How to Evaluate an AI Search Agency

Not every AI search agency is the same. Some are really content or SEO agencies in disguise. Others don’t have the LLM knowledge to be the expert consultants your business needs. Still others don’t have the tools or team. Find out what’s right for you.

Whether you’re a CMO, a growth marketer, or an SEO specialist, you’ve come to the point where your organization needs to bring on an AI search agency to help your company gain visibility on LLMs. But how can you tell one agency apart from another?

In this post we’ll identify strategies for:

Understanding the core competencies of the AI search agency
Exploring the agency’s methodology when it comes to AI Search and AEO/GEO
Evaluating AI search expertise
Extracting pricing for AI search consultation and agencies

You don’t know what you don’t know. But you can come to the first agency meeting better prepared with the right questions and some idea of what the answers should be.

What should be the core competencies of an AI search agency?

They’re all telling you the same thing: they can get your business more noticed and more cited on LLMs. But how do you know if this is even the right agency to be helping your business?

Start with asking a few questions:

First, what kind of agency were they in 2021?
If they didn’t exist, that’s not necessarily a problem. Not only to agencies rise and fall, but also the space is nascent. LLMs didn’t exist 4 years ago, and it wasn’t until the last 12 months or so that any agency was really helping companies show up in AI search. Answer engine optimization (AEO), also known as generative engine optimization (GEO), wasn’t even a concept. (Fun fact, I was actually the person who created the “Generative Engine Optimization” Wikipedia page. And that wasn’t until 2025.)

But what kind of agency they were before will tell you a lot about how they operate now. If they were a content agency before, they’re probably going to take a very content-heavy approach. If they were an SEO agency, they’re probably going to tell you that AEO/GEO and AI Search are really just SEO in disguise. You get the idea.
Who are their clients?
Do they serve B2B, B2C, eCommerce, or other types of businesses? There’s no WRONG answer, but there is a wrong answer for you. An agency that focuses on B2C will have techniques that just don’t work for B2B, and vice versa. Make sure you align your needs with their core competencies.
How do they measure success in AI search visibility?
I wrote an earlier post on GEO KPIs that is maybe a primer for you. But what you really want to understand is how the AI search agency has helped other companies. Ask for case studies. Try to understand what they’ve done to lift their clients’ AI search presence. Get comparisons on before and after to really evaluate what your agency has done for others that they might do for you.

The agency’s focus areas when it comes to AI search

There’s so much an AI search agency needs to do and know how to do. I’ve covered some of it in past posts, ranging from how to create an llms.txt file to vector embeddings and AI SEO. I include these posts to illustrate that AI search is a deep practice area, that’s only getting more interesting and complex as the space evolves.

The point of this section, though, is to give you an idea of the kinds of focus areas an AI SEO agency should have in the first month or two of an engagement. While you can dive deeper into On Marketing’s AEO services, here are some of the core focus areas your AI SEO agency should prioritize right away:

Audience insights: A deep understanding of your target audience’s needs, behaviors, and preferences, gathered from data and research to guide strategy and content.
Prompt library: A curated collection of tested branded and non-branded prompts designed to target different buyer stages, used to track and optimize visibility in AI search as part of your AEO/GEO strategy.
AEO/GEO audit: An assessment that examines how your brand and content perform in AI search results by analyzing AI-triggered keywords, brand visibility, citations, sentiment, and traffic across generative platforms.
Sentiment analysis: Examining how a brand is mentioned in LLMs by assessing the tone (positive, negative, or neutral), context, frequency, and credibility of sources.
Competitive analysis: Identifying gaps in your visibility and content within LLM outputs, mapping or creating content to fill those gaps, and benchmarking your brand’s presence, strategies, and authority against competitors.

How do I evaluate AI search expertise?

AI search and generative engine optimization are very new fields, arguably less than a year old, and clearly in their infancy. No doubt some of the self-proclaimed “experts” in the field aren’t truly experts at anything beyond selling their services. And many of those services might just be repackaged SEO tactics that are a better fit for 2006 than 2026.

How do you know who knows their stuff? And, even if you do end up talking with an agency with deep competency in LLM marketing, how can you be sure your account manager and lead strategist will have a similar depth of knowledge?

The best way is to ask questions. Here are five to start out with:

Can you show recent examples of measurable results you’ve achieved in AI search visibility for other clients? AI search and AEO/GEO are still emerging fields. Real results show they’ve done more than just read about the topic.
How do you adapt traditional SEO tactics for AI-driven search engines and generative platforms? Similarly, if they can provide case studies, reports, or client wins specific to AI search, it shows they’ve actually executed campaigns, not just theorized.
What’s your process for building and maintaining prompt libraries to improve LLM rankings? The best agencies will explain how they tailor keyword research, content creation, and optimization to the unique ranking factors of LLMs.
How do you measure success in generative engine optimization beyond standard SEO metrics? This is important because SEO metrics don’t work in an AI world. There are no rankings. The tools are different. The KPIs are different. And even the answers an LLM gives change much more frequently than a SERP. So ask this to make sure you don’t just get an SEO-agency-wolf in GEO-sheep clothing.
Who on your team will directly manage my account, and what is their hands-on experience with AI search optimization? A strong process means they’re proactive, data-driven, and can target multiple buyer stages with precision.

What does an AI search agency cost?

Finally, there’s the issue of pricing. AI search agencies, just like many other agencies, don’t always like to represent their pricing transparently. Some don’t want to submit their costs on an hourly basis, instead preferring project pricing. Others will make you jump through an audit, NDAs, and may even want access to your internal systems before finally providing pricing.

Going into this process you should understand that costs for AEO/GEO and AI search services aren’t typically very different from other digital marketing agency services. What you would expect to pay an SEO agency, a copywriting agency, a web development team, demand generation, or a social media or PR agency is in the same ballpark as an AEO agency. The prices for AI search go up and down in the same market as other marketing agency services, and the teams that are good at AEO/GEO may be the same teams that were good at other marketing services just a few years ago.

The trusted AI search agency

Here’s our plug for On Marketing: we’re an AI-native agency, built from the ground up to provide GEO, AEO, and AI search services. Everything listed above for solutions and skillsets are core to our team. Please reach out and we’ll be happy to help you on your AI search journey.