A GEO agency is the company hired to get a brand found and cited in AI answers, and the choice comes down to the proposal: named deliverables, dated measurement and no promise of guaranteed citations. Busca Orgânica sells GEO together with SEO and AEO, in a single project carried out by our team.
Anyone looking for a GEO agency has already decided the brand needs to appear in AI answers and now faces another problem: comparing proposals that use the same acronyms and promise similar things. The term gets 90 searches per month (DataForSEO, Oct/2026), and the top positions are held by vendors selling the service, which leaves little neutral information for buyers. This page is the buying guide: what to ask for in the proposal, which promises to reject and what a project delivers when Busca Orgânica carries it out.
What does a GEO agency do?
A GEO agency is the company hired to take over a brand's presence in AI-generated answers: measure who is cited today, change the site and work on external sources until the brand has reasons to make that list. The acronym comes from a 2023 academic paper that tested how text changes affect visibility in generated answers, Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv). It became a service category after that, and there is no certification or body that says who is qualified to sell GEO. It is up to the buyer to separate method from talk.
We use the term because it is what buyers type. Busca Orgânica is a technology company with a proprietary methodology, headquartered in Guarulhos (SP), with more than 700 clients served since 2021 (Grupo Orion corporate materials, Sep/2026). In our case, GEO is engineering work on pages, data and mentions, not a communications campaign.
What is the difference between hiring a GEO agency and the other options?
Before comparing vendors, it is worth confirming that a full project is really what you need. The concept, without the sales pitch, is in the post what is GEO, and how the service works from the inside is on the GEO service page. If your concern is a specific assistant, the show up on ChatGPT page explains what OpenAI documents about its own crawlers. If the goal is still just Google, with your team doing the work, SEO consulting is the answer. Companies with in-house marketing, content and IT teams to carry out the AI work have GEO consulting, in which we advise and your team executes.
This page covers the case in which we do the work, from assessment to review.
How do you choose a GEO agency?
The proposal says more about the vendor than the sales pitch. Before signing, ask for written answers to the six points below:
- Which questions will be tested, in which assistants and how often. Without a list of questions, there is no way to know later whether anything changed.
- A sample citation report. A serious report includes the date, the assistant, the exact question, the linked sources and the brands cited, not just hand-picked screenshots.
- Who works on the site. Robots.txt, firewall, rendering and structured data require someone with technical access, whether the vendor or your developer.
- How GEO connects with SEO. Separate teams for Google and for AI tend to produce two versions of the same page.
- Where each number in the proposal comes from. Market statistics without a source are a sign of generic copy.
- What is left out of the contract. The answer needs to mention AI visibility, because no vendor controls what the model writes.
Promises that signal a misleading proposal
| Promise | Why it does not hold up | What to ask for instead |
|---|---|---|
| Guaranteed citation on ChatGPT | The answer changes with every conversation, depending on the model, the account and the sources available | A list of tested questions, with the date the brand appeared in each one. |
| Being the assistant's top recommendation | There is no fixed ranking inside generated text | A comparison with the competitors cited for the same questions. |
| Hundreds of AI-generated articles per month | Scaled content with no value of its own violates Google Search spam policies | A few pages that answer real questions, with the company's own data. |
| A technical file that solves everything | llms.txt and robots.txt allow reading, but give no reason to be cited | A plan that combines technical access, copy and external sources. |
A promise the vendor cannot keep is also a contract issue. Brazil's Consumer Protection Code (Law 8,078/1990) treats as misleading, in article 37, any advertising capable of leading buyers into error about what the service delivers.
How does a GEO project work in practice, phase by phase?
We do not sell GEO on its own: the same project covers SEO, GEO and AEO, because the page that ranks on Google is the natural candidate to be the AI source and the direct answer. The phases have a fixed order, but not a fixed schedule. A site without a page per service spends more time in the second phase; an already structured site reaches the third phase sooner.
- Assessment. A list of buyer questions tested in the assistants, a map of the sources they use in your topic and a check of crawler access to the site.
- Search foundation. Our proprietary search engine optimization methodology defines which pages the site needs before any AI-focused copy, and what is missing goes into the plan.
- Answer pages and proprietary data. Copy that opens with the answer, following the SEO for AI standard, with what only the company knows: lead times, standards met, sourced results.
- External sources. Mentions on portals and outlets the assistants already use, and directory listings with the same company data.
- Reviews. Retesting the question list, reviewing visits from AI in Google Analytics and adjusting the plan for the next cycle.
What the client receives in each phase:
| Phase | Deliverable | How the client verifies it |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment | Sheet of questions, assistants and sources | Reruns any question on the sheet and compares. |
| Search foundation | Page map and what changes on each page | Opens each URL on the map live. |
| Answer pages | Published or rewritten pages | Reads the first sentence of each page. |
| External sources | List of mentions and listings | Opens the link to each mention. |
| Reviews | Report with the retest and AI visits | Checks the dates and numbers in their own Google Analytics. |
Where does hiring a GEO agency make the most difference?
A full project pays off most in three situations. The first is a company with no team to work on the site, the copy and the server at the same time. The second is when buyers in the industry research suppliers with AI assistants before requesting a proposal. The third is a site that already has some SEO but was built piecemeal, with pages nobody has reviewed to answer questions.
It is not the right choice for those with a team willing to execute with guidance, in which case consulting costs less, nor for those who want ads inside an assistant, which is not a Busca Orgânica service. We also do not recommend it for anyone expecting to see the brand cited by a set date: no honest vendor sells that.
A concrete example: two proposals side by side
The table is illustrative, built for this page, and reproduces the kind of comparison we make with people who come to us holding another proposal.
| Item | Proposal A | Proposal B |
|---|---|---|
| Promise | "Your company recommended by ChatGPT" | A list of 40 questions tested in four assistants, retested at each review |
| First deliverable | A bundle of articles | A sheet showing who is cited today and which sources the assistants use |
| Site | No mention of robots.txt or rendering | A technical check of crawler access before any copy |
| Measurement | Screenshots of answers | AI visits in Google Analytics and a dated testing spreadsheet |
| Excluded from the contract | Not stated | AI citations and exact position, in writing |
Proposal B takes more work to put together, because it requires the assessment before the price. It is also the only one of the two in which the buyer can prove, six months later, whether the work was done. The numbers in proposal B are from the example, not a standard scope.
How much does a GEO agency cost?
The price of a serious GEO agency comes out of the assessment, because it depends on the size of the problem, not on a package. At Busca Orgânica, the proposal weighs:
- how many services, states and industries the company needs to cover with their own pages;
- the size of the question list and in how many assistants each question is retested;
- the technical state of the site and whether it was built by us or by another vendor;
- the external source work, such as mentions on industry portals;
- the SEO foundation that already exists and what needs to be redone.
In organic search, Busca Orgânica works with a performance guarantee written into the contract, with goals agreed at the start of the project. In this project, the contractual goal covers deliverables and organic metrics, while AI citations are tracked in the reports and fall outside the guarantee, as detailed on the SEO with a guarantee page.
If you are comparing vendors, talk to Busca Orgânica and get our proposal in the format of this page: named deliverables, dated measurement and, in writing, what is left out of the contract.
