GEO services: what good AI visibility work actually includes.

The proposals look alike. A free “AI visibility score”, a dashboard of prompts, an llms.txt file and a monthly fee, often sold as a separate service next to the SEO you already pay for. What they rarely explain is which part of the work actually changes whether ChatGPT or Google’s AI Mode mentions you, and how you would know.

This guide is for marketing leads and founders who are about to buy GEO services, or who already pay for SEO and wonder what is missing. We built it from primary sources: Google’s guide to generative AI features in Search (updated in July 2026), OpenAI’s and Perplexity’s crawler documentation, Microsoft’s AI reporting in Bing Webmaster Tools and the research paper that named the field. We combined that with how we run SEO and AI search programmes at Viralistic in Amsterdam. If you want the conceptual comparison first, read SEO vs GEO. This piece is about the service: what to ask for, what to skip and what to pay.

What are GEO services?

GEO services are the work that makes AI systems find your website, understand your business correctly and use your pages as sources when they write an answer. You compete for a mention or a linked citation inside the answer rather than a position in a list of blue links. The same work is sold as AI visibility services, AI SEO services, AEO (answer engine optimisation) services or LLM SEO. In practice, it is one discipline.

The engines that matter are Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. The term itself comes from the 2023 paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization by Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors, accepted at KDD 2024. They describe generative engines as systems that gather information and summarise it with large language models.

For Google, most of this is SEO. Google’s guide Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search asks whether SEO is still relevant for generative AI search and answers with a clear yes, because the features “are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems.” A GEO service that ignores your SEO foundation is selling the roof without the house.

What a good GEO service includes

A serious GEO service delivers six things. Each has a clear output you can check, and each is grounded in what the platforms themselves document.

Crawler access and rendering

An assistant can only cite what it can fetch. Google’s own checklist includes making sure crawling is allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure. That second layer is easy to miss, because a bot filter can block AI crawlers without anyone noticing.

The distinction that matters most is search versus training. OpenAI’s crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot surfaces websites in ChatGPT search, and sites that opt out of it “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links.” GPTBot collects training data, and blocking it does not remove you from ChatGPT search. PerplexityBot plays the search role for Perplexity, which states it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.

Rendering is the other check. A December 2024 study by Vercel and MERJ found that none of the major AI crawlers rendered JavaScript at the time, including OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. If your service descriptions only appear after scripts run, they may not exist for those crawlers. Our guide to a href SEO covers the link side of the same problem.

Entity and business data

An entity is anything that can be identified without ambiguity: your company, founder, services and location. When the facts about your entity disagree across the web, an assistant hedges or repeats the wrong version. Entity work means one name, one description and one set of facts on your site, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories and partner pages. Google names Business Profile and Merchant Center as ways to appear in AI responses, and Microsoft points local businesses to Bing Places. Organization structured data helps Google disambiguate your company from others with a similar name.

Content that gets cited

Google’s guide is blunt about what wins over time: unique, non-commodity content. “Don’t just recycle what others on the internet have already said, or could easily be produced by a generative AI model.” In the GEO paper, citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics were the strongest of nine tested methods, with a 30 to 40 percent relative improvement on the main visibility metric, while keyword stuffing gave little to no improvement. A good service rewrites your core pages so they answer first, show who is behind them and back every claim with evidence. It does not mass-produce thin pages. For premium brands, that expertise usually lies in craft, materials and process, as our guide to SEO for luxury brands explains.

Bing, Copilot and freshness

Microsoft says Copilot is powered by Bing’s search index, and OpenAI says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with third-party search providers, listing Microsoft among them. A GEO service should therefore set up Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow. In its AI Performance announcement, Microsoft describes IndexNow as a way to notify participating search engines when content is added, updated or removed, so AI systems reference the current version of a page.

What to leave out of a GEO proposal

Google’s guide has a section called “Mythbusting generative AI search”. For Google Search, it says you can skip chunking content into tiny pieces, rewriting content just for AI, seeking inauthentic mentions, special schema.org markup and AI text files such as llms.txt. Our SEO vs GEO guide walks through each one. When they appear in a proposal as priced line items, ask what is left once you remove them.

Two more red flags. A separate page for every fan-out question breaks Google’s scaled content abuse policy if the aim is to manipulate rankings or AI responses. And any guarantee of a citation is a promise nobody can keep: OpenAI writes that placement in ChatGPT search is not guaranteed, and Google writes that no one can guarantee a first place in its results. We treat llms.txt as a ten-minute optional extra on the sites we build, because other assistants make their own choices. Our help article on getting cited by AI search shows the setup.

How AI visibility is measured

Measurement is where GEO services are genuinely new, and where you should expect first-party data rather than a proprietary score.

1. Google Search Console. The Generative AI performance report has been available to all websites since 31 August 2026. It shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. The same day, Google finished rolling out a Search generative AI control under Settings, which includes your site by default.
2. Bing Webmaster Tools. AI Performance launched in public preview in February 2026 with total citations, average cited pages, page-level citation activity and a sample of grounding queries across Copilot, Bing’s AI summaries and select partners. In June 2026 Microsoft added intents, topics, citation share and a compare view, also in preview.
3. Referral traffic and a fixed prompt sample. Track visits from ChatGPT and Perplexity in your analytics, and ask the same 10 to 20 buyer questions every month. Record whether you are named, which page is cited and whether the facts are right. Answers vary between sessions, so judge patterns over months.

Then connect it to revenue. Google reports that clicks from results pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, meaning people spend more time on the site. A good monthly report puts AI impressions, citations and qualified enquiries side by side.

SEO and AI visibility services in the Netherlands

For Dutch companies, AI search is no longer an English-only question. Google began rolling out AI Mode in the Netherlands, in Dutch, on 8 October 2025. Your buyers can now ask long, comparative questions in their own language and get one generated answer, which makes the Dutch version of your site as important as the English one.

Three things change the work for businesses here:

1. Two languages, one set of facts. If you run a Dutch and an English site and prices, services or team details differ between them, assistants pick one version or hedge. A good service audits both.
2. Local and international profiles. Google Business Profile, Bing Places, LinkedIn and Dutch directories should describe the same company. For a business that sells across Europe, so should the English-language partner and event pages that mention you.
3. One partner instead of two. Splitting “SEO” and “GEO” across agencies tends to produce two strategies and gaps in between. Google’s own checklist for hiring an SEO asks whether advice on AEO or GEO is consistent with its official guidance on generative AI features. One team that owns both surfaces can answer that question.

Being nearby helps with workshops and context, but the work itself does not depend on your city. What matters is experience with your market, your languages and the engines your buyers use. Sector matters as well: for B2B software buyers, AI chatbots are now the top source shaping vendor shortlists, as our guide to SEO for software companies shows.

What GEO services cost

GEO services should cost roughly what a strong SEO programme costs, because most of the work is the same. We have not found an independent price survey for GEO in the Netherlands; published price lists come from providers themselves. These are the factors that drive the fee:

• The size and technical state of your site, including how much depends on JavaScript.
• The number of languages and markets you cover.
• How many core pages need rewriting with first-hand expertise and sources.
• How much reputation work is needed: press, partners, events and reviews.
• How many engines and prompts you want measured each month.

At Viralistic, AI visibility is part of our SEO programme, not a separate line item. SEO starts at a few hundred euros per month for a focused programme and grows with scope. If you are quoted a separate GEO retainer on top of existing SEO, ask for the list of tasks that your SEO does not already cover.

How we help

At Viralistic, SEO and AI search are one discipline, which we call SEO & AIO. One strategic lead shapes positioning, technical foundation and content, so the same work earns rankings in Google and a place in AI answers. The sites we design in Figma and build in Astro are generated as static HTML, so every crawler can read the full text without running JavaScript. Our webdesign page explains how we build.

For SilverDrive, a premium chauffeur service, we ran a three-phase SEO growth programme. In the words of the case: “After the first phase we moved the content strategy towards city-to-city trips, so SilverDrive shows up both in Google and in AI answers such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.”

If you are comparing providers, read what to expect from an SEO specialist and what SEO optimisation covers in practice, or go straight to our SEO approach. Plan a strategic call and we will show you what AI assistants currently say about your brand, in Dutch and in English.

Frequently asked questions

What are generative engine optimization services?

Generative engine optimization services improve how AI systems such as Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot find, understand and cite your business. The work covers crawler access, rendering, consistent entity data, content with first-hand expertise and sources, Bing setup and measurement. For Google, most of it is SEO, because its AI features run on its core ranking systems.

Can ChatGPT do SEO for me?

ChatGPT can help with research, outlines, drafts and checks, but it cannot supply what AI answers need most from you: first-hand experience, your own data and a clear point of view. Google’s guide says AI-assisted content must meet its Search Essentials and spam policies, and warns against content a generative AI model could easily produce. Use it as a tool, not as the author.

How much do GEO services cost?

GEO services cost roughly what a strong SEO programme costs, because the work largely overlaps. The fee depends on the size and technical state of your site, the number of languages, how many pages need rewriting and how much reputation work is needed. At Viralistic, AI visibility is included in SEO, which starts at a few hundred euros per month.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Technical fixes can be picked up quickly. OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours for its systems to adjust after a robots.txt change, while Google notes that recrawling can take anywhere from several days to several months. Content and reputation work takes longer, because assistants need to find, trust and reuse it. Judge progress over months, not single answers.

What does an entity SEO specialist do?

An entity SEO specialist makes sure search engines and AI systems recognise your company, people, products and locations as clearly defined things with consistent facts. That means aligning your website, structured data, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, LinkedIn and directory listings, and removing outdated versions. The goal is that an assistant describes you correctly instead of guessing or mixing you up with someone else.

Is GEO worth it for a small business in the Netherlands?

Often, yes. In the GEO paper, adding citations raised the visibility of the fifth-ranked source by 115 percent while the top-ranked source lost 30 percent, so evidence can beat position. A small business with real expertise, clear facts and a crawlable site can be cited next to larger competitors. Start with the free checks: crawler access, Search Console and a monthly prompt sample.