Is GEO different from SEO?

It is SEO with a different reader. The assistant retrieves pages, extracts the parts that answer the question, and cites a few. The technical work overlaps heavily with search: structure, entities, schema, crawlability. The new parts are writing for extraction, measuring citations rather than rankings, and the fact that the assistant may answer without sending a click.

How do you prove GEO results?

Count citations before and after, across a fixed set of buyer questions and a fixed set of assistants, and report the change with the method. The agencies on this site that do this well publish figures such as citations up from a stated number to a stated number over a stated period. A percentage with nothing under it is the sign of an agency that is not measuring.

What tools do GEO agencies use?

Mostly the SEO stack plus a citation monitor, which several agencies have built for themselves because the commercial options are young. llms.txt, FAQ and entity schema, and answer-shaped content structure recur in every credible method. Beware any tool that promises a ranking in an assistant; there is no ranking to be had, only a share of citations that moves.

The label may be. The behavior is not: buyers ask assistants for recommendations and the assistants cite sources. Whatever it is called in two years, the work of being one of those sources will still be bought. The risk is the measurement, which is unstable, and the vendor hype, which is loud.

Should you start a GEO agency?

Yes, if you already do SEO and can prove citation changes with numbers. GEO, or AI search optimization, is getting a client cited when ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity answers a buyer’s question. Demand is rising, tooling is thin, and almost everything written about it comes from someone selling it. That is an opening for an agency that can measure.

What the work actually is

An assistant answering “which vendor should I use for X” retrieves a set of pages, extracts the passages that answer the question, and cites a handful. GEO is the practice of being in that handful. In the methods published by agencies listed on this site, the same components recur:

Entity and structure work. The client is described consistently everywhere it appears, with Organization, Service and FAQ schema so the assistant can tell what it is.
Answer-shaped content. Pages built so that a paragraph can be lifted out and cited: the question in the heading, the answer in the first sentences, comparison pages with the criteria a model would weigh.
Access. An llms.txt file, robots rules that admit the assistants’ crawlers, and no content behind JavaScript that a crawler will not execute.
Measurement. A fixed panel of buyer questions run against a fixed set of assistants on a schedule, with the citations counted. This is the part that separates an agency from a landing page.

It is SEO with a different reader, and most of the technical work overlaps. The new discipline is the measurement.

Who buys it

Companies that already rank on Google and have noticed they are absent when a buyer asks an assistant. SaaS firms are the classic case. Professional services and contractors are following, because “which plumber should I call” is now a question people put to a phone. The buyer usually arrives having already searched for an “AI SEO agency,” which is the term that has the demand. Google Ads data for the year to September 2026 shows US searches for it up roughly four times, and the generic “GEO agency” term with a fraction of that volume.

The catch

Three things, and none of them is small.

Measurement is unstable. The same question asked twice can cite different sources. Assistants change their retrieval without notice. An agency that reports a single number without a method is reporting noise, and a client who was sold on a percentage will leave when it moves the other way. The defensible practice is a panel, a schedule and a stated method, and a client who was told that at the start.

The vendors are louder than the practitioners. Most of what ranks for GEO terms is published by companies selling GEO software or GEO services. That is an opening for an agency with checkable results, and it is also the noise your client has been reading.

The assistant may not send the click. A citation is a mention, and a mention that answers the buyer’s question may end the search there. Clients need to be told that the goal is to be the recommendation, and that the measurement is citations and assisted traffic, both of which their analytics may not yet show.

How to enter from SEO

If you run an SEO practice, you already have the crawl, the schema and the content operation. Add three things. A citation panel for each client, built before you sell anything, so the first proposal has a baseline. A content format for answer-shaped pages, with the question as the heading and the answer first. And a pricing model that charges for the audit up front, because the audit is where you find out whether the client is citable at all.

Price the audit as a fixed engagement and the ongoing work as a retainer. The agencies ranked here for AI SEO and GEO show what buyers currently see, including who publishes methods and who publishes adjectives.

The honest verdict

Start it if you can measure it. The demand is real, the entry cost for an existing SEO practice is low, and the field is young enough that a named client with a before-and-after citation count puts you ahead of most of the market. Skip it if your plan is a services page and a promise, because the buyer has read that page already, and this site will say so in your listing. Get listed once you have the first result in writing.