Generative Engine Optimization Services: What They Include, What They Cost and the Red Flags

Generative engine optimization services should ship work you can open and check. GEO means getting AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google to name and link your business. The work covers answer pages, consistent business facts and outside sources that repeat those facts. Then someone measures the change in Search Console, GA4 and the AI answers themselves. On 28 September 2026, Reboot Online published GEO pricing from £2,500 monthly^[1] and Optimist from $3,000 monthly.^[2] Tracking tools started at $20 monthly.^[3] A dashboard on its own is reporting. I run Searchmaxxed and sell GEO, so weigh my judgement with that in mind.

What do generative engine optimization services include?

Generative engine optimization services cover four jobs. Two happen on your own site: answer pages and entity facts. The third happens on other people's sites: reviews, mentions, links and listings. The fourth is measurement.

Pages that answer buyer questions

Pages carry most of the on-site work. Google tells site owners to keep important content in text form and make it findable through internal links.^[4] It also says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use "query fan-out", running related searches across subtopics to build one response.^[4] A page that answers the main question and its obvious follow-ups gives that process more to work with.

At Radiant Roof Repairs, my rule was one engineered page per buying search. Shipped page work looks like this.

• New service, comparison, location and FAQ pages, each built around one buyer question.
• Rewrites that turn company-description pages into answers to the search.
• Schema, the code that labels page facts for machines, matching the words on the page.
• Internal links from related pages, so both people and crawlers find the new page.

We build that work on your Agentic Website. It lives on GitHub and Vercel, and you own it.

Entity facts

An entity is your business as engines understand it: its names, people, services and places. Entity work gives every engine the same facts about you. We map your names, founders, services, locations and proof into one master record. Then we align your own pages to it and correct the outside records we're able to edit.

Google asks for two related checks here. Structured data should match the visible text on the page.^[4] Business Profile and Merchant Center details should stay up to date.^[4] Say your site, your profile and a directory disagree on your service area. An engine can't confirm which one is right, so it may quote the directory instead of you.

Third-party sources

Your site is one source among many. Semrush's GEO guide says AI systems may give brand mentions more weight even when those mentions carry no link.^[7] It also says Reddit, YouTube and other user-generated platforms appear to have high exposure in generative engines.^[7] Siege Media's GEO scope includes digital PR, affiliate partnership outreach and a Reddit presence.^[8]

A tracking tool can't do off-site work. Our Off-Page Source Layer does it. The work covers reviews, citations, listings, editorial links, press and mentions on other sites. We log four states for each source separately: live, fetched by an engine, cited in an answer and naming you.

Measurement

Measurement closes the loop. Google counts AI Overview and AI Mode appearances inside the Search Console Performance report, under the Web search type.^[4] So your Google AI traffic sits inside your normal Search Console data. Google also says clicks from results pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, meaning people spend more time on the site.^[4]

For ChatGPT, Perplexity and the rest, providers track prompts and count mentions, citations and share of voice.^[7] Share of voice means how often you appear compared with competitors. iPullRank frames the check as a question: "Are we tracking citations, recommendations, mentions, and referrals?"^[9]

I want both halves. Prompt tracking shows where you appear, and Search Console and GA4 show whether it turned into enquiries. Our Managed Search Loop reads a 7-day view for awareness. It uses matched 28-day periods for monthly calls and matched 90-day periods for direction.

How do AI engines choose which sources to use?

Google and OpenAI each publish the conditions a page must meet before their AI features can use it. Meeting those conditions makes you eligible, which differs from being chosen.

What Google says

• To appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.^[4]
• AI Mode and AI Overviews may use different models, so the links they show vary.^[4]
• AI Overviews appear only when Google's systems judge them additive to classic Search, and they often don't trigger.^[4]
• Google's best practices include allowing crawling in robots.txt and in any CDN or hosting rules.^[4] Robots.txt is the file that tells crawlers what they may fetch. A CDN is the network that delivers your pages to visitors.

Google says specific optimisation isn't required for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and its existing SEO practices still apply.^[4] Site owners limit what appears through nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex.^[4] Google-Extended is a separate control for AI training and grounding in some of Google's other systems.^[4] Grounding means an AI system backs its answer with web pages.

What OpenAI says

• OAI-SearchBot surfaces websites in ChatGPT's search features.^[5]
• Sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won't show in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links.^[5]
• GPTBot crawls content that may train OpenAI's foundation models. OpenAI treats it as a separate setting from OAI-SearchBot.^[5]
• OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to reach its search systems.^[5]

What that means for your GEO provider

The first GEO job is plumbing. Someone has to confirm that Googlebot and OAI-SearchBot can reach your pages, including through your CDN. Our technical SEO work starts there.

Past eligibility, the public evidence gets thinner. Semrush's guide points to one study of 10,000 queries. Pages with quotes and statistics had 30% to 40% higher visibility in AI responses.^[7] Semrush also says AI tools often favour fresh content, and AI crawlers seem to have trouble with JavaScript.^[7] I treat those as signals to test on your pages, then keep or drop. For the ChatGPT side in depth, read our guide to earning ChatGPT citations.

What do GEO services cost in 2026?

On 28 September 2026, published GEO prices ran from £2,500 monthly for a managed agency service down to $20 monthly for an entry tracking tool.^[1][3]

Agency prices

Siege Media, iPullRank, Omnius, LSEO, Gravitate, FullFunnel, Minuttia and Geo Digital also sell GEO services.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]} Their GEO pages that I captured show no price.

Optimist shows a bare $ sign without naming a currency, so I copy its figures as published. Reboot Online says final costs depend on your goals, your brand's complexity and how much of its AI data team you need.^[1]

Tool prices

Frase and ZipTie state their prices in USD, and Peec AI prices in euros. The others show a bare $ sign, and I copy it as published. These are list prices from vendor pages on 28 September 2026, and they change.

What moves the price

Four things set a GEO bill.

• How many pages someone ships each month.
• How much off-site work sits in the scope, such as PR, reviews, links and listings.
• How many prompts, engines and countries you track. Scrunch Core covers one country, and Peec AI adds multi-country tracking on its Advanced plan.^[21][20]
• Whether the provider advises or builds. Optimist prices its advisory retainer for in-house teams below its full-service one.^[2]

Optimist lists "Schema, entity cleanup, FAQ and answer-first structure, a visibility tracker for a few hundred dollars a month" as work a capable in-house team can set up alone.^[2] The lasting cost of GEO sits in the work that keeps going: new pages, new sources and the call on what to build next.

How do you tell real GEO work from reporting?

Real GEO work leaves things you can open: new URLs, corrected records elsewhere, fresh reviews and mentions, and a measured before and after. Reporting leaves a chart. Five red flags tell them apart.

The monthly deliverable is a screenshot or a score

An AI answer can change from one day to the next, so a screenshot tells you little about next week. Optimist's own page says it: "The dashboard reports your score, not which gaps are worth money or what to fix first."^[2] Ask what changed on the site because of that score.

Nobody opens your robots.txt

If OAI-SearchBot can't reach you, ChatGPT search won't show you.^[5] Better content doesn't change that. Google lists CDN and hosting rules beside robots.txt, so the check has to cover both.^[4]

The schema says something the page doesn't

Google asks that structured data match the visible text on the page.^[4] Markup full of claims the copy never makes is a flag. Good schema restates facts a reader can already see.

Someone promises you a spot in AI answers by a date

Google says AI Overviews often don't trigger, and that AI Mode and AI Overviews show different links.^[4] No provider controls that, including us. We commit to the work and the measurement, and you see both.

The content reads like a machine wrote it for a machine

Semrush names the main GEO risk as optimising for AI at the expense of human readers.^[7] It adds that content overloaded with quotes, statistics or prompt-heavy formatting won't perform well long term without real value.^[7] The buyer still has to read the page and call you.

What should you ask a generative engine optimization agency?

Ask a generative engine optimization agency for evidence of shipped work, then for the plan behind it. These eight questions separate delivery from dashboards.

1. Which URLs did you ship for clients last month? A good answer comes with links you can open today.
2. Who approves each page before it goes live, and who deploys it? You want named people, and one team that owns both steps.
3. How do you check crawler access? Listen for robots.txt, CDN rules, Googlebot and OAI-SearchBot by name.
4. Where does our master fact record live? You want one owned record that your site and profiles match.
5. Which outside sources will you pursue first, and why those? A good answer names the review sites, directories, publications or communities your buyers use.
6. Which prompts will you track, on which engines, and how often? Peec AI runs each prompt once every 24 hours on each selected model.^[20]
7. How will you connect AI visibility to Search Console and GA4? Google already counts its AI features inside Search Console, so a good provider starts there.^[4]
8. What do we own if we leave? The site, the content, the data and the history should stay with you.

Do you need a GEO agency, a tool or your own team?

Pick by who builds. If your team already ships pages and earns coverage, a tool plus your own judgement may be enough. If you have writers and developers but no plan, an advisory retainer fits. Optimist prices that option for teams that execute in-house.^[2]

If nobody on your side ships, you need a provider that builds and publishes. A tracker alone won't close that gap. Semrush cites Aleyda Solís's point that tools showing where your brand appears aren't enough on their own.^[7]

How does Searchmaxxed deliver GEO?

Searchmaxxed delivers GEO as agentic SEO. We build AI agents that plug into your whole Search Console and GA4, then run every job through one weekly loop.

• The agents scrape your competitors' sites every week.
• They read the Google results for the searches that bring you customers.
• They check what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews say about you.
• That data feeds the Managed Search Loop. It checks the data against your plan and picks the next best job.
• We build the on-page assets on your Agentic Website: new pages, fixes, schema and internal links.
• We build the off-page assets through the Off-Page Source Layer: links, reviews, citations, press and mentions on other sites.
• A person approves every change before it goes live. Then the agents measure what it did, and the loop picks the next job.

You talk to the people doing the work, with no account managers. Our GEO service page covers the scope, and our AEO page covers answer engines.

The method comes from my own business. Before Searchmaxxed, I took Radiant Roof Repairs from zero to more than A$1 million a year in revenue. SEO was its only marketing channel. Three high-intent Gold Coast roofing searches reached number one within 90 days. I did that work by hand: the pages, the research, the competitor checks and the updates. Our agents now run those same steps every week. Read the Radiant Roof Repairs case study for the detail.

Radiant is an SEO result. GEO needs the same raw material: answer pages, consistent facts and outside sources. By my own count across our client book, our work has generated more than A$10 million in revenue through search.

Which Searchmaxxed package fits your GEO work?

AEO and GEO sit inside every Searchmaxxed managed package. The packages differ in how many pages we ship and how much off-page work we run through the Off-Page Source Layer. Our AI search optimisation page explains how AEO and GEO fit together.

• Local Search suits businesses serving their own area. It includes at least 8 page releases a month, daily Google Business Profile management and the review engine. It also adds local links, citation cleanup, local AI answer tracking and a monthly map of where you rank across your area.
• Growth System ships 30 page releases a month. It adds landing-page work on up to four existing pages a month, plus citations, profiles and reviews. You also get one qualified link action a month, Reddit engagement scaled to 10 mentions a month and AI visibility tracking.
• Agentic Search Engineering holds everything in the Growth System, plus 50 page releases a month. It adds new comparison, industry and integration page families, a monthly press release and continuous digital PR. It also runs qualified link campaigns and Reddit engagement scaled to 20 mentions a month. We track AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews.
• Custom & Enterprise scope can cover multiple markets, dedicated engineering, custom reporting and original first-party research.

Every managed package includes continuous audits, a 90-day plan in weekly releases and a person approving every public change. We connect and verify Search Console and GA4. You own the site, repository, content and data from day one.

Three entry products come first. The AI SEO Audit takes five business days and ranks every fix by what it's worth. We credit it to the build or first month when you start within 14 days. The Agentic Website Full Build goes live in 30 business days. The Agentic Migration keeps a design worth keeping and moves the site to a repository you own.

Terms run monthly, six-month or 12-month, and we agree the term on the call. You can compare scope on our pricing page. We quote each business after we look at its website, market and goals. Let's talk pricing.

Frequently asked questions

What are generative engine optimization services?

Generative engine optimization services are paid work to make AI answers name and link your business. Semrush defines GEO as optimising your presence and content to appear in responses from AI-powered search systems.^[7] Real services ship pages, entity facts and outside sources, then measure them. At Searchmaxxed, that work runs through the Managed Search Loop.

Is GEO different from SEO?

GEO overlaps heavily with SEO. Google says the same foundational SEO practices apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode.^[4] Semrush says splitting them into two separate strategies might not make sense.^[7] We run our SEO service and GEO through the same Managed Search Loop. For the wider picture, read what AI SEO is.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Timing depends on crawling and on each engine. Google says crawling can take anywhere from several days to several months, depending on how often it refreshes a page.^[4] OpenAI says a robots.txt change reaches its search systems in about 24 hours.^[5] Our Managed Search Loop judges work on matched 28-day periods each month and matched 90-day periods for direction.

Can a GEO agency promise I'll appear in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?

No provider can promise that. Google says AI Overviews often don't trigger, and its two AI features show different links.^[4] OpenAI also runs its own crawler and search systems for ChatGPT.^[5] We commit to shipping the work every week and measuring it, and you see both.

Do backlinks still matter for GEO?

Links still matter, alongside unlinked mentions. Google says its foundational SEO practices apply to its AI features.^[4] Semrush says AI systems may give brand mentions weight even without a link.^[7] Our Off-Page Source Layer works on both, plus reviews, citations and press. Our link building page covers the link side.

Should I block GPTBot?

Blocking GPTBot is a training decision, separate from search. OpenAI says each crawler setting is independent. You can disallow GPTBot for model training and still allow OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search.^[5] On Google's side, Google-Extended covers training and grounding in some of Google's other systems.^[4]

How do I measure traffic from AI search?

Start with Search Console and GA4. Google counts AI Overview and AI Mode traffic inside the Search Console Performance report, under the Web search type.^[4] Add prompt tracking for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, where tools report mentions and citations.^[7] Our agents bring both into the Managed Search Loop every week.

How much do GEO tools cost?

Entry plans on vendor pricing pages ran from $20 monthly at Rankscale to $295 monthly at AthenaHQ on 28 September 2026.^[3][6] Peec AI starts at €85 monthly, and Frase at US$49 month to month.^[20][18] A tool tracks answers. The pages and sources still need someone to build them.

Can small businesses benefit from GEO?

Yes, and a small business can start with its Google Business Profile. Google tells site owners to keep Business Profile information up to date for its AI features.^[4] Our Local Search package adds daily profile management, the review engine, citation cleanup and local AI answer tracking. See our local SEO page.

What do I own if I stop working with a GEO agency?

You should keep the site, content and data. With Searchmaxxed, you own the Agentic Website, its repository, the content and the data from day one. Our content strategy work lives in that same repository, so it stays with you.