How to Choose an AI SEO Agency
The category is barely two years old, so nobody has a track record worth the name. Here is what to ask instead, and the answers that should worry you.
Search for an AI SEO agency in the UK and you will find pages of identical listicles. The 10 best agencies, the 15 leading generative search consultants, the top-rated AI search firms. Read three of them and you quickly realise that the lists disagree completely, and that almost every list was written by one of the agencies featured on it.
That is the first reality of this market: it is barely two years old. Nobody has a twenty-year track record in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or getting businesses cited in ChatGPT, because the technology did not exist. Anyone claiming a decade of AI search dominance is either exaggerating or rebranding traditional keyword stuffing under a trendy new label.
You cannot choose an agency purely on vintage. But you can choose on technical substance. Here are the questions that separate genuine practitioners from opportunistic resellers, and the warning signs to watch out for.
First, the question almost nobody asks
'Will you be working on my website itself, or only around it?'
This is the single question that divides the field, yet most buyers never think to ask it. When an AI tool like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews answers a buyer's query, it constructs that recommendation from two distinct data sources: what your website directly says, and what independent third-party sources say about you.
Plenty of self-styled AI marketing agencies will sell you external citations, directory submissions, and prompt tracking dashboards. But if they do not touch your website code, rewrite unclear page headings, or fix the slow, bloated templates that prevent AI crawlers from reading your content, your foundation remains broken. A real AI search partner looks at your technical architecture first.
Ask what they build themselves and what they resell
Much of the AI SEO agency market is white-labelled. An agency sells you a high-priced monthly programme, then routes your domain into an automated American SaaS tool that churns out robotic AI articles or automated citation blasts. There is nothing wrong with using software, but there is everything wrong with paying bespoke agency retainers for an off-the-shelf automated tool you could have licensed yourself.
Ask who actually writes the code, who structures your schema markup, and whether an experienced human practitioner reviews every recommendation. If they cannot explain their technical workflow without hiding behind proprietary jargon, they are likely reselling a generic script.
Ask how they will prove it is working
The honest difficulty with AI visibility is that tracking it requires a different approach than traditional rank tracking. In traditional search, you were either position three or position seven. In AI search, answers are probabilistic: ChatGPT might name you in six queries out of ten depending on user phrasing and location.
Ask what proof you will actually receive. Look for providers that test consistent buyer queries over time, track brand mentions across multiple AI platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot), and monitor entity recognition. Be wary of agencies that simply hand you standard Google Analytics charts and claim credit for traffic that was already visiting your site.
Ask what they cannot promise
This is a reliable way to test integrity. Ask the agency what they cannot guarantee. A trustworthy provider will tell you plainly that nobody controls OpenAI, Microsoft, or Google, and that no agency has a 'direct partnership' that guarantees inclusion in AI answers. Anyone promising guaranteed number-one positioning in ChatGPT is selling snake oil.
The same honesty applies to timelines. Generative engine optimization compounds over months as search models update their indexes and crawl your verified presence. Anyone promising instant overnight results is likely using spam tactics that could harm your domain reputation.
Six questions to ask on your agency discovery call
- Do you edit our website code and content directly, or only manage off-page listings? If they do not fix your site's structure, they are only doing half the job.
- How do you handle Bing Webmaster Tools and Bing Places? ChatGPT Search relies heavily on the Bing index. An agency that only talks about Google is missing a major AI search channel.
- Do you write original content, or use AI tools to generate bulk articles? Flooding your website with low-quality AI articles is the fastest way to get filtered out by search quality updates.
- What specific structured schema markup will you implement? Look for answers naming Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, and Person schema.
- How do you test and verify whether AI assistants are recommending us? Ask to see a real reporting snapshot showing multi-platform prompt tracking.
- What happens to the work if we stop working together? All website improvements, schema code, and claimed profiles should belong to you permanently.
Where to start
Before you hire any agency or sign a long-term monthly contract, examine your own website with clear eyes. Does it state plainly, on every key page, who you help and what you do? Can a machine read it in a fraction of a second without getting bogged down by plugins and outdated scripts?
If you want an honest, grounded evaluation of where your business stands in both search engines and AI assistants, start with our free site audit. And if you would like to discuss a practical, technical approach to AI search visibility, our AI search optimisation service is built specifically to make UK businesses legible, credible, and recommended.