What should a GEO provider ask you first?
Google's advice on hiring an SEO says a good provider should be interested in your business and ask what makes it unique, who your competitors are and how your customers find you. The same test applies to AI visibility work. A provider who starts with a package before asking which questions your buyers put to assistants, which suburbs or regions you serve and which jobs you want more of has no basis for choosing prompts or pages. Expect them to ask who on your side will act on the findings, because an audit that nobody implements changes nothing.
Which questions should you ask a provider?
Google suggests asking an SEO for examples of previous work, whether they follow Google Search Essentials, what results they expect and in what timeframe, how they measure success, what experience they have in your industry and location, and whether they will share every change they make with the reasoning. Google's current version of that advice also asks whether they cite official Google documentation for their recommendations and whether any AEO or GEO advice they give is aligned with Google's official guidance. Add the following for assistants other than Google.
- Which assistants will you test, with which questions, and will I receive the raw answers?
- How do you handle answers that change between runs of the same question?
- Which official documentation supports each main recommendation?
- Which pages, settings and listings will you change, and who approves each change?
- What will you measure before work starts, and when will you measure it again?
Which claims are warning signs?
Google's hiring advice says nobody can promise a number one ranking on Google, and warns against providers who claim a special relationship with Google, advertise priority submission, are secretive about what they will do or talk about link schemes. Its generative AI guidance adds that no third-party tool has access to Google's internal ranking or AI systems, and that seeking inauthentic mentions across the web is less helpful than it might seem. Apply the same caution to claims about ChatGPT. OpenAI's documentation describes crawler access and no paid or priority route into its search answers.
- A promise that you will be cited, named or ranked first.
- A visibility score with no explanation of how it is calculated.
- Claims of partnerships or insider access to Google or OpenAI.
- Plans to post mentions or reviews under made-up identities.
- Requests for owner-level access to every account on the first day.
What access should you give at the start?
Google advises that if a provider offers an SEO audit, you grant read access to Search Console only and do not grant write access at that stage. Search Console has three main roles. An owner has full control, including adding users and configuring settings. A full user can view all data and take some actions. A restricted user has simple view rights on most data. Keep ownership within the business, so access can be removed when the engagement ends. For the website itself, create a separate login for the provider rather than sharing an existing password.
How should results be reported?
Ask for a baseline before any change: the questions tested, the assistants used, the dates and the raw answers with their cited links. Later reports should rerun the same questions under the same conditions and keep each measure in its own column. Search Console's Generative AI report counts impressions, Bing Webmaster Tools counts citations, GA4 counts visits and your enquiry records count leads. A report that blends these into one score hides which one moved. Outcomes such as being named more often can only be measured after the work, so be cautious of a proposal that states them in advance.
When do you not need an agency?
Google's hiring page says a small local business can probably do much of the work itself, starting with Google's SEO starter guide. Much of the AI visibility groundwork is similar: confirm crawlers can reach the site, keep the Business Profile accurate, state the facts buyers need on each service page and fix contradictory listings. An outside provider is worth paying when there is a technical problem you cannot diagnose, when nobody has time to run consistent prompt checks, or when the site needs substantial rewriting. Paying for checks your own team can run is poor value.