We asked AI to recommend a GEO agency. Here is what it said.

Before we build anything for a client, we map their market the way a buyer now meets it: by asking an AI assistant. In October 2026 we ran that map on our own category, GEO (generative engine optimization), the work of getting a business named in AI answers. You will also hear it called AI SEO, AEO or AI visibility.

We asked Claude and Perplexity the 20 questions a US buyer would ask: who is the best GEO agency, which ones B2B SaaS teams use, how much it costs, what the red flags are, whether you can do it yourself. That gave us 40 answers to read.

Who the answers named

A short list of agencies came up again and again. Here is how many of the 40 answers named each one.

When the question was about tools rather than agencies, the answers named Semrush, Ahrefs, Profound, Otterly and Peec. Nobody owns the category yet. Even the most-named agency appeared in only a quarter of the answers.

40 answers is a small sample, so read these as a direction, not a ranking. ChatGPT and Google AI Mode were not in this run; we will add them.

The answers warned against the lists themselves

The most interesting part was not the names. Both assistants pointed out, unprompted, that most "best GEO agency" lists online are written by agencies that rank themselves first. In other words, the AI knows the usual trick and tells the buyer about it.

So a self-ranked listicle is not a shortcut into the answer. What the answers leaned on instead were things a buyer can check: named clients, published results, independent reviews and what other sites say about you.

People stopped asking what GEO is. They started asking who does it.

Search data tells the same story from the other side. Average monthly US Google searches, compared with a year earlier:

Searches for the term itself peaked in late summer 2025 and are falling. Searches for someone to hire are up two to five times. The learning phase is over and buyers are shopping.

Search volumes from DataForSEO (Google Ads data, United States), pulled October 2026.

What the most-named agencies have in common

We read the sites of three of the most-named agencies: iPullRank, First Page Sage and Omniscient Digital. Three patterns stood out.

• They publish a lot. Omniscient Digital has more than 700 blog posts. First Page Sage has about 30 "vs" pages, the kind written to answer "X or Y?" questions.
• They sell SEO and GEO together. None of the three pitches GEO on its own.
• None of them shows a price. Not one links to pricing from its home page. Buyers are left to ask the AI what it costs, and the AI answers with ranges from other sources.

What this means for your business

This was a map of our own industry, but the lesson carries to any category. If you want AI assistants to recommend you:

1. Ask the questions your buyers ask. Type them into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google. See who gets named, and how you are described if you are.
2. Give the answer something to check. Named clients, real results and reviews on sites you don't own count for more than praise on your own page.
3. Say one clear thing everywhere. If your site, your listings and the articles that mention you describe you differently, an assistant can't confirm who you are.
4. Answer the buying questions in public. What it costs, how long it takes, when you are the wrong fit. If you don't answer, the AI will answer for you using someone else's page.

We do this work for clients, built on design, content marketing, digital marketing and AI. See how we approach AI search.