Learn · Choosing

AI SEO agency: what one does and how to choose

By Cloute · Published October 1, 2026

The short answer

An AI SEO agency, also called an AEO agency or GEO agency, works to get a business named in the answers AI engines give on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. A good one measures how often each engine names you against your competitors, does the work to raise it, and proves the change on identical questions. A weak one sells ordinary SEO under a new name.

What AI SEO services should include

A baseline: how often each AI engine names you today, and who it names instead.
Coverage of every engine your customers use, reported separately.
Competitors measured on the same answers, by name.
Work on what the engines read about you, on your own site and beyond it.
Regular re-measurement on identical questions, so a change is real and not noise.
For a business with several locations, results for each location in its own market.

Ten questions to ask an AI SEO agency

Which AI engines do you measure, and do you report each one separately?
How many times do you ask each question? One run is an anecdote.
Where are the questions asked from? Local answers change by town.
Do you measure my named competitors on the same answers?
Will before and after use the same questions and the same engines?
Do you measure first-pick rate, or only whether I am mentioned?
Who does the work after the report: your team or mine?
Can I see which AI crawlers visit my site, and how often?
What have you moved for a business like mine, on what basis?
What do you not promise?

Red flags

A guarantee of first place in ChatGPT. Nobody controls the answer.
Proof by screenshot. A single answer can be different an hour later.
Reports with no competitors in them.
Hundreds of AI-written pages as the deliverable.
No baseline taken before the work starts.

Agency or software?

AI visibility software tells you the number and leaves the work to your team. An agency or managed service does the work for you. Choose software if you have people to act on it, and a service if you want the result moved.

Where Cloute fits

Cloute publishes this page and is a managed AI visibility service for local businesses. Cloute measures every location each month on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews against the local rivals customers weigh it against, and its team does the work to move the result.

Questions people ask

What is an AI SEO company?

An AI SEO company helps a business get named by AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. The same service is sold as AEO (answer engine optimization) or GEO (generative engine optimization).

Is an AI SEO agency different from an SEO agency?

The goal is different. An SEO agency reports rankings and traffic. An AI SEO agency reports how often AI engines name you, which rival they name instead, and how that changes. Many agencies now offer both.

How do I know an AI SEO service is working?

Ask for the share of AI answers naming your business, by engine, on the same questions before and after, alongside the same figure for your main competitors.

What is a GEO agency?

A GEO agency does generative engine optimization: the same work as an AI SEO or AEO agency, named after the generative engines that write the answers.

About Cloute. Cloute is an AI visibility company for local businesses. It measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend a business against its local competitors, and works every month to move it to the top.