Generative Engine Optimization Company: How to Compare Them on Evidence

What a generative engine optimization company sells

Generative engine optimization, usually shortened to GEO, is the work of getting your business named when an AI tool writes an answer instead of listing links. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI answers are all generative engines in this sense. A GEO company sells that work, sometimes as a service, sometimes as software plus a service.

The term is new, so the market is crowded and uneven. Some companies have spent a year measuring how assistants answer. Some added a page to an existing site last month. From the outside both look similar, with a clean website, a confident explanation and a list of packages.

This page is about comparing companies, so it skips the long explanation of the work. For that, see our walkthrough of what a GEO engagement includes. For how GEO relates to older terms, see SEO, GEO and AEO compared.

The comparison method below does not need technical knowledge. It needs patience and a willingness to ask for specific things. Companies that do the work well tend to enjoy being asked. Companies that do not tend to change the subject.

Rank every piece of proof by how much it can tell you

Every company will show you something to prove it works. Not all proof is equal, and most buyers treat it as if it were.

Logos and testimonials. They show the company has had clients. They say nothing about whether any client was named more often in assistant answers afterwards.

Rankings and traffic charts. These come from the old search world. A business can rank well and still be missing from assistant answers. A chart of rising traffic proves the company can do ordinary search work, which is fine, but is not what you asked about.

A single screenshot. It is a draw from a variable process. It might be typical or it might be the best of twenty tries.

A repeated measurement. The same questions run on a schedule, across assistants, with answers saved. This is real proof of a trend.

Before and after pairs on the same question. This is the strongest. The question, the answer before, the work done and the answer after, with dates. Ask for three.

When you compare companies, line up the proof each one offers against that list. The one that can show the bottom two kinds is ahead of the one that can only show the top three, whatever the price.

Ask to see the question set

Everything a GEO company measures depends on its list of questions. A good list covers the situations your buyers are in, in the words they use. A poor list reflects the company's marketing and flatters whoever built it.

Ask each company three things about its list. Who writes it? You should be involved, because you know how customers talk. How many questions does it hold? Twenty to fifty is a workable range for a small business. Too few makes the numbers swing wildly. Too many costs money to run and produces data nobody reads.

And is it fixed? If questions are added or removed every month, trends become meaningless. A company that cares about honest measurement adds new questions alongside the old ones and keeps the originals running unchanged.

There is a quick test of a company's seriousness. Ask for a sample list from an existing client in a similar field, with the name removed. If the questions read like real situations, such as "I have a tight budget and a small space, what should I buy," the company understands buyers. If they read like keywords with question marks, it does not.

Insist on a baseline before work starts

A baseline is the measurement taken before the company changes anything. It says where you stand today: which questions name you, which name competitors and what each assistant says about you.

Companies that skip it are usually protecting themselves. Without a baseline, every improvement can be credited to the work and every decline blamed on assistants changing. You cannot argue with that because you have nothing to argue with.

Look for a baseline that includes three items. The answer text itself, not just a yes or no. The list of competitors named, because it tells you who you are really up against. And the date and assistant for each run, so the record can be repeated.

Expect the baseline to look poor. For many businesses, the honest finding is that assistants rarely mention them yet. A company that is comfortable showing you that is one worth listening to. A company that promises a flattering baseline before running it is guessing.

If you want to take a rough baseline yourself before talking to anyone, our guide to the AI visibility checker explains a simple way to do it by hand. It takes an afternoon, and it gives you a point of comparison for every proposal.

Compare what each company measures

Two companies can both say they track visibility while measuring very different things. Ask each one these questions and write down the answers side by side.

Which assistants? Some track one. Some track five. Your buyers may use any of them, so a narrow view can miss where your customers actually look.

How many times is each question run? Because answers vary, a single run is a guess. Several runs per question turn a guess into a rate.

Do they separate being named from being cited? Being named means the assistant wrote your business into the reply. Being cited means it linked to your page as a source. Both matter. They are not the same, and a company that lumps them together loses useful detail. Our page on AI citation tracking explains the difference.

How do they handle a failed or blocked run? A report that shows zero for a week when the tool actually failed will read like a collapse. Good companies mark failures separately.

None of these questions requires a demo. A company that has thought about them will answer in a sentence each.

Read the work plan for balance

A GEO plan has usually four parts: measurement, technical access, content and presence in outside sources. A balanced plan has something in each. An unbalanced one tells you where the company is comfortable.

A plan heavy on measurement and light on content comes from a software company. That is fine if you can do the writing yourself. A plan heavy on content and silent on measurement comes from a content shop. You will get pages and no way to judge them. A plan that is entirely about your own site, with nothing about outside sources, has left out the part that often decides whether you are retrieved at all.

Look at the verbs. "Monitor" and "report" are about watching. "Publish", "rewrite" and "correct" are about changing things. The ratio matters. If you are paying to be watched, you will get a good picture of the problem and no fix.

Finally, check that the plan is tied to your questions. A good plan reads like "for these six questions where competitors are named and you are not, we will do these specific things." A weak plan reads like a generic list of activities that could be pasted into any proposal.

Compare price shape, not just price

Headline fees hide how a company's costs grow. Two proposals at the same monthly number can behave very differently once you add questions, assistants or competitors.

Ask what happens to the fee if you double the number of questions. Ask what happens if you add a second location or product line. Ask whether content is included, or measured separately. A software-style fee that covers measurement only is not comparable to a service fee that includes writing and publishing, and putting them in one table is misleading.

Ask also what you keep if you stop. The history of measurements is the valuable record. Some companies keep it behind a login that closes when the contract ends.

For a broader view of what drives cost across the whole field, see our guide to how much AI SEO costs. It explains why the same label can cover very different amounts of work.

Consider who the company usually serves

A GEO company that has only served national brands has built its process around big teams, big budgets and many stakeholders. A company that serves small local businesses has built around speed and limited time. Neither is better in the abstract. One is better for you.

Ask for the smallest and the largest client in the last year. Ask what a typical client in your field looks like. If you run a local service business, a company that mostly works with software firms will not know where your category gets discussed, and may not know which review sites or directories matter to you.

Industry focus counts for a lot here, because so much of this work happens off your own site. A company that already knows the review sites, forums and trade publications for your category starts with a head start. A company that has to learn them will spend your first months doing so.

If you are small, say so early and ask what the company would do differently for you. The answer reveals whether it has a real small-business process or just a smaller version of an enterprise one. Our page on AI search optimization for small business covers what is realistic at that scale.

How to read a case study without being fooled

Case studies are where most comparisons are won or lost, so read them with a few habits.

Check the starting point. A client who began at zero will show a huge percentage gain from a tiny absolute change. Ask for the actual numbers: how many questions, how many assistants, how often the client was named before and after.

Check the time frame. A gain measured over two weeks may be noise. A gain that holds over three months is more believable.

Check what else changed. If the client also launched a new product, ran a sale or earned a news story, the company may be claiming credit for something else. Ask directly what else was happening.

Check that the client is real and reachable. A company that cannot offer a reference, even a short email exchange, may be showing you a story that does not hold up.

Finally, ask for a case where the work did not move the numbers. Every honest company has one. How it explains the miss tells you more than any success story.

What a trustworthy report looks like

Ask each company for a sample monthly report and read it for honesty.

It should show the same questions as last month, with changes flagged and explained. It should split results by assistant. It should quote real sentences from real answers, including the unflattering ones. It should list what was done and what was not done, and name anything that did not move.

A report that is all good news is curated. In a field this variable, some questions will move up, some down and many will wobble. A report that shows only gains has probably dropped the rest.

Notice also what the report asks of you. A good one ends with a short list of decisions or inputs the company needs, so the work keeps moving. A weak one ends with a summary and a thank you.

How RunOctopus handles this

RunOctopus is a done-for-you service. Its AI, Ollie, researches your business, then writes and publishes pages directly on your own website. A team plans, writes, reviews and publishes alongside Ollie. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix.

You install nothing and approve nothing. Pages go live on their own. Week one brings 8 long-form articles, 6 pages and a custom interactive tool built for your niche, followed by 175+ pieces of content a month.

It reports on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your business. Its 90-day promise is more visibility on Google and in AI answers, measured against the 90 days before you joined, or every dollar back.

Sterman, a real estate business in Los Angeles, went from 44 to 210 Google clicks a month since April (Google Search Console, 28 days to September 29, 2026).

You can check how Ollie reads your site before comparing anyone: paste your address for the free site read. No account, no call.

A scorecard you can use today

Make a simple list with one row per company and five columns. A fixed question set shared with you. A baseline before work. Repeated runs across assistants. Before and after examples. A plan that includes outside sources. Mark each yes, partly or no.

You will probably find that no company scores five yes marks, and that is fine. What the scorecard does is make the differences visible, so you choose on evidence and not on whose sales page was smoother.