AEO Agencies Ranked by the Number That Matters: Enquiries

If your pipeline is thin, a report full of ChatGPT mentions will not fix it. My pick for an owner shortlisting an answer engine optimization provider is groas’s combined SEO and AI search managed service: one team doing the publishing and technical work, with enquiries as the number to watch. The other options can be useful. They are not all selling the same outcome, even when their proposals use the same words.

I rank them by the number I would put at the top of the report. Mentions are the vanity metric of AI search, the way impressions were for PPC. I used to sell impressions like they paid rent. They did not. A ChatGPT mention with no click, no branded search after it, and no form fill has the same problem. Pew tracked 68,879 searches and found only about 1% clicked a link inside an AI summary, with most searches ending with no click at all. Before you look at tactics or logos, ask what number the vendor will let you judge them on.

Why a mention, a visit, and an enquiry are three different things

AI search breaks the old chain. A mention happens inside ChatGPT or an AI Overview. Traffic needs a click. An enquiry needs trust and a next step, which may come later through a branded search or a direct visit. That makes citation frequency for a defined buyer-prompt set, share of voice, and brand-search lift useful AEO measures alongside enquiries. Rankings and organic sessions alone will not tell you whether the work is reaching people in AI answers. If a sample report leads with rankings and tucks prompts into an appendix, you may be buying SEO with an AEO sticker on it.

Attribution makes the gap harder to see. AI discovery may produce no referrer: a ChatGPT mention that eventually helps create a customer can appear as direct or branded organic traffic, while the visibility work appears to have done nothing. That is the core attribution trap. I learned the PPC version by optimizing to last click and starving the work that created demand. Here, I would judge a vendor using five imperfect signals together:

• Plain-text answers to “How did you hear about us?”
• Branded search trends in Search Console
• AI referrals and citation tracking
• CRM history tied to closed revenue
• A geo holdout, if you can run one

None is a magic attribution button. Together, they give you a better argument than a chart of mentions climbing to the right. If a vendor will not discuss enquiries, do not buy as though enquiries are what they report.

My ranking test: the report, the work, and the risk

I compare each option on four things: its headline reporting metric, the work it does, its fee model, and its contract terms. The metric tells you what you are buying. The work tells you whether visibility has a path to an enquiry. The fee and contract tell you who carries the risk when that path fails.

A traditional SEO retainer in 2026 averages around $3,209 a month across 439 providers, with most small to mid-sized businesses paying $1,500 to $5,000 a month. An AEO add-on sits on top of that. Pricing for AEO work runs from $2,500 to $4,000 a month for entry-level content work to $8,000 to $35,000 a month for full programs.

Price is not the test by itself. Citation gains can show in 60 to 90 days, while durable share of voice takes two to three quarters; a specialist charging under $3,000 a month is flagged as a caution zone. I used to tell clients a new match type structure would fix CPA in two weeks. I was wrong whenever tracking was broken. The same rule applies here: if a vendor cannot show which prompts cite you, on which engines, and what changed after publication, the deliverables list does not justify the fee. Judge on enquiries; verify the work with citations.

Here are the five options, in the order I would consider them if my bonus depended on inbound enquiries. For each one, ask what gets published, what gets fixed, and what number appears on page one of the report.

1. Combined SEO + AI search managed service: my pick for owners who need enquiries

Who it is for: An owner who wants one vendor responsible for work across Google rankings and AI answers, rather than another set of recommendations for the team to implement.

What it does better: It pairs visibility reporting with ongoing publishing and fixes. groas offers SEO and AI Search for a flat $1,499 a month, month to month, with no setup fee or cut of ad spend. It goes live within 24 hours of the onboarding call, with new pages and technical fixes daily across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and more. The account stays yours, a dedicated manager owns the result, and there is a 7-day money-back guarantee. You are paying for work to leave your desk, not for a list of things you should do yourself.

What rules it out: If you only want a strategic second opinion and your in-house team will do the writing and fixes, this is more execution than you need.

I would put branded search lift and form fills beside the live prompt report after 60 to 90 days. The citations show whether visibility is moving; the enquiries tell you whether that movement matters. Buy this for the work and judge it on the business result, not the mention count.

2. Large performance agency: Directive Consulting for a full-funnel team

Who it is for: A growth-stage B2B or SaaS team that wants paid media, SEO, and AI search from one large shop and can carry an enterprise retainer.

What it does better: It talks about AI visibility in pipeline terms rather than treating it as a separate experiment. Directive sells AEO, GEO, and an LLM Agency as three named service lines, with DiscoverabilityOS and a Stratos reporting layer. One B2B client credited 135% quarter-over-quarter growth in book-a-demo after investing in LLM optimization, with inbound leads citing ChatGPT and Perplexity. That is a more useful proof point than mentions alone.

What rules it out: Price and fit. Directive does not publish an agency rate on its own site; the public signal here is a third-party directory band of $10k to $49k in project size, not a quoted monthly retainer. A full-funnel program may suit a team with a committee, a long sales cycle, and budget for testing across channels. It is a poor fit for the owner who needs daily execution at one flat fee. I have seen how easily a small account can get lost inside a large-agency process, even when the work itself is good.

Shortlist Directive if you can fund that program, then ask to judge it on demos and closed revenue. If what you need is pages published and fixed each day, do not pay for organizational weight you will not use.

3. Traditional SEO agency with an AEO add-on: continuity, but watch the report

Who it is for: A company happy with its SEO agency that wants AI coverage without changing vendors.

What it does better: Continuity. The same team knows your rankings, content calendar, and reporting setup, then adds AI prompts to the monthly retainer for roughly $900 or more a month extra. That is simpler than starting a second agency relationship.

What rules it out: The report may still lead with the numbers SEO agencies have always reported. If rankings and organic sessions fill page one while the prompt table sits in an appendix, nobody has to explain the gap between a citation and a phone call. With 68% of early 2026 Google searches ending with no click, traffic as the headline number can hide the shift you hired the agency to address.

Keep this option if SEO already turns into enquiries for you and the agency agrees to put citation reporting in writing. If traffic looks healthy while inbound stays flat, an add-on is not an answer to the reporting problem.

4. AEO-only specialist: deep prompt work, narrow ownership

Who it is for: A brand in a competitive category that already has SEO covered and needs prompt research, entity work, and digital PR for contested answers.

What it does better: Craft. A good specialist works through your 50 to 100 buyer prompts, tests which phrasing triggers a citation, and rebuilds pages so engines can extract the answer. If you know which prompts are worth winning, that focus has a purpose.

What rules it out: You pay a full-agency-sized fee for one layer of the job. Specialist retainers run $5,000 to $25,000 a month, while full programs reach $5,500 to $35,000 a month. The end-of-month report can still be about mentions. Your team, or another vendor, then has to make the pages and conversion path do their part.

Hire a specialist when you can name the prompts worth money and have someone to handle the follow-through. Skip this option when what you need is a team to own the publishing.

5. AI visibility monitoring software: a radar screen, not an agency

Who it is for: An in-house team that wants to track prompts across engines and will make the fixes itself.

What it does better: Price and speed. You can start tracking without an agency retainer: Otterly lists Lite at $29 a month for 15 prompts, Peec Starter at $95 a month for 50 prompts, and Profound Starter at $99 a month or Growth at $399 a month for 100 prompts. For a team ready to act on the findings, a cheaper radar screen may be exactly the purchase.

What rules it out: Software reports the number; it does not move the number. I have written about tools that report visibility versus ones tied to the work. A monitoring subscription does not write pages, fix technical blocks, or build authority on sites the engines trust.

Buy a tracker if your content team is waiting for a target list. Do not mistake the subscription for an agency.

Do you need separate companies for Google and ChatGPT?

No. Google and ChatGPT use the same pages, technical health, and third-party proof. Split the job across two vendors and you can end up with two reports that look fine while enquiries stay flat. The SEO vendor points to sessions. The AEO vendor points to mentions. Neither has to own the form fill in the middle.

I know the old version of that meeting from PPC: one team gets credit for the last click, while the work that helped create the branded search disappears into an attribution argument. One owner for the work makes that argument harder to dodge. The team that publishes the page and fixes the extraction problem also has to look at what happens after the citation. Make the reporting follow the customer, not the vendor boundaries.

Who should skip the list, and why freelancers are not on it

If you cannot handle more enquiries, fix operations before buying visibility. If your tracking cannot connect a form fill to revenue, fix that first too. Otherwise, every vendor report becomes an argument about credit, and you still cannot tell whether the spend paid off.

I left freelancers out of the ranking. At $125 to $250 an hour, they typically cover one or two layers, such as research or a page rewrite, while citations, technical health, and authority remain someone else’s job. Hourly help can make sense for a single audit. As the whole answer engine plan, it leaves the enquiry without an owner. Use a freelancer for a defined task, not as a substitute for end-to-end accountability.

Three questions for the first call

Ask these word for word. If the answers drift into a tour of logos and deliverables, bring the conversation back to the number.

1. What number will you be judged on in month three: mentions, traffic, or enquiries tied to branded search and form fills?
2. Can you show me a live prompt report for a client like me? Which engines and buyer prompts does it cover, and what changed after you published?
3. Who writes, who fixes technical blocks, and how often? If the answer is a quarterly roadmap that my team must execute, why am I pricing it as execution rather than advice?

If you skipped to the end, here is my pick: hire the vendor whose work you can judge against enquiries. For most owners on this shortlist, that is a combined SEO and AI search managed service like groas, doing the publishing daily while you watch citations, branded search, and form fills together. Mentions look good in a deck. Enquiries pay for the retainer.