GUIDE

How to hire and audit a GEO or AI SEO agency

In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 218 ChatGPT answers, the result in position 1 of ChatGPT's first search was cited 55.5% of the time.

Updated October 30, 20265 min read

55.5%Citation rate for position 1 in ChatGPT's first search (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)
51.2%Retrieved vendor pricing pages cited by ChatGPT (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)
97%Valid published llms.txt files receiving zero requests in May 2026 (Ahrefs)

In short

A capable GEO agency focuses on OAI-SearchBot crawler access, top search rank, and vendor-owned pages rather than technical gimmicks.
In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 218 ChatGPT answers, the result in position 1 of ChatGPT's first search was cited 55.5% of the time, while results in position 16 and lower were cited 0.4% of the time.
Across 4,203 retrieved results, a company's own pages were cited 20.1% of the time versus 3.9% for third-party pages.
Reject agencies selling /llms.txt or Schema.org markup as primary fixes: Ahrefs studies found 97% of valid llms.txt files got zero requests and JSON-LD had no statistically significant effect on ChatGPT citations.

Whether called generative engine optimization, answer engine optimization, or AI SEO, With web search on, ChatGPT can retrieve web results and cite pages in its answers.

Step 1: Require a technical access and snippet audit first

Start by verifying that OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, can fetch your HTML and extract clean text without JavaScript. Ensure your agency knows OpenAI's bots: OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's search crawler. The GEO audit checks access for OAI-SearchBot and whether text is present in the HTML without JavaScript.

Run our free GEO audit (no account needed, 5 audits a day) before hiring an agency. It fetches your page as OAI-SearchBot, rebuilds the title and ~200-character snippet ChatGPT keeps, checks the page in ChatGPT, and returns a score out of 100 with a letter grade. It checks:

Page response, bot protection, and robots.txt rules for OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, and ChatGPT-User.
HTML text without JavaScript, page size, noindex tags, and sitemap.
Title length, H1, meta description, and menu or cookie text in the snippet.
Opening sentence and upfront facts.

Step 2: Build the strategy around search rank and vendor-owned pages

Consider search rank and the citation rates observed for different page types when setting GEO priorities. In our October 2026 study of 218 ChatGPT answers with web search, ChatGPT cited 2.2 different URLs per answer on average and cited 10.3% of the web results it retrieved. In ChatGPT's first search, the result at position 1 was cited 55.5% of the time (95% CI 49.1% to 61.9%); the rates were 34.9% at position 2, 27.5% at position 3, 14.4% at positions 4-5, 8.1% at positions 6-10, and 2.4% at positions 11-15. A February 20, 2026 SSRN study of 1,736 pages also found Google organic rank mattered most, with citation odds at 43% at rank 1 versus 5% at rank 7.

Agencies should prioritize commercial and documentation pages over blog posts. In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 4,203 search results across 211 answers, vendor-owned pages were cited 20.1% of the time when retrieved versus 3.9% for third-party pages (odds ratio 13.1).

Page type	Share of retrieved pages cited	What your agency should do
Vendor pricing pages	51.2%	Put clear plans, limits, and numbers in plain HTML text
Vendor product pages	28.4%	State exact features, integrations, and use cases up front
Docs and help pages	23.0%	Open public documentation to OAI-SearchBot
Vendor blog posts	14.5%	Answer specific buyer questions with verifiable data
Third-party listicles and reviews	7.5%	Pitch inclusion on pages ChatGPT already cites
"A vs B" comparison pages	4.2%	Keep factual tables comparing specs without fluff
PDFs	0.4%	Convert important PDFs into standard HTML pages

Step 3: Target the third-party pages ChatGPT already cites

Off-site outreach should target the exact directories and reviews ChatGPT already cites for your buyer questions. Many agencies pitch Reddit marketing, but in our October 2026 study of 218 answers, Reddit was 28% of retrieved results yet only 2 of 2,462 citations.

In FoundByChat's local tests, businesses listed on cited pages were more likely to be named, though results varied. In FoundByChat's October 2026 local tests, listed businesses had 3.3 times the odds of being named for plumbers and 2.1 times for dentists; for agencies, the 1.6 times lift was not statistically significant.

Step 4: Spot the red flags in AI SEO agency pitches

Red flag 1: Selling llms.txt as a visibility fix

Proposed by Jeremy Howard on September 3, 2024, /llms.txt is auto-generated by Yoast SEO, AIOSEO, Mintlify, and GitBook. However, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity have not said they read third-party llms.txt files, and Google's 2026 documentation states Google Search ignores them. Google's John Mueller (April 17, 2025) compared llms.txt to the keywords meta tag, and Gary Illyes (August 1, 2025) compared it to the 1990s keywords meta tag. Using May 2026 data, Ahrefs studied 137,210 domains: 28% published a valid llms.txt, 97% of those valid files got zero requests that month, and Slackbot fetched llms.txt more than PerplexityBot. Readable reported that it analysed 2 million AI agent requests and found none for llms.txt; an October 3, 2026 Zenodo preprint found an unannounced /llms.txt across 7 sites was requested twice.

Red flag 2: Charging extra for "AI Schema"

Google's 2026 AI optimization guide states structured data is not required for generative AI search and no special schema.org markup is needed. When Ahrefs compared 1,885 pages adding JSON-LD against 4,000 matched controls, AI Overview citations changed by -4.6%, AI Mode by +2.4%, and ChatGPT by +2.2% (the last two not statistically different from zero). A 2026 Roskilde University trial of 8 synthetic brands (4 with Schema.org) found no evidence that markup improved visibility in Gemini with Google Search grounding. OpenAI has never said ChatGPT parses JSON-LD; Mark Williams-Cook hid a fake address in deliberately invalid JSON-LD and ChatGPT and Perplexity returned it, which suggests they read the block as plain text in the HTML rather than as Schema.org data.

Red flag 3: Guaranteed citations or single-screenshot reporting

No agency can guarantee ChatGPT citations. A single screenshot is not proof an edit worked.

Step 5: How to check your agency's results yourself

Verify agency work by repeatedly testing buyer questions. Add your website and customer questions to FoundByChat (free to start, no password or credit card), which queries ChatGPT with web search every 2 hours from the United States (English) or the Netherlands (Dutch).

Each check logs if your pages were "Found" or "Cited", plus their usual search position. It lists your "Pages in ChatGPT's index" with the title and snippet ChatGPT keeps, and emails you on "New in the index", "Snippet changed", or "No search results" when ChatGPT returns no web results three checks in a row; the first check sets the baseline. You can use these records to review your SEO or GEO partner's work. See SEO in 2026.

FOUNDBYCHAT

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We ask ChatGPT your questions every 2 hours and mail you what its index picked up or rewrote. Free to start: sign in with Google or an email link.

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Questions

What is the difference between a GEO agency, an AEO agency, and an AI SEO agency?

GEO, AEO, and AI SEO are terms to consider when looking for help with AI search visibility. Consider checking OAI-SearchBot access and publishing clear facts on your pricing, product, and help pages.

Should I pay an agency to create an llms.txt file or custom JSON-LD schema for ChatGPT?

No. Ahrefs' study of 137,210 domains found that 97% of valid published llms.txt files received zero requests in May 2026, and Ahrefs' study of 1,885 pages adding JSON-LD showed a +2.2% change in ChatGPT citations that was not statistically different from zero.

Which pages on my website should a GEO agency optimize first?

Start with your pricing pages, product pages, and help documentation. In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 4,203 labelled search results, ChatGPT cited 51.2% of retrieved vendor pricing pages, 28.4% of retrieved vendor product pages, 23.0% of retrieved docs and help pages, and 14.5% of retrieved vendor blog posts.

Does blocking GPTBot stop my website from showing up in ChatGPT search?

The free GEO audit checks robots.txt rules for GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot. OAI-SearchBot is OpenAI's search crawler; the audit also checks robots.txt rules for ChatGPT-User.