Choosing an AI Search Agency: What to Check Before You Commit

Ask what happens after you sign

An AI-search agency may offer to help your business appear in answers on Google, ChatGPT or other services. Before committing, ask it to describe the work behind that promise. Which customers are you trying to reach? What needs changing? Who will make those changes, and what evidence will you use to decide whether to continue?

A twelve-month proposal needs an answer to those questions just as much as a short trial does. The term can make sense for a substantial programme of work. Its length alone tells you little about the quality of that work.

Imagine a fictional proposal with a polished dashboard showing how often a company appears in AI answers. It looks encouraging. But the proposal does not say who will update the website, which enquiries matter or whether the dashboard includes people already searching for the company's name. Those gaps need resolving before the dashboard can support a buying decision.

Start with the customers and the work

Ask the agency to name the platforms, countries and languages it proposes to cover, and explain why they matter to your customers. A Google-only engagement and a proposal covering several answer services have different scopes. The labels SEO, AEO and GEO do not settle what you are buying.

Request an initial assessment tied to your website and business. It should identify the problem, the evidence for it, the proposed changes and the important unknowns. A generic list of AI-search tasks gives you little basis for choosing priorities.

Google's current generative-search guidance connects its AI features to Search fundamentals. Ask a supplier proposing Google work to explain its recommendations against that guidance. Rules and reporting for Google do not establish how another answer service works.

Then separate advice from implementation. If the agency recommends clearer service pages, does its fee include research, writing and publishing them? Who checks their accuracy? If a website change needs your developer, when can that person do it, and is their time included in the price?

Ask what the agency actually contributed

A relevant example should explain the client's starting point, the work the agency performed, the period measured and the result being claimed. Ask which parts other people handled. A before-and-after chart can show a change without proving that the agency caused all of it.

Where permission allows, speak to a reference whose business, market or problem resembles yours. Ask whether recommendations were understandable, changes were delivered and reports helped them make decisions. A logo on a proposal cannot answer those questions.

Google's hiring guidance recommends checking references and asking for explained recommendations and realistic expectations. It also recommends read-only Search Console access for an initial audit. Arrange later implementation permissions separately, with named approvers and a record of changes.

Make the report answer a business question

In the fictional proposal, the next step is to ask the agency to explain each number. Does an appearance concern your business or another company with a similar name? Did the person already ask for your brand, or did the answer introduce it while responding to a broader customer question? Keep branded and nonbranded checks separate, and inspect examples for mistaken identity.

Use four distinct ideas when discussing results:

• Mentions and citations: your business is named, or a source is referenced, in an answer. Establish what the tool counts and inspect the underlying answer.
• Impressions: links or content were displayed under the reporting platform's counting rules. This does not tell you that someone visited your website.
• Referrals: people arrived at your website from a recorded source. Establish what your analytics can identify and what remains unattributed.
• Conversions: visitors completed an agreed action, such as a relevant enquiry or purchase. Decide how you will assess its quality, rather than treating every form submission as an equally useful lead.

Google now has a dedicated Generative AI performance report for Search impressions, with dimensions including page, country, date and device. That is useful platform evidence, with its own limitations. It does not measure every answer service or demonstrate enquiries by itself.

Agree a starting point before changes begin, then use comparable reporting periods and explain changes in the method. Ask for access to the underlying reports and usable exports, including the prompt sample where one is used. You should be able to follow the reasoning from the source data to the agency's recommendation.

The report should connect completed work, observed changes and the next decision. If impressions rise while relevant visits and enquiries remain unchanged, discuss what that tells you and what to investigate next. A proprietary visibility score can be one observation. Give it a defined meaning before using it to justify another year's spending.

Read the continuing commitment as carefully as the first deliverable

Ask why the proposed term suits the work. What happens first? Which later tasks depend on the initial findings or your approvals? When will you review completed work, reporting quality and the remaining plan?

Agree the fee, any setup charge, third-party tools or publishing costs, and how additional requests are priced. Establish whether recommended development or content production is included. A monthly figure is hard to compare until those boundaries are clear.

Also settle account access and handover. Which accounts will your business control? Can your team retain agreed content, reports, settings and change history? What is available only through the agency's tools, and what would replacing those tools cost? Specify the notice dates, renewal process, exit charges and handover work in the actual agreement.

The UK government's guidance on cloud-provider dependence offers a useful comparison: dependence can bring benefits as well as switching costs. It addresses public-sector cloud buying, rather than your agency contract. The useful question here is whether you understand the dependence you are accepting and the work involved in leaving.

Leave the meeting with an answer you can compare

Turn the proposal into a short written discussion record. For each proposed piece of work, record the platform and customer need, the deliverable and exclusions, who does and approves it, the expected evidence, the milestone and dependencies, and the access your business receives. Add the fees, review points and unanswered renewal or exit questions.

For our fictional proposal, that might mean agreeing that the agency researches and drafts service-page improvements, your subject expert approves them, and a named developer publishes the approved changes. The report then shows what was delivered, the agreed prompt observations and platform data, and separately the relevant visits and enquiries you can measure. The unresolved costs and handover terms stay visible until both sides settle them.

Compare agencies against that same scope. Continue when the work, evidence and responsibilities justify the commitment. Ask for a revised proposal when important parts remain vague. Decline when the supplier cannot explain a material claim or the arrangement does not fit your business. A shorter trial is useful only if it answers a real uncertainty and has a clear review.

We offer SEO/GEO and website services. If you want to discuss the work your site needs, contact us. Scope, implementation responsibilities and commercial terms are agreed for the particular engagement.

Questions before you sign