Hiring an AI Search Agency: 15 Questions and an RFP

TL;DR: The way to choose an AI SEO agency is to judge a dated work sample, written limits and contract terms rather than a pitch. In the Strategi pricing survey of 55 providers, checked 24 Oct 2026, Strategi reports that 16 publish no price, so a visible price is a fair first filter. An AI SEO agency that guarantees placement in AI answers should be dropped, because AuthorityTech's RFP framework, from a firm selling in this market, expects agencies to admit that none can guarantee deterministic placement. A sound AI search contract names the tracked prompts, the pages to be changed and the owner of each fix.

How to choose an AI SEO agency: what should it show you before you sign?

An AI SEO agency should show you dated evidence on your own buyer questions before you sign, plus proof from clients who sell the way you sell. Begin with the agency you already pay: Onely, itself a search agency, advises testing an incumbent SEO agency on AI answer work before hiring another provider. Strategi reaches a similar place from the seller's side, treating SEO and AI search as one job for one provider.

Generative engine optimization (GEO)

the work of getting a brand mentioned, cited or recommended in answers from services such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity, which is how Search Engine Land describes the objective.

Onely's recommended work sample does the real sorting. For each sales-relevant question, it should give the dated prompt and platform, the full saved answer, brand and competitor mentions, citations, factual issues and a proposed change. Include queries where you rank but a competitor appears in the AI answer, which Onely suggests will show whether an agency looks beyond its rankings report.

Past results need a second check. Ask for case studies from companies with your conversion model, not just your general industry, and ask where current clients appear today, with dates and references you can call. One good screenshot means nothing.

Which questions expose a provider that only reports?

A provider that only reports can show you a dashboard but cannot say what it will change. Send these 15 questions to every shortlisted provider and require written answers with examples, screenshots and raw exports where possible, the standard AuthorityTech suggests. The list is Strategi's own, built on agency-published guidance, and no published evidence shows that any single question predicts better agency results.

1. Which "AI SEO" are you selling? The answer should say whether the offer means AI used to do SEO or visibility inside AI answers. Those are different purchases with different deliverables.

2. What exactly am I paying you to change? A good answer lists the pages, fixes and off-site work planned for the first 90 days. An answer built on dashboards describes monitoring, and monitoring changes nothing on its own.

3. Who will actually work on my account? Request an introduction to the delivery team before signing, and ask how many hours each person has for you. The person who sells is rarely the person who executes.

4. How will you measure AI visibility, and what is the baseline? Require the tracked questions, engines and competitors before work starts, with a dated baseline. Search Engine Land lists visibility, share of voice, sentiment and prompt context among GEO measures, though that list sets no benchmark.

5. How do you define a citation? Get a written definition that separates it from a mention, link, recommendation, source and co-citation. Being named in passing and being recommended are different outcomes, so a report should not merge them.

6. How do you handle answers that change from run to run? AuthorityTech's framework asks for repeated prompt runs, date windows and a rule for when a signal is too unstable to act on. Strategi's position is that one reading is weather, not climate, and only trends over weeks mean anything.

7. How do you evaluate our share against competitors? Seer Interactive suggests asking how an agency tracks generative AI visibility and evaluates market share. Microsoft Clarity has an AI citations dashboard, so citation reporting need not depend entirely on an agency's proprietary tool.

8. Can you separate branded mentions from actual discovery? Botpresso warns that reported growth may come from people already searching for your brand. Non-branded appearances are the ones that reach new buyers, so they need their own line in every report.

9. How will you connect visibility to leads and revenue? Expect a method for tying completed work to measurable outcomes, plus an admission that attribution may not be exact. Strategi's position is that nobody can honestly claim tactic X caused citation Y, so distrust a neat causal story as much as a missing one.

10. How would you find out whether our customers use AI answers? Forrester's 2024 account, reported by Onely, describes business buyers using generative AI to discover vendors, compare offerings, refine RFPs and validate decisions. That account gives no percentage and no India figure, so the agency should explain how it would test your own customer base.

11. What is new here compared with SEO? OuterBox, an agency selling both services, says many tactics promoted for GEO have been SEO tactics for the last decade. Strategi agrees it is one job, while holding that Google rank no longer predicts AI citation. Any bidder should name the line items an SEO plan would not already cover.

12. What does a typical month look like? Grow and Convert suggests asking how effort splits across technical fixes, content and links. No universal split exists, so the agency should justify its mix for your site.

13. How do you divide work between our site and third-party sources? Agencies disagree on whether earned media or the website carries more weight, and each position tends to fit what the agency sells. Strategi says third-party mentions track whether a brand gets named far more closely than domain authority. Every bidder should defend its mix with measured prompts.

14. Should we block AI crawlers? Seer Interactive includes AI bot blocking as an RFP discussion point without prescribing an answer. Look for reasoning tied to your content, and keep AuthorityTech's point in mind: crawler access does not mean a page will be selected as a cited source.

15. What can't you control, and when would you tell me not to hire you? A credible answer admits that engines choose the answers and citation is probabilistic. AuthorityTech lists honest disqualifiers such as a weak source base, no internal owner or an unrealistic timeline.

What should the contract say about prompts, pages and reporting?

An AI search contract should name the tracked prompts, the monthly output, who implements each fix, who owns the work and how either side leaves. Commitment length comes first: published terms run from month to month to 12 months, as the pricing table below shows. A long term asks you to carry the risk before any result exists, so it should buy you something specific.

• Prompts. Name the buyer questions, engines and competitors tracked, and how often each is checked. State who may change the set, because an edited prompt list can make any trend look good.

• Pages and fixes. Write down the monthly output and say whether anyone is actually implementing changes. Botpresso's guidance is that someone internal must own priorities and make sure recommendations reach production, so name that person too.

• Reporting. Require access to saved answers and raw data, with AI visibility kept apart from business outcomes. AuthorityTech argues that a visibility score can be useful as a summary but should not be accepted as proof.

• Milestones. Botpresso suggests tracking technical fixes, indexation and non-brand impressions in the first 90 days, on the principle that outcomes may lag but inputs should not. Commerce Pundit tells buyers to expect initial AI Overview appearances in 6 to 12 weeks, which is one vendor's unverified estimate rather than a norm. Strategi's pricing page says to give the work at least 90 days to judge. No plan guarantees a spot in AI answers.

• Ownership and exit. State who owns the content, data and prompt history after the engagement ends. Notice periods belong here as well, along with what the agency hands over.

How much does an AI SEO agency cost, and what is a fair price?

A fair price is visible, tied to named work and paired with a term you can leave. The Strategi pricing survey of 55 providers, checked 24 Oct 2026, read every price live on each provider's own site. Of the 55, 16 publish no price, and only 16 of the 35 agencies or done-for-you services publish a GEO price. Strategi sells this service and appears in the table, so read the table with that in mind.

Published prices differ from private quotes and change over time, so date every figure you compare. Commerce Pundit, an agency that sells these services and discloses no method, states that retainers typically run $2,500 to $8,000 a month for SMBs and $10,000 to $30,000+ for enterprise. Those are US dollar figures, and no published benchmark covers the Indian market.

The cheapest line on a shortlist may be a different product. Tracking tools in the survey start at $29 a month, and they do not write, fix or earn mentions. No independent benchmark links a retainer's price to citation, pipeline or revenue results, so compare what each price buys: pages, fixes, off-site work and tracked questions. Strategi's pricing and its comparison of AI SEO agencies set this out by provider.

What belongs in an AI search RFP?

An AI search RFP needs your goals, a defined scope, a work sample and written answers, but first decide whether you need one at all. iPullRank's Garrett Sussman calls RFPs a necessary evil for many large enterprises and advises avoiding them where possible. iPullRank also argues that apples-to-apples formats can prevent agencies from showing where they excel, so fix the evidence you require and leave the shape of the answer open.

Where procurement requires an RFP, use the template below. No published standard exists for AI search RFPs, so this structure is Strategi's own.

1. Background and goals. State what you sell, who buys it and the business goal this work supports. iPullRank advises tying agency success to business goals while recognising that this does not guarantee traffic, rankings or revenue.

2. Scope. Group requirements under iPullRank's five headings: research, strategy, governance, content execution and technical execution. Add a sixth line for off-site work, which the SEO framework does not name.

3. Buyer questions. Supply a fixed set of sales-relevant questions and name the AI tools your buyers use. Include queries where you rank and a competitor appears in the answer.

4. Work sample. Require the dated record for each question: prompt, platform, saved answer, mentions, citations, factual issues and proposed change. This section should decide more than the pitch does.

5. Written answers. Attach the 15 questions above and ask bidders to state the limits of their evidence. Seer Interactive lists budget, scope, goals, evaluation criteria and submission guidelines as basics that a current RFP should go beyond.

Sources

1. AI Visibility RFP Questions to Ask Before Hiring (Google Search Central, as characterised by AuthorityTech, 2026-08-11)

2. Choosing an SEO Company | How to Find the Right SEO Agency - OuterBox (OuterBox, 2026-10-23)

3. 41 SEO RFP questions you should be asking that most templates miss (Seer Interactive, 2024-03-16)

4. How to Evaluate & Choose Your Next SEO Agency? (SEOFOMO ecommerce SEO survey, as cited by Botpresso)

5. 10 Best AI SEO Agencies in 2026, Ranked | Commerce Pundit (Commerce Pundit, 2026-06-04)

6. SEO RFP: The Best Process for Hiring the Right Agency [Template] (iPullRank, 2024-10-02)

Frequently asked questions

Run Strategi through this checklist

Hold Strategi to the same test: Strategi's pricing page lists plans at $499, $999 and $2,499 a month, all month to month with no setup fee, and says the dashboard goes live within the hour. To start smaller, take the free AI visibility check, which gives you a full check of your site, the 5 issues costing it most and your first 5 topics to publish, in about 30 minutes.