The short answer
A generative engine optimization (GEO) agency gets your brand surfaced inside AI-generated answers — Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude — rather than chasing classic blue-link rankings. DoodleWeb is a GEO agency that runs SiteSonar to measure, query by query and engine by engine, which brands are getting cited and which are not.
GEO and AEO overlap heavily. The simplest way to think about the split: GEO focuses on generative answers wherever they appear (including Google's AI Overviews and Bing Copilot), while AEO is usually framed around chat-style answer engines. Most credible programs do both under one retainer.
What a GEO agency does that an SEO agency does not
The mechanics that move generative answers are not the mechanics that move a Google top-10 ranking. A GEO agency is built to optimize for the following:
- Entity clarity. The engines need to know what you are, who you serve, and which category to slot you in. Vague About copy and inconsistent third-party profiles cost you citations.
- Quotable structure. Generative engines extract sentence-level claims. Pages built as wall-of-text marketing copy do not quote cleanly. Pages built with clear claims, short paragraphs, and labeled lists do.
- Third-party citation density. Engines weight what other sites say about you almost as heavily as what your own site says. A GEO agency builds and maintains your footprint on directories, listicles, niche reviews, Reddit, and category-specific publications.
- Freshness on the surfaces engines actually re-crawl. Perplexity and Google AI Overviews re-pull web sources frequently. ChatGPT and Gemini lag. A GEO agency knows which surface needs which cadence.
If an agency's pitch deck is mostly schema markup and FAQ blocks, it is an SEO agency that added "GEO" to the title slide. Real GEO work is half off your own website.
How a GEO agency measures success
The honest answer: by running real buyer queries against each generative engine on a fixed cadence and tracking which engines name your brand, which name a competitor, and how that movement maps to the work shipped that week.
A GEO agency that cannot show you a per-engine, per-query baseline before you sign is not measuring. A "GEO score" with no engine breakdown is a vanity metric. The score you care about is: on the 30 queries that matter for your business, how many engine-query pairs name your brand today, and where does that number need to go.
What it costs
Most credible GEO retainers run between $4,000 and $15,000 per month. We published our actual GEO services pricing for 2026 and the bands held up across the agencies we benchmarked. The variance comes from three places: how many queries you want covered, how dense the competition is on those queries, and how much off-site citation work the program needs to ship.
Anything well under $4,000/month is monitoring software with a human checking the dashboard. Anything over $15,000/month is typically an enterprise SEO retainer with GEO bundled in — not a focused GEO program.
How GEO differs from AEO and SEO in one paragraph
SEO optimizes for a Google ranked list. AEO optimizes for being named in a chat-style answer (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude). GEO is the broader term and includes Google's AI Overviews and Bing Copilot alongside the chat engines. In practice, a single retainer covers both, because the underlying work — entity clarity, quotable structure, third-party citation density — moves the needle on every surface. If you want the foundational primer, our complete answer engine optimization guide for 2026 is the place to start.
What to ask a GEO agency on the first call
Five questions that separate real GEO work from rebranded content marketing:
- "Show me a baseline report for a current client, with names redacted." If they cannot produce one, they do not have a measurement system.
- "Which engines do you measure, and how often?" The answer should name at least four engines and a weekly or biweekly cadence.
- "What percentage of the work is on my site vs off my site?" If the honest answer is 90% on-site, the program will move slowly.
- "Who do you have on staff for off-site citation work?" Editorial outreach, Reddit-credible writers, and directory specialists are different skills than on-page SEO.
- "What is your definition of done at 90 days?" Vague answers mean no plan. Real answers name engines and queries.
Where DoodleWeb fits
We run GEO and AEO under one program, measured weekly with SiteSonar, with on-site rewrites and off-site citation work running in parallel. Pricing starts at $4,000/month for focused GEO, and we publish our actual numbers — no "contact us for pricing" wall. Reach the team at info@doodleweb.io with the queries that matter to your business and we will return a baseline before the first call.
FAQ
/What is a generative engine optimization agency?
A GEO agency optimizes a brand to be surfaced inside generative AI answers — Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude — rather than chasing classic blue-link rankings.
/How is GEO different from AEO?
GEO is the broader term and covers generative answers wherever they appear, including Google's AI Overviews. AEO is usually framed around chat-style answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude). Most credible programs run both under a single retainer.
/Is GEO different from SEO?
Yes. SEO targets ranked links on Google. GEO targets being named inside generative AI answers. The signals overlap but the surfaces, measurement, and tactics are different. A page can rank well on Google and still be missing from AI answers.
/How much does a GEO agency cost?
Most credible retainers run $4,000–$15,000 per month, scaled to query coverage, competitor density, and the amount of off-site citation work the program needs. Anything well below that range is monitoring software, not a service.
/How long does GEO take to show results?
Google AI Overviews and Perplexity often move within 30–45 days because they re-crawl web sources frequently. ChatGPT and Gemini lag and typically take 60–90 days on competitive queries.
/How does DoodleWeb measure GEO results?
With SiteSonar, our own tool that runs your real buyer queries against each generative engine on a weekly cadence and reports which engines cite you, which cite competitors, and why.
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