- A real GEO retainer covers research, content, technical work, off-site citations and measurement every month.
- Insist on a prompt set and a baseline before work starts, then the same prompts tracked every month.
- Reports should show share of voice, citations and answer accuracy by engine, tied to traffic and pipeline.
- Red flags: guaranteed AI placement, mass AI content, fake reviews or Reddit astroturfing, and no access to raw data.
- Price follows scope: prompts tracked, content and outreach volume, and who does the work.
Almost every agency now sells AEO or GEO. Some run a genuine program. Others resell a tracking tool with a monthly screenshot. The difference is easy to spot once you know what to look for.
Use this guide to evaluate proposals, compare partners and hold your retainer accountable.
What a GEO retainer is
A GEO retainer is an ongoing engagement to increase how often and how accurately AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews mention, cite and recommend your brand. It should combine strategy, execution and measurement, not just monitoring.
Monthly deliverables to expect
| Workstream | What you should get | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt research | A tracked set of buyer prompts by persona and stage | Month 1, reviewed quarterly |
| Visibility tracking | Share of voice, mentions and citations across major AI engines | Weekly or monthly |
| Answer-ready content | New and refreshed pages built to be cited: definitions, comparisons, FAQs | Monthly |
| Technical AEO/GEO | Crawler access, schema, llms.txt where useful, page structure fixes | Ongoing |
| Citations and off-site | Outreach to cited sources, reviews, PR and organic community participation | Monthly |
| Answer accuracy | Monitoring how engines describe you, with fixes for wrong or outdated claims | Monthly |
| Strategy review | Results, learnings and next month's priorities | Monthly |
What good reporting looks like
A useful monthly report answers whether you are winning and why. It should include:
- Share of voice by engine and topic, against your top competitors.
- The number of prompts where you are mentioned and where you are recommended.
- The sources cited most in your category, and whether you appear on them.
- Answer accuracy issues found and fixed.
- AI referral traffic and conversions from your analytics.
- What shipped this month and what is planned next.
Red flags to avoid
- Guaranteed placement in ChatGPT or any AI engine. No one controls model outputs.
- Mass AI-generated content with no expert review. It rarely gets cited and can hurt your brand.
- Fake reviews, sockpuppet Reddit accounts or vote manipulation. They break platform rules and can backfire publicly.
- Vague deliverables like AI optimization, with no list of pages, prompts or outreach targets.
- No baseline, or a prompt set that changes every month so progress cannot be compared.
- Vanity metrics only, with no link to traffic or pipeline.
- Tool lock-in where your data disappears if you leave.
Community work done right is transparent and rule-following. See how we approach organic Reddit management.
Pricing signals
GEO retainers vary widely in price. Instead of anchoring on a number, look at what drives it:
- How many prompts and engines are tracked.
- How much content is created or refreshed each month.
- How much outreach, PR and community work is included.
- Whether technical implementation is included or handed to your team.
- How senior the people doing the work are.
Be wary of very cheap retainers that are a tool subscription plus a report, and of expensive ones that cannot tell you what they will ship each month.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Which prompts will you track, and how did you choose them?
- How do you measure share of voice and citations, and can we see the raw answers?
- What exactly will you ship in the first 90 days?
- How do you earn third-party mentions, and what will you refuse to do?
- Who writes and reviews the content, and what expertise do they have?
- How will you connect AI visibility to traffic and pipeline?
- What happens to our data if we leave?
For the bigger picture, read GEO vs SEO and how to track your brand in AI search.
FAQs
Co-founder and SEO lead at OGAI. Dave builds technical SEO and content programs that turn organic search into pipeline for B2B cybersecurity and SaaS companies.