7 questions to ask any agency that says they do 'AI SEO'

The phrase “AI SEO” is on every agency homepage now. The problem is that almost none of them mean the same thing by it, and most mean nothing at all. It’s a label stapled onto the same service they were selling in 2018.

You don’t need to be technical to tell the difference. You need seven questions. They’re designed so the dodges are obvious: a vendor who actually does this work will welcome them, and a vendor who doesn’t will get vague, defensive, or suddenly very interested in jargon. Watch which one happens.

1. “Can you show me a business you’ve gotten cited in an AI answer, with screenshots?”

This is the whole game in one question. AI citation is observable. Either a client gets named when you ask ChatGPT about their category, or they don’t. Anyone genuinely doing this work has the screenshots (the actual AI answers, naming the actual business) because that’s the deliverable.

Watch what they show you instead. Traffic graphs, keyword rankings, “impressions,” domain authority scores: those are traditional SEO proof. They are not citation proof. The thing you’re paying for is your name inside an AI answer, and that is exactly the thing a real vendor can put in front of you.

The dodge to watch for: “AI is too new for case studies,” or a fast pivot to a rankings dashboard. The discipline is new, but it is not so new that nobody has shipped results. We did, and we keep a live grid of them.

2. “Are you selling me rankings or citations, and do you know the difference?”

A ranking is a position in the list of blue links. A citation is being named inside the generated answer that now sits above those links. Ask the vendor to explain the difference back to you. If they treat the two as the same thing, they’re running a rankings playbook with a new sticker on it.

This matters because the two reach customers at completely different moments. A prospect who reads an AI answer that names your business and quotes your service area never scrolls down to the list of links at all. They’ve already got their answer. If your vendor is optimizing for a position on a page your customer never sees, you’re paying for the wrong real estate.

3. “When I get a report, will I see the actual AI answers naming my business, or a dashboard of keyword positions?”

Reporting tells you what a vendor actually optimizes for, because nobody reports on work they didn’t do. A monthly dashboard of keyword positions is the tell of a rankings shop. The proof that AI visibility is working is the AI answer itself: a screenshot of ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overview, or Perplexity naming you, dated, for a query a real customer would type.

If a vendor can’t or won’t put those in your monthly report, sit with what that means: they are not measuring the thing you’re buying. They’re measuring the thing they already knew how to measure.

4. “Is your ‘AI optimization’ a new name on the same SEO service you sold last year?”

Ask it bluntly, because it’s the most useful question on the list. The AEO discipline is new enough that most of the market simply relabeled existing services to ride the wave. So ask what specifically is different about an AI engagement versus a normal SEO one.

A straight answer will acknowledge that getting cited is mostly about how the site is built and structured to be read by machines, not just more blog posts and more backlinks pointed at the same underlying site. If “AI optimization” turns out to be keyword research, content velocity, and link building, that’s traditional SEO. It moves rankings. It does not, on its own, get a site cited in AI answers.

5. “How long until I’m getting cited, and what should the first 90 days honestly look like?”

This is the honesty test, and it’s the easiest one to fail. AI citation is organic. It builds over weeks and months (first in specific, long-tail queries, then in broader ones) and it depends on factors outside any vendor’s control: your reviews, your reputation, the competitive density of your market.

So a straight answer comes with a range and a caveat, not a guarantee. Real movement typically takes a few months to show up and longer to compound. Anyone who promises you the number-one spot, instant results, or guaranteed placement as the first source named is lying to you. Full stop. The honest version of this answer is less exciting and far more trustworthy.

6. “Are you fixing my website, or bolting onto the one I have?”

Most “AI SEO” is sold as a layer added on top of your existing site: a plugin here, some content there, a few tags. But if the underlying site is hard for AI engines to read in the first place, adding to it doesn’t fix the problem. You can’t optimize your way out of a foundation issue.

Ask whether their process touches the site itself, or just stacks things on top of it. You don’t need them to hand you the technical details. You need to know which of those two things they’re actually doing, because only one of them moves the needle.

7. “If it doesn’t work, am I locked in?”

Risk sits with whoever signs the contract, so read the exit terms before you read anything else. Annual lock-ins with cancellation penalties protect the agency, not you. They’re a way to keep billing you while the results they promised fail to show up.

A vendor confident in the work doesn’t need to trap you. They earn the next month by delivering this one. Month-to-month isn’t a discount or a gimmick. It’s the structure you get from someone who believes they’ll still be worth paying in 90 days.

The pattern underneath all seven

Every one of these questions is pointing at the same line. A real AEO vendor sells you an observable outcome (your name, in the answer, with a screenshot to prove it) and stands behind it without locking you in a cage. Everyone else is selling you the old playbook with a new label, measured by metrics that were never the point, protected by a contract that exists because they expect you’d otherwise leave.

You don’t have to take anyone’s word for it, including ours. Ask us all seven. If the answers don’t hold up, you’ll know inside one conversation, and you’ll know exactly what to ask the next vendor, too.