GEO · HOW TO BUY IT WITHOUT GETTING TAKEN
Before you buy a GEO retainer.Ask them these nine questions first.
Public retainers in this category vary wildly, and many "best agency" lists are published by agencies that place themselves on the list. Here's how to tell, in one conversation, whether you're buying measured work or a deck.
WHAT THE MARKET CHARGES
The category priced itself
before it proved itself.
GEO is a young product category, and pricing has arrived ahead of consistent outcome evidence. None of that means it's a scam — the underlying shift is real and I've written the available data up in full. It means you should buy it like you'd buy anything new: by asking harder questions than the seller expects.
Compare baseline, hours, deliverables and cancellation terms — not a headline monthly number.
Ask what is written, shipped and measured before a recurring commitment begins.
In my own scan of 210 sites, the single biggest differentiator was publishing real prices. That's writing, not retainer.
No single market range is reliable enough to print as a promise. The questions below make a vendor's actual scope comparable.
THE INTERROGATION · 1 / 9 OPEN
Nine questions.
Their answers tell you everything.
Ask these on the first call. You're not testing whether they're clever — you're testing whether they've measured anything. Tap any question for the answer you want and the answer that should end the call.
✕ END THE CALL
We'll start seeing improvements in the first month.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Ten fixed prompts, run logged-out across four surfaces, scored and dated before we touch anything.
Why it matters: with no baseline, every future report is unfalsifiable. If they can't tell you today's number, they can't prove tomorrow's.
✕ END THE CALL
We optimise for AI search generally.
✓ KEEP TALKING
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, reported separately, because they cite different sources.
Why it matters: "AI search" isn't one place. Published citation analyses in 2026 found only around 11% of cited domains overlapped between ChatGPT and Perplexity. Winning one is not winning the category, and a single blended number hides which one you won.
✕ END THE CALL
It's essential — we ship one for every client in week one.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Harmless, no evidence it does anything. We'd rather spend the afternoon on schema and reviews.
Why it matters: this is the cleanest litmus test in the whole category. Ahrefs analysed 137,210 domains and found that of roughly 38,000 with a valid llms.txt, 97% got zero requests for it in a month — no bots, no humans. Google has documented that it has no effect on Search. Anyone still selling it as a deliverable is repeating industry chatter instead of reading data.
✕ END THE CALL
We'll optimise your on-page content and build backlinks.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Most of it. Unlinked mentions, directories, supplier pages, local press, reviews. Your site is the smaller half.
Why it matters: across 75,000 brands, Ahrefs found branded web mentions correlated with AI visibility at 0.66 and backlinks at 0.22 — roughly three times weaker. A vendor still selling link volume as the main lever is running a 2019 playbook with a 2026 name on it.
✕ END THE CALL
You're almost certainly blocking GPTBot — that's the first thing we fix.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Checked it before this call. You're not blocking anything, so that's not your problem.
Why it matters: it's the industry's favourite opening scare. When I scanned 210 real contractor sites, only 5 of them — 2.4% — disallowed any AI crawler. It's catastrophic when it happens and rare enough that leading with it proves they haven't looked at your site. Checking takes thirty seconds; you can do it yourself right now.
✕ END THE CALL
Eight AI-optimised blog posts a month.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Your actual price ranges, your response times, the ten questions you answer on the phone. We'll interview you to get them.
Why it matters: in my scan, the single largest gap between the top-scoring and bottom-scoring sites was publishing real price figures — 87% versus 4%, an 83-point spread. Nobody can write that for you without asking you. If their content plan doesn't start with an interview, it will produce text no model has any reason to quote.
✕ END THE CALL
Results in the first seven days.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Four to eight weeks before anything reaches an answer. Month one is baseline, entity cleanup and the pricing page.
Why it matters: sources have to be re-crawled and re-ingested before a change to your information shows up in an answer. Nobody controls that clock. A seven-day promise isn't optimism, it's a claim about someone else's infrastructure.
✕ END THE CALL
Yes — we have a proprietary method.
✓ KEEP TALKING
No. There's no ranking to buy, no ad slot, and nothing to register with.
Why it matters: ask it deliberately, as a trap. There is no placement to sell and no index to submit to. Anyone who says yes has just told you exactly how much of the rest was true.
✕ END THE CALL
GEO is a long game, you have to be patient.
✓ KEEP TALKING
Here's the number we're moving, the date we judge it, and how you leave if we miss.
Why it matters: "long game" is the most expensive sentence in marketing, because it converts every missed target into a reason to keep paying. A defined metric, a defined date and a defined exit is what separates a partner from a subscription.
WHY I GET TO SAY ANY OF THIS
I scanned 210 real sites
instead of writing a top-10 list.
Every number on this page comes from my own measurement of live U.S. home service websites, or from a study I've linked and named. I run the scanner myself, it's free, and it doesn't ask for your email before it tells you anything.
live contractor sites scored across 17 checks
average quotability — the weakest of four groups
point gap on publishing real prices, top vs bottom
actually block AI crawlers, against the industry scare
The full write-up, with method and caveats, is here. The outside research behind the reasoning is here, with every source linked.
WHAT AN ANSWER ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Twenty contractors in the city.
Three names in the answer.
Ask an assistant who to call for a leaking roof in a named city and you get a short paragraph with two or three businesses in it. Not twenty. Not a page of results to scroll. Three names — and the rest of the city is not in the conversation at all.
So I stopped scoring sites one at a time and started measuring them in groups: one city, one trade, everybody I could reach. Twenty-six groups, 235 companies, the same seventeen checks on every one. The lists are public.
have all three: a price, a response time, an answered question
have none of the three — nothing a model can repeat
answer a single question in plain question-and-answer form
names published per city, because that is what an answer holds
The lists name the top three in each group rather than shaming the bottom — being absent from a short list moves people more than a bad score, and a bad score just gets argued with. If your city is in there, you can see where you land in about eight seconds.
THE WORK ITSELF
Six things to review.
Evidence before changes.
These are possible review topics from the scanner. Some are optional context, not counted checks. Run a current scan to see which observations apply to your page; implementation is scoped separately.
These rows do not predict ranking, traffic, leads or a future score. Without a successful live scan, no personal result is shown. Address and phone are not compulsory for every business; publish only accurate, appropriate contact information.
THE PAID ROUTE
Evidence first.
Then the work.
The public scan is automated and free. Human diagnosis is a finite paid engagement, and implementation follows only after a written scope.
Signal audit
Eight focused hours of evidence review, public-page priorities and a hand-off-ready implementation map.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
- Baseline scan — all 17 checks, dated, before anything changes
- LocalBusiness schema — hours, service area, phone, services
- Name, address, phone — matched across every profile you control
- A real pricing page — your three most-asked jobs, with ranges
- Response time & hours — in plain text, near the top
- Ten questions answered — Q&A form, FAQPage schema
- Crawler access — robots.txt checked and opened where needed
- Comparison record — the same checks can be re-run after approved changes
The report states what the fetched pages and profiles expose, what is missing, and what an approved intervention would change. The score is a diagnostic proxy, not a private model readout.
No score-based invoice and no free implementation. If you want the changes applied, they are priced at $240 per focused hour inside a separate written scope.
Not guaranteed: rankings, AI citations, leads, revenue, conversion rates or a third party's timing. Those remain outside the work I can control.
WHAT I NEED FROM YOU
- The URL, market and decision the audit must support
- Access to the pages and profiles you already control, if they are in scope
- Permission to publish only the facts you approve in writing
- Timing and dependencies agreed in the scope — there is no universal day promise
START
Discuss the paid scope in WhatsApp ↗ONE FIT REPLY, FROM ME. THE SCOPE AND PRICE COME BEFORE ANALYSIS.
Or skip the nine questions
and just look at your score.
Paste your address. Seventeen checks, ten seconds, no signup, no email wall. You will see the observable gaps before deciding whether a paid audit or implementation is worth it.