What Does a GEO Agency Do? AI Search Optimisation Explained

A GEO (generative engine optimisation) agency works to make your business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews to find, understand and trust, so they are more likely to mention you accurately when buyers ask. The work covers five areas: technical access for AI crawlers, consistent business facts, answer-ready pages, earned mentions on other websites, and regular measurement of what AI tools say. A good one will also tell you up front that nobody can guarantee an AI will recommend you.

What does a GEO agency actually do?

A GEO agency does five jobs, and most of them build on ordinary SEO. Here is what each looks like and what you should be able to see.

If a GEO proposal does not cover most of these, it is probably a content-writing package with a new label.

Why can't you just do SEO?

You can, and SEO does most of the work, but it leaves three gaps that AI answers expose. Google's own guidance, published in May 2026, says that optimising for its generative AI features is still SEO, and that is right for Google. A GEO agency adds what Google-only SEO tends to miss:

• Other engines. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude use their own crawlers. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Some sites block these crawlers by accident.
• Reputation beyond your site. An AI answer names a few businesses and summarises them. That summary draws on reviews, directories, articles and lists, not only your homepage.
• Accuracy. An AI can rank you and still describe you wrongly: old prices, a closed branch, a service you stopped offering. Fixing that is part of the job.

For the full comparison, see SEO vs GEO vs AEO.

What happens in the first 30 days?

The first month is an audit and a baseline, not results. A competent agency should cover:

1. Prompt baseline. Twenty to fifty questions your buyers really ask, such as "best furniture shop in Accra that delivers to Kumasi" or "which accounting firms in Tema handle VAT returns". Each one asked in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google, with every answer saved.
2. Crawler check. Which search and AI crawlers your robots.txt, hosting and security tools allow, and whether your important pages are indexed in Google and Bing.
3. Facts audit. Your name, address, phone, hours, services and description compared across your site, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and directories.
4. Content gaps. Which buyer questions have no clear answer anywhere on your site.
5. Mention gaps. Which sources the AI answers cite for your category, and whether you appear in any of them.
6. A prioritised plan. What gets fixed first and why.

You should come out of month one knowing exactly what AI tools say about you today. That baseline is what every later report is measured against. See what a marketing audit should include.

What does the work look like week to week?

After the audit, GEO is steady weekly work rather than a single project. A typical month looks like this:

• Week 1: fix technical issues found in the audit, publish or update the entity statement, correct business profiles.
• Week 2: rewrite or create two to four priority pages answer-first, with FAQs and structured data.
• Week 3: outreach for mentions: directory submissions, a pitch to a local publication, a request to a partner or supplier to list you, a push for customer reviews.
• Week 4: run the prompt set again, check AI referrals in analytics and Bing Webmaster Tools, report, and adjust next month's priorities.

Smaller clients may move at half that pace. That is fine as long as the work is visible and tied to the plan.

What deliverables should you expect?

You should be able to see and keep everything the agency produces. At minimum:

• A written audit with the prompt baseline and the screenshots or saved answers behind it.
• An entity statement and a business facts sheet you can reuse.
• A list of every page created or changed, with links.
• A robots.txt and crawler access summary, in plain English.
• A log of every mention, listing and review push, with dates and links.
• A monthly report showing the same prompts over time, who was named, whether the facts were right, and AI referral traffic.
• Access to your own Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools accounts, owned by you, not the agency.

On our own site we apply the same checklist: an llms.txt file, a robots.txt that names the search and AI crawlers it allows, Organization and BreadcrumbList structured data, a "Company facts" table on the about page, one entity statement reused word for word in our structured data and llms.txt files, and a public process page that explains how we work.

What can't a GEO agency do?

A GEO agency cannot control what an AI says, so it cannot promise mentions, rankings or a place in a specific answer. AI assistants change their models and sources often, give different answers to the same question on different days, and personalise some answers. Google states that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.

It also cannot make up for a weak business. If your reviews are poor, your prices are unclear or your service is hard to describe, an AI will reflect that. Sometimes the most valuable advice a GEO agency gives is about the business, not the website.

What are the red flags?

The biggest red flag is a guarantee. Others to watch for:

More warning signs that apply to any agency are in the real cost of a bad marketing agency.

How do you judge a GEO agency?

Judge a GEO agency on how clearly it explains its work and how honestly it reports, not on promises. Ask these questions before you pay:

1. "What do AI assistants say about my business today?" A serious agency will check before the first call or as the first deliverable.
2. "Which prompts will you track, and can I see the raw answers?" You want the actual questions and responses, not only a score.
3. "Which crawlers does my site allow right now?" They should be able to answer this from your robots.txt in minutes.
4. "What will you change in the first month, specifically?" Look for named pages, profiles and fixes.
5. "How do you earn mentions?" The answer should involve real publications, directories, partners and customers, not bought links.
6. "What happens if AI tools still don't mention us after six months?" An honest agency talks about what it can measure and what it will change, not refunds for things it never controlled.
7. "Who owns the accounts and content?" You should.

For general hiring questions, see questions to ask before hiring a marketing agency and our guide to choosing an SEO agency in Ghana.

How long before you see anything?

Expect visible fixes in the first month and changes in AI answers over several months. Technical and profile fixes can be done in days. AI tools that search the web live, such as ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google's AI features, can only use new pages once they have been crawled and indexed. What a model "knows" without searching changes only when it is retrained or updated, which you do not control. Honest timelines are in how long SEO takes.

Do you need an agency, or can you do it yourself?

Many small businesses can do the basics themselves: fix their Google Business Profile, make facts consistent, write answer-first service pages and ask customers for reviews. Our guide to getting your business recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini covers that.

An agency earns its fee when you lack the time, when your category is competitive, when AI tools describe you wrongly and you don't know why, or when you need mentions from sources you can't reach alone.

Common questions

Is a GEO agency the same as an SEO agency?

Overlapping, not identical. A good SEO agency already does much of the work. A GEO agency adds AI crawler access, entity and facts work across the web, and tracking what AI assistants actually say.

Can a GEO agency guarantee my business appears in ChatGPT?

No. No one controls what ChatGPT or any other AI writes. An agency can help make you a clear, credible option and show you, month by month, what the answers say.

How is GEO success measured?

By a fixed set of buyer questions asked in each AI assistant every month, AI referral traffic in your analytics, citation reports such as Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report and Google Search Console, and enquiries that mention AI tools.

Is GEO worth it for a small business in Ghana?

Often, yes. Many Ghanaian categories have thin information online, so a business with clear pages, consistent facts and a few credible mentions can stand out. Start with the basics before paying for more.

What should a GEO report include?

The prompts asked, the answers received, whether you were named and described correctly, which competitors and sources appeared, AI referral traffic, and what was done that month.

If you want an honest look at how AI assistants see your business, see our AI search optimisation service or book a free strategy call.