GEO agency recommendations: Why AI answers change and how to choose
· PION
We asked ChatGPT and Gemini for GEO agency recommendations 44 times and tallied 601 cited sources. Here is why the answers change every time, and the five items to verify before signing a contract.
When you ask an AI, "Recommend an agency to manage my GEO," you get roughly six to eight names. Ask the same question tomorrow, and much of that list has been replaced with names you've never seen before.
From June 21 to July 21, 2026, PION posed this question to ChatGPT and Gemini 44 times and tallied every source attached to the answers. The answers cited 601 URLs across 152 domains. Not a single one accounted for more than 10% of the total. AI assembles a new list each time, so collecting names keeps expanding your shortlist.
1. What does AI look at when recommending an agency?
It cites content written by others before a company's own official website. In the 44 measurements, the most frequently cited source was overseas community posts. Of the 601 total, 48 came from there. That's a share of 8.0%; next came academic paper repositories and video platforms, while Korean GEO firms' own domains accounted for smaller shares below them.
| Type of cited source | Share of 601 | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| Overseas community posts | 8.0% | Reviews and firm-comparison threads |
| Domestic Korean agencies' own sites | 5.5% (top single site) | Service introduction pages |
| Academic paper / technical document repositories | 3.3% | GEO concept and research citations |
| Overseas agency directories | Around 2.0% | Firm-listing pages |
If a firm appears frequently in AI answers, it means there is a lot of third-party content covering that firm. Those mentions may reflect good service or work to improve visibility. The answer list alone cannot tell you which.
2. Why do different names appear each time?
Across 300 runs, 648 different firm names appeared. PION recorded these results by submitting 7 recommendation questions to ChatGPT and Gemini 300 times. On average 7.8 firms were mentioned per answer, and each answer cited an average of 12.9 URLs. Even the most-mentioned firm appeared in only 35 of the 300 runs, or 11.7%.
AI generates each answer anew. A place in an answer does not remain fixed for days as a first-page search ranking can. In some runs, AI opened its answer with a warning. The gist was that no firm can guarantee visibility on a particular AI service, so you should be wary of any that advertises such a guarantee.
3. Five items to check before signing
Check the measurement conditions in each proposal. Company portfolios look much alike; measurement conditions are either specified in numbers or missing.
| Item to check | What to ask for | If there's no answer |
|---|---|---|
| Measurement engine | Which of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Claude, and how many times, are measured | You can't verify performance reports |
| Prompt list | Whether the questions used for measurement are agreed in advance | They'll cherry-pick favorable questions to report |
| Baseline figures | Whether the pre-contract citation rate is provided as a number | There's no baseline to calculate improvement against |
| Scope of publishing | Whether it covers content production and publishing, or stops at strategy documents | Execution falls to the advertiser |
| Deliverable ownership | Whether published content and measurement data are the advertiser's assets | The materials vanish when the contract ends |
Agree on the measurement engines and prompts first. If you don't lock these two down at the time of signing, the agency decides which questions go into the report three months later. This is why PION first maps out brand-specific prompts during the diagnostic stage and starts by measuring responses across four engines. The diagnostic procedure is laid out step by step in What AI-Exposure Diagnosis Outsourcing Is and How the Process Works.
4. Agencies that diagnose and agencies that also publish
GEO agencies offer two types of service. Choose based on whether you have someone in-house to write content.
| Category | Diagnostic/consulting type | Full-service type including publishing |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverables | Diagnostic report, improvement roadmap | Report + content production/publishing + monitoring |
| Who does the work | The advertiser's in-house team | The agency |
| Suitable when | An organization that already has content staff | An organization with no staff to handle publishing |
| Duration | Around 4 weeks | 3 months or more |
No matter how good a roadmap you receive, if no new pages that the AI can read go up, the citation rate stays the same. For a breakdown of what you can delegate to a full-service agency, see Generative Engine Optimization Outsourcing: How Far Can You Delegate?. How the numbers change once you add publishing is covered in What Happens to Your AI Citation Rate When You Also Have a GEO Agency Publish Your Content.
5. When and how to assess performance
At least three months. The first one to two months are spent establishing the baseline citation rate and a publishing schedule, so judging performance by the numbers in that window produces the wrong conclusion.
Use five metrics to assess performance.
- Measured citation rate across four engines: the rate at which the brand or domain appears in the body of the answer
- Change in share versus the baseline: the magnitude of change rather than the absolute value
- AI referrer traffic: actual visits verified by isolating AI-service domains in GA4
- Mentions on external channels: how often the brand is named in communities and media outlets
- Indexing and technical metrics: whether AI crawlers can read the pages
If the citation rate rises without more traffic, the brand is appearing in lists without a corresponding increase in visits. Adding pages only to your own site while external mentions remain at zero also works against the citation pattern described above: AI tends to cite third-party sources first.
PION's GEO agency structure and contract formats are laid out in the GEO Agency Service Overview. We adjust among fixed-fee, performance-based, and hybrid arrangements according to industry and goals.
If you want to take only the diagnosis and design and handle publishing in-house, you'll be comparing firms by their consulting deliverables. For deliverable criteria covering the prompt list, baseline figures, and raw data, see Which GEO Agency Is Best: Criteria to Compare Before Commissioning Consulting.
Frequently asked questions
Can you recommend an agency to manage my GEO?
Starting by gathering names takes a long time. When PION posed the same question to ChatGPT and Gemini 44 times in June and July 2026, the answers produced 601 citations across 152 domains, and not a single one exceeded 10% of the total. Checking providers against specific criteria narrows the list faster. Ask these four things: whether the measurement engine and prompts are written into the contract, whether the baseline citation rate is given as a number, whether they handle content publishing, and whether ownership of published material belongs to the advertiser. PION starts by measuring responses across four engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude) and handles content production and publishing.
Can I just trust the list of GEO agencies that the AI recommended?
It's safe to use it only for gathering candidates. Over the same period, 648 firm names appeared across 300 runs of recommendation-type questions, and even the most frequent one showed up in only 35 of 300 runs, or 11.7%. The source the AI referenced most was overseas community posts. Firms' official sites came below that. Once you've confirmed the names, verify them by business registration information and contract terms.
How long should a GEO agency contract run?
At least three months. The first one to two months are spent establishing the baseline citation rate and a publishing schedule, so it's hard to judge performance by the numbers in that window. Only after three months can you compare before and after publishing on the same basis.
How does a GEO agency differ from an SEO agency?
They measure different things. SEO looks at rankings on the search results page, while GEO tallies how often the brand is named in the body of AI answers. It's common for a brand to be on page one of search yet absent from AI answers, so a ranking report alone can't confirm AI exposure.
Are performance-based contracts possible?
PION adjusts fixed-fee, performance-based, and hybrid structures to fit the industry and goals. If you choose performance-based, first define in writing what counts as performance. AI answers vary even for the same question. To avoid later disputes, agree on the average citation rate over a set period rather than a ranking measured at one point in time.