lead: supplies the questions buyers actually ask.
• Legal or procurement: reviews ownership, confidentiality and exit terms.
• A second scorer: someone outside the pitch meetings who scores the written evidence independently.

What should you decide before contacting any agency?

Write one page that states the outcome you want, the questions your buyers ask, the markets you sell in, who can change your website and what you can spend. Agencies quote more accurately against a brief, and you compare more fairly.

• The business outcome, in your own unit: qualified inquiries, demo requests, applications, booked consultations.
• Ten to twenty questions real buyers ask before choosing a provider like you, in their wording.
• The countries, states or cities you sell in, and the languages.
• The competitors you expect to see named in answers.
• Your site platform, who maintains it and how long a change takes to release.
• What exists already: an SEO provider, analytics, Search Console access, PR activity.
• The decision maker, the budget ceiling and the date you want to start.
• Any constraints: regulated claims, brand rules, restrictions on AI tools.

Why the buyer questions matter most

They become the measurement. An agency will test what assistants say in response to these questions, so a list written by your sales team is worth more than one invented during a pitch. The AI visibility prompt builder helps draft a first version.

Why release speed belongs in the brief

Most early fixes are small technical changes that somebody on your side must ship. If a robots.txt edit takes your organization two months to approve, every candidate’s timeline should reflect that, and the ones who ask about it are showing experience.

Check where you stand first

A free baseline makes the brief sharper. Run your questions through the AI visibility checker and your domain through the AI crawler access checker so you know whether the problem is absence, inaccuracy or blocked access before anyone sells you a diagnosis.

Which AEO services should be in scope for a first engagement?

Measurement, access and the pages that matter most. A first scope should cover a dated baseline on your buyer questions, a check that AI crawlers can reach and read the site, restructuring of the highest-value pages and a monthly re-run. Content volume, large PR programs and multi-market tracking can wait until the baseline shows where the gaps are.

Ask each candidate to mark every proposed line as essential now, useful later or optional. The split shows how the agency thinks: one that puts everything in month one has not prioritized, and one that leaves measurement out has no way to show what changed. The descriptions on our AEO services page can serve as a checklist of what the individual pieces are.

Do you need a separate AEO agency at all?

Not always. Much of the work overlaps with technical SEO, and Google states that optimizing for its generative AI features is still SEO. A separate provider earns its fee when it brings measurement and diagnosis your current team does not have.

Google’s Search Central guide to generative AI features describes AEO and GEO as names for work that, from its perspective, remains SEO, and its documentation on AI features says there are no additional requirements for appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode. That covers Google. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity run their own crawlers and retrieval, each documented by its vendor, and measuring what they say about you is a job ordinary rank tracking does not do.

So ask your present SEO provider first. If it can show a dated record of what assistants say about you, evidence that AI crawlers reach your site and a plan for the pages that matter, you may already have what you need. If it cannot, the gap is specific and you can buy exactly that. Our AEO vs SEO comparison lists what transfers, and AEO pros and cons covers when the spend is not yet justified.

When a specialist is worth it

Your buyers research by asking questions, competitors are being named and you are not, your site depends on scripts to display its content, or nobody on your side can say what AI assistants currently state about you.

When to wait

Your category is bought on proximity or price, your site already loads cleanly and is indexed, and assistants are not yet part of how customers find providers like you. A small business in that position should read AEO for small business before commissioning anything.

What should you do when your SEO agency says it also does AEO?

Take the claim seriously and test it like any other candidate. Ask the agency for three things within two weeks: a dated record of what assistants say on ten of your buyer questions, evidence from your logs that AI crawlers reach the site, and a short plan for the pages that matter. Then score what arrives.

An incumbent has real advantages: it knows your site, your approval process and your history, and much of the technical groundwork is shared with SEO. What you are checking is whether AEO is a practiced method or a new line on the invoice. If the three items arrive and hold up, extending the existing scope is usually simpler than adding a supplier. If they do not, you have found out cheaply.

Should SEO and AEO sit with one agency or two?

One, when that agency can show a working AEO method, because the technical groundwork is shared and a single team avoids conflicting recommendations. Two can work when the SEO agency is strong but has no way of measuring AI answers. In that case name one owner for the technical backlog and keep the two sets of results in separate reports.

If you split the work, settle these points in writing:

• Who decides when the two agencies disagree about a page.
• Who briefs your developer, so that tickets arrive from one queue.
• Which agency owns structured data and robots.txt changes.
• How each one reports, so search positions and AI answer results are never blended.

Should you hire an AEO agency or build the capability in-house?

Hire when you need a method quickly and have nobody who can read server logs, test rendering and design a repeatable question set. Build in-house when AI visibility is central to growth, the work will be continuous and you already have a technical SEO lead with developer support. Starting with an agency and moving the work inside later also works.

Whichever you choose, the question set, the saved answers and the reporting should belong to you from the first day, so the capability can move in either direction. If you plan to hire, ask the agency to document its method as it goes. Our guide to AEO expertise describes the skills an in-house hire would need.

Where do you find AEO agencies worth shortlisting?

Start with providers whose published method you can read, then add referrals and your existing agencies. Aim for a long list of six to eight and a short list of three.

• Your current SEO, PR or web agency, asked directly whether it measures AI answers.
• Referrals from peers who can show you a report, not only an opinion.
• Agencies whose own pages explain how they measure and what they refuse to promise.
• Speakers and authors whose published work includes method, data and limits.
• Directories and review sites, read as a list of names and not as a ranking.
• AI assistants themselves, used as one input and checked against the pages they cite.

Should you ask ChatGPT which AEO agency to hire?

It is a reasonable first search and a poor final answer. Assistants that browse the web assemble a recommendation from pages they retrieve: agency sites, comparison articles, directories and reviews, and they show citations for what they used. Open the cited pages and judge those. Ask the same question in two or three assistants and on different days; the names will change, which is itself a lesson in what you are buying.

What an agency’s own visibility does and does not prove

An AEO agency that assistants cannot describe accurately has a question to answer. But appearing in an answer about the best agencies mostly shows that the agency has invested in its own marketing. Weigh it lightly next to the evidence in the next two sections.

Reading directories and paid listings

Many directories sell placement or sort by sponsorship. Use them to collect names, then apply the same evidence request to every name regardless of where it ranked.

How many to approach

Three is enough for a fair comparison and few enough that you will actually read what comes back. Tell each candidate how many others are being considered and the date you will decide.

How should a startup choose an AEO agency?

Look for an agency that has worked with young brands. A startup has few third-party mentions for assistants to draw on, so the work leans on clear positioning and earned coverage more than on technical repair. Buy an audit and a baseline first, keep the term short, and make sure the founders’ time for approvals is written into the plan.

Questions that matter more for a startup, with more on the fit in AEO for startups:

• How do you measure a brand that assistants do not yet recognize?
• Which comparison and alternatives questions would you track first?
• What can our own team do between your reports?
• What would you leave out at our budget?

How should a small business choose an AEO agency?

Start with the smallest useful purchase. For most small businesses that is a one-off audit with a dated baseline, at a published range of $1,000 to $4,000, followed by a short list of fixes your web person can ship. Choose the provider who is willing to say which parts you can do yourself.

Run the free checks first, so you arrive knowing whether assistants can reach your site at all. If your customers find you mainly through map results and reviews, ask each candidate directly whether listings work would do more for you this year; an honest answer to that question is a good selection test. AEO for small business sets out where to begin.

How should an enterprise run an AEO agency selection?

Add procurement, security and governance to the method in this guide. An enterprise should ask how the agency works through change approval, how it measures several markets and brands separately, and how it hands findings to internal engineering teams. Run a pilot on one template family and one market before committing a program budget.

• Send the security and data-handling questionnaire with the brief, not after selection.
• Ask who on the agency side has worked with release schedules and change boards.
• Ask for reporting that separates markets, brands and business units.
• Name the internal owner of the question set before kickoff.

Enterprise AEO explains why approvals, more than technology, set the pace in a large organization.

What questions should you ask an AEO agency?

Ask about method, people, access and limits, in writing, and ask every candidate the same set. Eighteen questions follow, grouped by what they reveal.

Send these before the first call so the conversation can be about the answers. Four shorter vetting questions that work well in a live interview are set out on our AEO agency page; the list below is the fuller written version and does not repeat them.

Why written answers beat a call

A call rewards fluency. A written reply shows whether the agency has a method it can state, and gives you something to hold it to later. An agency that declines to answer in writing has told you how reporting will go.

How to read a vague answer

A reply such as ‘we track your AI visibility across all major platforms’ contains no number, no list and no schedule. Ask once for specifics. If the second reply is no clearer, score it as it stands.

Questions Google suggests for any search provider

Google’s Search Central page on whether you need an SEO lists interview questions that apply equally here: how success is measured, what results to expect and in what timeframe, and whether recommendations follow its published guidance. It specifically suggests asking whether a provider’s AEO or GEO advice is aligned with Google’s official guidance on generative AI features.

Subcontracting is a disclosure question

Reselling specialist delivery is common and not a fault in itself; our own white label AEO service exists because agencies do it. What matters is that you are told who does the work and that the same confidentiality terms bind them.

What should happen on the first call with an AEO agency?

The agency should ask more than it presents. On a good first call you hear questions about your buyers, your site, who releases changes and what you have already tried, followed by a plain account of what the agency would check first. A slide deck of industry statistics tells you nothing about your own site.

A workable agenda for forty-five minutes:

• Your brief, in five minutes.
• The agency’s questions about buyers, site and approvals.
• What it would test before quoting, and what it needs from you to do that.
• Who would do the work, and when you can meet them.
• What it will send in writing, and by when.

What should a good AEO agency ask you before it quotes?

It should ask what your buyers ask, how your site is built and released, which markets you sell in, what has been tried before and what a new customer is worth. Google’s guidance on hiring search providers makes the same point: a provider worth hiring is interested in your business, your competitors and how customers find you.

Requests for read access to Search Console and for a sample of server logs before quoting are good signs, because rendering and crawler access drive the cost of the work. A price offered without any of these questions cannot reflect your site.

How do you tell whether an AEO agency understands your industry?

Give it a small task instead of asking for a client list. Ask each candidate to draft ten questions a buyer in your category would put to an assistant, and to name the kinds of sources those answers are likely to draw on. A reply written in your customers’ language shows more than a slide of logos.

Direct experience in your sector helps most where claims are regulated or the vocabulary is specialized. Elsewhere a sound method transfers, and an agency that can show how it learns a category is a reasonable choice. Our AEO by industry pages show how buyer questions and sources differ from one sector to another.

What evidence should you request?

Documents from real work, with client details removed: an audit, a monthly report with the answers behind it, a question set, a statement of work and a method note. Evidence of process is more reliable than evidence of outcome in a field this new.

Why process evidence outweighs case studies

A case study shows a line going up. It rarely shows the starting point, what else changed, or whether the result could be reproduced, and answers from assistants vary from one run to the next. A method you can inspect is a better predictor of what you will get. For reading case studies critically, our red flags guide lists the numbers to ask for.

What to ask a reference

Did the reports match what you saw in your own Search Console and analytics? What did the agency tell you that you did not want to hear? Who did the work after the first month? What would you change about the contract?

If an agency cannot share samples

Confidentiality is a fair reason to redact, not to withhold. Any agency with active clients can remove names and show structure. A new agency without samples can instead run a small paid test on your site, which the pilot section below describes.

How should you read an AEO case study?

Look for the method before the result. A usable case study states which questions were tracked, in which assistants, over what period and how many times each was run, and it shows the starting point. Without those details, a chart of rising mentions cannot be told apart from ordinary variation between runs.

Ask the agency for:

• The question set, or a sample of it.
• The baseline date and each measurement date.
• First-party figures that moved alongside, such as AI feature impressions or assistant referrals.
• What else changed in the period: a rebrand, press coverage, a site rebuild.
• What did not improve.

How do you check an AEO agency’s references properly?

Ask for three kinds of reference and pick at least one yourself: a client in its first three months, a client past six months, and a client who has left. Speak by phone instead of email, and ask each to describe what the agency delivered, not whether they were satisfied.

Before the call, read the sample report the agency sent you, then ask the reference whether theirs looked the same. Ask who they dealt with week to week and whether that changed. An agency too new to have long-standing clients can say so, and a short paid pilot then does the job a reference would have done.

How can you verify an agency’s claims yourself?

Use first-party data that no agency controls: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, your analytics and your server logs. Five checks cover most claims, and none needs specialist software.

Check Google’s own AI reporting

Search Console includes a generative AI performance report that shows how often your pages were displayed in AI Overviews and AI Mode, with breakdowns for page, country and device. A claim about visibility in Google’s AI features should be consistent with it. The Search generative AI control in the same account shows whether your site is included in those features at all.

Check Microsoft’s reporting

Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report for citations in Copilot and Bing, including the queries that grounded them. Microsoft describes its citation share figure as an observational metric and not a ranking system, which is a useful standard to hold agency dashboards to.

Check your analytics

Google Analytics lets you place AI assistants in their own custom channel group. If an agency reports traffic from assistants, the same sessions should be visible in your property.

Check your logs

AI vendors publish their crawler names and, in several cases, the IP ranges they use. OpenAI’s crawler page lists its user agents with IP range files, and Anthropic and Perplexity publish equivalents. A claim that crawlers now reach your site can be confirmed by your host from log lines carrying those user agents.

Re-run a sample of questions

Pick five questions from the agency’s report and ask them yourself. Expect variation, not identical wording. What you are checking is whether the report’s overall picture is recognizable.

One caution applies to every dashboard: Google states that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. A vendor score can be useful for watching a trend; it is not a reading from inside any platform. Our comparison of AI visibility tools explains what each class of tool observes.

How do you tell whether an AEO report is telling you anything?

Apply five checks that need no technical background. Is the question set the same as last month? Are the full answers attached? Do the Google and Bing figures match what you see in your own accounts? Is there a list of what was changed on the site? Is next month’s work named?

A report that passes all five can be discussed. One that offers a single score, a screenshot or a paragraph of adjectives cannot, however polished it looks. If you are unsure, ask the agency to walk you through one question from the report: the wording, the answer recorded, where your company appeared and what will be done about it.

What are the red flags when hiring an AEO agency?

Guaranteed citations, unexplained scores, claimed special access, mass-produced content and manufactured mentions. Each one is either impossible or carries a risk that lands on your domain and not on the agency’s.

The rules behind those rows are public. Google’s hiring guidance says no one can guarantee a top ranking. Its spam policies define scaled content abuse and hidden text. Its guide to generative AI features says llms.txt files are ignored by Google Search, and that seeking inauthentic mentions across the web is less helpful than it might seem. The FTC has a rule on fake and purchased reviews, 16 CFR Part 465, and it reaches agencies as well as advertisers. OpenAI’s crawler documentation lists a separate bot for ad landing pages, which is how you know that ads and organic answers are different products.

Signals that are not red flags

A small team. A refusal to guarantee outcomes. A statement that AEO is mostly good SEO plus measurement. A recommendation to begin with an audit. Use of third-party tracking tools, when the method is disclosed. Disclosed subcontracting. An agency that tells you your category is not ready. Each of these is candor, and candor is what you are trying to buy.

General agency warning signs

Pressure to sign quickly, vague answers about who does the work and contracts built to be hard to leave apply to any marketing supplier. They are covered in marketing agency red flags and are not repeated here.

One flag or several?

A single item from the table deserves a direct question, because some agencies repeat phrases they have read without having tested them. Two or more, defended after you ask, is a pattern.

What does it mean when an AEO agency says it has proprietary technology?

Usually that it has built or licensed a tool that sends questions to assistants and records the answers. That can be useful, but it is observation from the outside. Google’s own guidance says outside tools have no access to its internal ranking or AI systems, so treat any claim of inside data as a reason to ask more.

Questions for any proprietary platform:

• What exactly does it observe, and how often?
• Can we see the raw answers behind a score?
• Can we export everything if we leave?
• Does the fee change if we stop using the tool?

What should you make of a promise of AEO results in 30 days?

Separate what can move in 30 days from what cannot. Access fixes can take effect quickly: OpenAI says its search systems adjust within about a day of a robots.txt change. Being cited is different. Google says recrawling alone can take days to months, and answers vary from run to run, so a 30-day citation promise is a guess.

A fair 30-day commitment lists documents and fixes: a baseline, an audit, crawler access confirmed and the first specifications delivered. Trends in mentions and citations need several monthly runs before they mean anything. How long AEO takes gives the sequence.

Do badges, certifications or top-agency lists prove anything?

Very little on their own. Google says it does not evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools, and its hiring guidance warns against providers who allege a special relationship with it. If an agency shows a certification or partner badge, ask what the program actually covers. Lists of top agencies are editorial or commercial products.

Use lists to find names, then judge each name on its evidence. Advertising partner programs are a separate matter: a badge for managing ad accounts says nothing about earned visibility in answers. Awards can be checked by asking who gave them, in which year and on what criteria. None of these replaces a redacted audit and a sample report.

What rules should you set for AI-written content?

Allow AI as a drafting and research aid, and require a named person to check facts and approve every page. Google’s guidance accepts generative AI content that adds value and treats pages mass-produced to manipulate rankings as scaled content abuse. Put the rule in the contract, so volume cannot be substituted for quality later.

Four rules cover most cases; AEO content writing explains the editing side:

• Every published page has a human approver on your side.
• Facts, prices and claims are checked against your own records.
• No page is created only to match a variation of a question.
• The agency states which tools it uses.

A scoring table you can reuse

Score every candidate on the same six criteria, each rated 0 to 5 and multiplied by a weight, for a total out of 100. The weights below are a starting point; change them to match what matters in your situation before you read any proposal.

1. Adjust the weights so they total 100 and reflect your priorities.
2. Score each criterion from 0 to 5 using the descriptions, from the written evidence only.
3. Divide each score by 5 and multiply by the weight.
4. Add the six results for a total out of 100.
5. Have two people score independently, then compare and discuss the gaps.
6. Record the reason for every score below 3.

The three proposals are invented to show the arithmetic. Notice that Proposal B has the strongest team score and the weakest total, and that Proposal A leads on ownership terms while C leads on measurement. A scorecard does not make the decision. It shows where two finalists differ, so the last conversation can be about those differences, including whether C will match A’s contract terms.

Why measurement carries the most weight

Every later claim about progress depends on it. An agency with a sound method and average execution can be managed; an agency with no method cannot be evaluated at all.

When to change the weights

Raise technical capability if your site relies on scripts to show content or you have no developer. Raise team and fit in a regulated market. Raise commercial terms if you have been tied into a contract before.

Set a floor as well as a total

Decide in advance that any candidate scoring 0 or 1 on measurement or on ownership is out, whatever its total. A high score elsewhere does not compensate.

Keep the scorecard

Re-score the agency you hire after six months, using its actual reports. The table that chose the supplier is a fair basis for the review.

How do you compare AEO proposals and prices?

Normalize scope before you look at totals. Published US retainers run from $1,500 to $20,000 a month and a one-off audit from $1,000 to $4,000, and most of the spread is explained by seven countable things.

The published bands are set out on our AEO pricing page: small-business retainers of $1,500 to $5,000 a month, mid-market $5,000 to $10,000, enterprise $10,000 to $20,000 or more, strategy development $1,500 to $6,000 and full implementation projects $25,000 to $100,000. They are planning ranges, not quotes; a real figure follows a written scope. A proposal far outside them is not wrong, but it should be able to say which of the items above explains the difference.

Why the cheapest quote needs a second look

Low totals usually reflect narrow scope, not efficiency. Check what is excluded before treating a quote as better value.

Retainer, project or audit

An audit is a bounded first purchase that tests the working relationship. A retainer suits ongoing measurement and iterative fixes. A project suits a defined rebuild. Retainer versus project compares the structures in general terms.

Pricing models to question

Fees tied to a number of citations or to a visibility score reward the agency for moving a figure it also measures. If performance pay is proposed, tie it to deliverables shipped on time.

What do you do when two AEO proposals recommend opposite things?

Ask each agency for the evidence behind its recommendation. Opposite advice usually comes from different diagnoses: one agency tested how your pages render and the other did not, or they tracked different questions. The proposal that can show log extracts, a rendering test and recorded answers is the one grounded in your site.

If both have evidence and still disagree, the disagreement is useful. Put the two findings side by side, ask your developer which matches what they see, and consider paying for one short diagnostic to settle it. A week spent resolving the diagnosis costs less than a quarter spent on the wrong work.

What can an AEO agency do on a limited budget?

Quite a lot, if the money buys diagnosis before activity. Published ranges put a one-off audit at $1,000 to $4,000 and strategy development at $1,500 to $6,000. Either gives you a baseline, a prioritized fix list and a plan your own team can carry out, which is a sensible first year for a smaller company.

Ways to stretch a small budget, with the bands explained on our AEO pricing page:

• Buy the audit, ship the fixes in-house and re-run the baseline each quarter.
• Limit tracking to your main market and a short list of questions.
• Restructure the few pages that carry most inquiries before touching the rest.
• Ask which free checks you can run yourself between engagements.

What should an AEO retainer include each month?

A re-run of the agreed questions with every answer stored, first-party figures from Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and analytics, a list of what was changed on the site, corrections to inaccurate facts found in answers, and a named plan for the following month. Anything described only as ongoing optimization should be itemized before you sign.

Ask what is not included as well. Development time to release fixes, new content beyond restructuring, outreach for third-party coverage and tool subscriptions are often separate lines. A retainer that lists hours without outputs is hard to hold to account; one that lists outputs lets you check each month whether you received them.

Which contract terms should you check before signing?

Ownership of the question set and saved answers, the measurement method, access levels, content rights, AI tool use, subcontracting, and what happens at exit. General agency clauses matter too, but these are the ones peculiar to AEO.

Two of these rest on points people often assume. Content written by an outside agency is not automatically yours: the US Copyright Office’s Circular 30 explains that a commissioned work counts as a work made for hire only in limited categories and only under a signed written agreement, so the contract should assign the rights. And access should start narrow: Google advises granting read access only to Search Console while a provider audits your site.

This section is general information, not legal advice, and contract law differs by state and country. The broader clauses, including notice, fees, data processing and indemnities, are covered in our guide to marketing agency contracts, and switching marketing agencies explains how to recover assets if you are replacing a provider.

The clause that is new with AEO

Ownership of the question set and the saved answers. Traditional search contracts never needed it, because positions could be looked up afterwards. Past answers from an assistant cannot be recovered, so whoever holds the archive holds your history.

Confidentiality when AI tools are involved

Ask which tools will process your documents and under what terms. Vendors publish them, and the terms for business products often differ from consumer ones. The contract should name the tools and let you exclude any of them.

Advertising rules do not pause for AI

If the engagement touches reviews, testimonials or endorsements, the FTC’s Endorsement Guides and its reviews rule apply to what is published, whichever channel it is meant to influence. Under the FTC Act, advertising must be truthful and advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims, and in healthcare, financial and legal markets your own regulator’s rules sit on top.

How long a contract should you sign with an AEO agency?

Long enough to see a trend and no longer than you can review. Citation patterns need several monthly runs before they can be read, so a term of around six months with a defined review point is reasonable. What matters more than the length is the notice period, stated in days, and whether renewal is automatic.

A shorter first commitment is possible when the engagement begins with an audit or a pilot. Be cautious of a twelve-month term with no review point, and of renewal clauses that require notice months ahead. Our guide to marketing agency contracts explains how term and notice interact.

What should an AEO statement of work include?

Named deliverables with dates, the measurement method, what is excluded, who does what on each side and how changes to scope are handled. For AEO it should also state the number of questions tracked, the assistants covered, how many times each question is run and where the saved answers are stored.

• Deliverables and due dates, month by month.
• Question count, assistants, markets and run frequency.
• Access required, and at which permission level.
• Your responsibilities: approvals, developer time, subject experts.
• Exclusions, named one by one.
• Reporting dates and format.
• How either side requests a change.

Should you ask an AEO agency for exclusivity in your category?

Ask about conflicts first, then decide whether exclusivity is worth paying for. An agency tracking the same buyer questions for two direct competitors has a divided interest, because only so many names fit in one answer. Disclosure of competing clients is a reasonable minimum; formal exclusivity usually carries a higher fee and needs a precise definition of competitor.

If you request it, define the competitor set by name or by market and limit it to the contract term. If the agency declines, ask how teams and question sets are kept apart between competing accounts. Either answer tells you how carefully it has thought about the problem.

What should you receive when an AEO agency contract ends?

Everything needed to continue without the agency: the current question set with its version history, every saved answer, all reports, the list of changes made to the site, any content drafts in progress and confirmation that the agency’s access has been removed. The handover list and its deadline belong in the contract, not in a goodwill email.

Check the exports before the final invoice is paid. Data held only inside a dashboard you are about to lose should be exported to plain files first. If you are moving to another provider, switching marketing agencies covers the order of operations.

Should you run a paid pilot before a retainer?

Usually yes. A fixed-fee audit or a pilot of six to eight weeks shows how an agency works on your actual site, and it produces a baseline you keep whichever provider you choose.

Define the pilot by what will be delivered, since citations cannot be promised on any schedule. A sensible pilot includes a dated baseline on your buyer questions, a crawler access and rendering review, fix specifications, two or three restructured pages and one report in the format you would receive monthly.

• The fee, fixed, and what it covers.
• The documents you will receive, and their dates.
• That the question set and all saved answers are yours.
• The access you will grant, and when it will be removed.
• How the fee is treated if you continue to a retainer.
• What you will do with the findings if you do not continue.

What to judge at the end

Were the findings specific to your site? Could your developer act on the specifications? Did the report tell you something you could verify in your own data? Did the agency say anything inconvenient? Outcomes in assistants are not the test after a few weeks; working method is.

An audit as the smallest pilot

A one-off audit at $1,000 to $4,000 is the cheapest structured test. Our AEO audit checklist shows what one should contain, and the first checks can be run free before you pay anyone.

If two finalists are close

Commission the same small audit from both. The cost is modest next to a year’s retainer, and comparing two audits of the same site is the most direct evidence available.

What success criteria should an AEO pilot have?

Criteria you can verify without the agency’s help, agreed before work starts. Good pilot criteria describe documents and fixes: a baseline delivered by a set date, crawler access confirmed in your logs, specifications your developer accepts as workable, and a report that matches your own Search Console data. Citation counts make a poor pilot criterion because they vary.

Write each criterion so the answer is yes or no:

• Was the baseline delivered on the agreed date, with full answers?
• Did the audit name specific templates and URLs?
• Could the developer implement the specifications without rewriting them?
• Did the report reconcile with first-party data?
• Did the agency say what it could not determine?

A four-week selection timeline

Week one for the brief and long list, week two for evidence, week three for scoring and references, week four for the contract. Faster is possible; slower usually means the brief was not agreed internally.

Week 1: brief and long list

Agree the one-page brief internally, run the free baseline checks, list six to eight candidates and send each the brief with the question list and the evidence request.

Week 2: evidence and first calls

Read the written answers before each call. Use the call for what the documents left unclear, and to meet the people who would do the work.

Week 3: scoring and references

Two people score independently. Phone references for the top two or three. Ask finalists about any criterion where they scored below 3.

Week 4: contract and start

Compare terms against the contract table, negotiate ownership and exit, agree the question set version and the first reporting date, and grant read access.

Our AEO agency page describes a compressed one-week version for buyers who already have a short list; the four-week version here adds the brief, the references and the contract review.

What should the first 90 days look like after you sign?

Access granted, a dated baseline, a list of fixes with owners, the first changes released and three monthly reports. Citations may not have moved yet, and that alone is not a sign of failure.

The first reliable reading of citation trends usually needs several monthly runs. How long AEO takes sets out the sequence. What should worry you at 90 days is missing documents, an unversioned question set, or reports you cannot reconcile with your own data.

Name an internal owner

Someone on your side should hold the question set, receive the exports and attend the monthly review. An engagement with no internal owner drifts, whoever the supplier is.

Keep search and AI reporting apart

If the same agency runs SEO, ask for positions and AI answer results in separate sections. Combined scores make it impossible to see which one moved.

What should you do if the AEO agency you hired is not delivering?

Check documents before outcomes. If baselines, reports and specifications are arriving on time and fixes are waiting on your side, the agency is not the bottleneck. If documents are late, the question set keeps changing or reports cannot be matched to your own data, raise it in writing, set a correction date and re-score the agency on the original scorecard.

Give one clear period to put things right, then use the notice clause. Before giving notice, export the question set, the saved answers and the reports, and confirm that you hold admin rights on every account. The handover section above lists what else to collect.

Choosing for a regulated or specialist market

Add one criterion: how the agency handles claims. In healthcare, financial services and law, what a page may say is constrained by regulators, and restructuring content for AI answers does not loosen those constraints.

• Ask who reviews rewritten claims and how changes are logged.
• Ask for experience with your regulator’s advertising rules, described specifically.
• Confirm the agency will not write reviews, solicit them by sentiment or suppress negative ones.
• Confirm that every factual or numerical claim will carry its supporting evidence on file.
• Ask how inaccurate statements about you in AI answers are traced and corrected.

An agency should restructure and document what your compliance team has approved, and nothing in this guide is legal, medical or financial advice. Sector pages such as AEO for law firms and the wider AEO by industry index describe the specifics.

Firms chosen on expertise

Law, accounting, medical and consulting practices are chosen for the people in them, so ask how the agency would make it clear who wrote and reviewed each page. Google’s guidance on helpful content asks the same of any page: whether it is evident to a visitor who created it.

What should a B2B company look for in an AEO agency?

Experience with long buying cycles and with the comparison questions buying committees put to assistants: which vendors to shortlist, how two options differ, what a category costs. A B2B scope should track those questions by segment, involve your sales team in writing them and report on the quality of inquiries, not only on mentions.

• Ask how the agency treats gated material, which a crawler cannot reach behind a form.
• Ask how product names, integrations and specifications are kept consistent everywhere they appear.
• Ask how results will be connected to pipeline in your CRM.

AEO for B2B companies covers the fit in more depth.

What should a SaaS company look for in an AEO agency?

Fluency with the way software buyers ask: alternatives to a named product, head-to-head comparisons, pricing and integration questions. The agency should check whether your marketing site, documentation and pricing page return their content without scripts, and should treat review sites and your own docs as sources assistants draw on.

Ask to see a sample question set built for a software category, and ask how the agency would handle a pricing page that hides numbers behind a sales call. A scope for a software company usually touches product, documentation and marketing teams, so confirm who on your side approves changes in each. AEO for SaaS goes further.

What should an ecommerce brand look for in an AEO agency?

An agency that works at template level and understands product data. For a store, the work is mostly category and product templates, structured data that matches the visible page, and accurate feeds. Google notes that Merchant Center and Business Profile information can help products appear in its AI responses, so feed quality belongs in the scope.

• Ask how many templates the agency would change, not how many pages.
• Ask how price, availability and specifications are kept consistent between page, markup and feed.
• Ask for its written position on reviews; fake reviews and reviews bought on condition of sentiment are prohibited by FTC rule.

AEO for ecommerce describes the work for stores.

What should a local or multi-location business ask an AEO agency?

Ask first whether you need AEO yet. Google says accurate Business Profile information helps a business appear in its AI responses, so an agency should begin with your profile, consistent name, address and phone details, and review practices before proposing anything larger. A multi-location business should also ask for measurement by city.

A provider that recommends listings work over a retainer is showing judgment, not a lack of ambition. For several locations, ask how location pages are kept distinct and how the question set changes from one city to the next. Local AEO explains when the larger scope starts to pay.

How do you choose an AEO agency for more than one country or language?

Choose one that measures each market separately. Answers can differ by country and language, so a single English question set tells you little about Germany or Mexico. Ask for a question set written by a native speaker for each market, results stored per market, and a plan for which markets come first.

• Ask who writes and reviews the non-English questions.
• Ask how the agency tests from the right location.
• Ask how facts that differ by country, such as prices and availability, are kept consistent on each local site.
• Ask for the cost of each additional market, since measurement grows with every one.

Our international SEO page covers the search side of the same problem.

Related services and guides

The search equivalent of this guide, the pages it deliberately does not repeat, and the AEO references a buyer usually reads alongside it.

• How to choose an SEO company
• Answer engine optimization agency
• AEO agency: the vetting questions and proposal contents
• AEO experts: the six skills
• Marketing agency red flags
• How to choose a digital marketing agency
• Marketing agency contracts
• Switching marketing agencies
• AEO services: what you receive
• AEO pricing
• AEO audit checklist
• AEO vs SEO: which work is shared
• AEO tools: what each class observes
• What is AEO? The definition
• The pros and cons of AEO
• How long AEO takes to show
• Twelve AEO myths, assessed
• Local AEO for single-location businesses
• Enterprise AEO and governance
• White label AEO for agencies
• Generative engine optimization agency
• AI SEO agency
• LLM SEO

Frequently asked questions