The AEO and GEO agency that makes your pages the ones AI answers quote.
An AEO and GEO agency works to make your company the source an AI assistant names when a buyer asks about your category. We open the way for the crawlers behind ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, shape each page to answer its question in the first sentences, and check every month which engines cite you.
What does an AEO and GEO agency do?
An AEO and GEO agency makes a company’s pages the ones that answer engines lift from and generative engines cite. Answer engine optimization, or AEO, shapes a page to let an engine lift a direct answer and show it in place of a list of links. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, earns your brand a named place in answers that an AI model writes from several sources, and we explain where the two part ways in AEO or GEO.
Buyers now research in these tools. Forrester’s survey of nearly 18,000 business buyers found that 94 percent used AI during buying, and that they check its output against trusted sources such as peers, product experts and industry analysts1. 6sense’s 2025 report found that 94 percent of buyers ranked their shortlist before contacting any seller, and that 84 percent of them bought from the first vendor they spoke with2.
Neither survey measures whether an AI answer decides who reaches a shortlist, which makes that link our judgment. We still read the two findings together as a reason to be named where buyers are already researching, which today includes an assistant.
- Forrester, “The State Of Business Buying, 2026” (January 2026). Survey of nearly 18,000 global business buyers.
- 6sense, “B2B Buyers Are Even Less of a Blank Slate Than We Thought” (November 12, 2025), from its 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report.
- Google Search Central, “Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search” (last updated July 10, 2026).
- OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI Crawlers”.
- Perplexity, “Perplexity Crawlers”.
- A featured snippet
Lifts one passage from one page and shows it as the answer.Needs a passage that still makes sense when quoted alone
- A Google AI Overview or AI Mode answer
Runs several related searches and writes one response from the pages it finds.Needs an indexed page that is specific enough to be included
- A ChatGPT search answer
Surfaces sites through OpenAI’s search crawler and may link the pages it used.Needs OAI-SearchBot allowed in robots.txt
- A Perplexity answer
Surfaces and links sites through its own crawler when it answers a question.Needs PerplexityBot allowed in robots.txt
Why most AEO and GEO work fails to get cited
Three problems account for most of the misses, and a longer list of tactics does not repair any of them.
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It buys tricks instead of fixing the page
Google says generative AI search needs no special schema.org markup, no new AI text files such as llms.txt, and no content chopped into small pieces3. A plan built on those tricks spends its effort where Google says it does not look, while the page itself still opens with a vague paragraph.
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It blocks the crawlers it wants citations from
OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers4, and Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot for a site to appear in its results5. A robots.txt rule written to keep content out of model training can catch these crawlers too, because OpenAI treats its training crawler, GPTBot, as a separate switch4.
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It never checks the result
A generated answer changes from one run to the next, which means a ranking report cannot say whether you are cited. The check is to put the questions your buyers ask to several engines on a schedule and record which domains come back, which is slower than reading a dashboard and far more honest.
What an AEO and GEO engagement covers
Six pieces of work, and the mix depends on what the first round of questions shows. Each one can be taken on its own, and the technical base underneath is covered by our B2B SEO work.
- Let the right crawlers inWe review robots.txt, firewall and CDN rules to let Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot read the pages you want cited, and we leave the decision about training crawlers such as GPTBot to you.
- Write down the questions your buyers askWe build the list from your sales calls and closed deals, covering every role in the buying group, and that list becomes the set we write for and test against.
- Open each page with its answerA page begins with a complete answer in its first sentences and uses headings that match real questions, which gives an engine a passage that survives being quoted on its own.
- Give the engine something specific to nameFigures with a named source and year, quotations from credible people and links to primary documents hand a generative engine a claim to attribute, and they are what a careful reader wants as well.
- Make the facts about you agree everywhereWe align how your company is described across your site, your LinkedIn page and the review and directory profiles buyers read, because an engine that finds the same fact in several places has more reason to repeat it.
- Test the result by askingEvery month we put your question list to several engines, repeat each question more than once and record which domains come back, which shows whether the work is moving anything.
What your first quarter looks like
The shape is the same for most clients, and the detail depends on your site, your category and how many engines your buyers use.
- Month 1
Access and questions
We check crawler access and indexing, write the question list from your sales calls and run the first round across the engines. You receive a baseline that shows where you are named, who is named instead and which pages to rework first.
- Month 2
Rework and add proof
We rewrite the highest-priority pages to open with their answers, add sourced and dated figures and fix the places where the facts about your company disagree. Every change is documented with the reason for it.
- Month 3
Check and adjust
We repeat the question set, compare it with the baseline and read the sources the engines used. The second quarter follows what the first one showed, because engines change often and a single month of results can mislead.
What we will not do
Five commitments, because they mark the places where AEO and GEO work most often goes wrong.
- We will not promise a citationEngines decide what to cite on their own terms and change how they do it often, which means no agency can guarantee a mention. We commit to the work and to a monthly record of where you appear.
- We will not sell you a special file or markupGoogle says generative AI search requires neither3, and we add structured data only where it describes what is visible on the page.
- We will not publish unedited AI pagesAI helps with research and first drafts, and a person decides what is true and what goes out under your name.
- We will not game mentionsGoogle lists inauthentic mentions among the tactics to ignore3. We pursue the coverage and profiles that real sources would give you anyway.
- We will not hide the testThe question list, the engines and every result sit in a file you own, which lets you rerun the check without us.
Is this the right fit for you?
AEO and GEO earn their cost when your buyers research in an assistant, and when your category has questions with real answers. That describes most IT services and B2B tech firms, and many SMBs whose competitors already appear in the answers. A start-up with few pages usually starts with the pages a late-stage buyer needs. The work rests on a site that engines can crawl, and when the technical base is weak we begin there, and the content that fills the pages is covered by our B2B content marketing work. AEO and GEO sit inside our discoverability work alongside SEO, paid media and founder visibility, and you can take it on its own or alongside the rest.
Straight answers
What does an AEO and GEO agency do?
It makes a company’s pages easy for answer engines to lift from and generative engines to cite. That covers crawler access, a list of the questions your buyers ask, pages that open with their answers, sourced and dated claims, consistent facts about the company across the web, and a monthly check of which engines cite you.
Is AEO the same as GEO?
No, although they share most of their inputs. AEO aims to be the passage an engine lifts as a direct answer, while GEO aims to be a named source in an answer that an AI model writes from several pages. We run them as one service because the same page serves both, and we explain the difference in AEO or GEO.
How do you get cited by ChatGPT?
Access comes first, because OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. After that the page has to answer the question plainly and carry a claim specific enough to attribute. No agency controls the outcome, which is why we record the result every month.
Should we block GPTBot?
That decision is yours. OpenAI describes GPTBot as the crawler used for content that may train its foundation models, and disallowing it indicates your content should not be used for training. OAI-SearchBot is a separate crawler for search, which lets you disallow one and allow the other.
How do you measure whether AEO and GEO work?
We put a fixed list of buyer questions to several engines each month, repeat each one more than once because answers vary, and record which domains are cited and which pages they point to. The record shows movement over time, and it can show which of the two jobs is failing, which a ranking report cannot do.
Do we still need SEO?
Yes. Google says the technical requirements for its generative AI features are the same as for Search in general, which means a page that is not crawled and indexed has no chance of being lifted or cited. SEO is the base, and our B2B SEO work covers it.
Book a discovery call
Tell us what buyers in your category ask. On the discovery call we’ll look at your site, test a handful of those questions in the major engines and show you where to start.