Lead The Mood’s GEO service has a published starting reference of €560 per month. When hiring a generative engine optimization agency for 2027, that number needs a scope: questions monitored, engines and languages covered, content produced and responsibility for implementation. A tracking subscription is a different purchase from a team that researches, writes and delivers changes.
This guide explains how to compare AI visibility proposals. It includes a fictional €900 setup, three €950 monthly cycles and a €70 monthly software allowance: €3,960 excluding VAT. This is neither a Lead The Mood tariff nor a market average or promise of citations. Actual 2027 prices and terms are confirmed in the proposal.
Which prices are published?
Our GEO and AI visibility service describes baseline review, entity information, content and monthly monitoring from €560 per month. This reference was checked in October 2026; it does not establish an identical package for every business. Pages, markets and responsibilities are scoped in the proposal. The larger worked example below has its own expressly hypothetical deliverables.
English-language offers illustrate different purchases. 009 Agency publishes a complimentary audit and ongoing work from $3,000 monthly. GEO for B2B bundles GEO into SEO plans including Flagship, advertised at $1,050 monthly with query and production scope described. These specific offers were reviewed in October 2026. They are not Spanish averages or quotations for equivalent services.
The buying lesson is to request verifiable units. A one-off review, an observation panel and a programme including writing and website changes have different costs. If you already commission SEO, identify the research, content and implementation it covers before adding another retainer. A GEO label should not conceal two suppliers billing for the same delivery.
What does a GEO agency deliver?
A commission can combine diagnosis, preparation of company information, page improvements and observation of generated answers. Distinguish recommendations from delivery. A report identifying a problem does not automatically include fixing it, while a content retainer need not include development, translation or coordination across every department in your business.
Before choosing an agency, describe the buyer and the information needed to compare your service. An industrial supplier might provide specifications, applications and supply limitations; a consultancy might provide specialisms and approved examples. These materials support useful content. The work should not involve inventing authority, customers or results to make an answer sound more persuasive.
Technical scope also needs precision. Google’s guidance says AI Overviews and AI Mode retain SEO fundamentals without requiring special files or markup; eligibility does not guarantee appearance. This concerns Google Search. It establishes neither a universal recipe for every engine nor a commercial outcome from installing markup.
The question panel matters
A useful panel starts with questions tied to actual buying decisions: comparing suppliers, understanding compatibility, assessing a service or clarifying conditions. Separate prompts containing your brand from those describing a need without naming it. Getting an answer to repeat a name already supplied in the question differs from discovery by someone unfamiliar with the company.
Our example defines twenty Spanish-language questions for one brand, one domain and the Spanish market. It observes two agreed surfaces: ChatGPT search and Perplexity. Each question is observed three times per surface in each capture. That produces 120 planned attempts, not 120 users, 120 verified demand searches or a representative market survey.
Approve and identify the panel before measuring. Replacing questions to obtain favourable answers breaks the comparison. New buying needs can be introduced as a separate group. Another language needs intent review and its own baseline, rather than combining different questions and audiences into one apparently comparable average.
Provide evidence about the offer
The business supplies approved descriptions, documentation, service conditions and cases it can publish. Those materials help reveal contradictions, gaps and repeated buyer questions. The agency can organise and write; a knowledgeable person at the company validates factual claims. That participation belongs in the schedule and in the real cost of original content.
The Heron AI website project, credited to Bearplus and Kenny Ho and recognised as Awwwards Site of the Day on 12 October 2026, pairs a visual demonstration with product explanation. We use it to inform a brief: what the offer does, where it is used and what requires the user’s approval. It is not evidence of GEO performance.
A screenshot does not independently verify product functionality or how an engine interprets the page. In your project, claims need support from verifiable company information and publishable materials. This image prompts discussion about clear presentation; it does not establish citations, sales, photographic authorship or a connection between that external project and Lead The Mood.
A three-cycle scope
The exercise covers initial diagnosis and three monthly cycles for a service business with an existing website. Setup includes twenty questions, the baseline capture, review of up to ten pages and priorities. There is one initial capture and another at each month-end: four captures with 120 planned attempts each, or 480 attempts overall.
Each monthly cycle includes one original answer-focused article of up to 1,200 words, two improvements to existing pages and a forty-five-minute meeting. The business supplies sources and one consolidated feedback round per delivery. Improvements are limited to copy, internal links, metadata and settings available within the CMS. Redesign, new code and integrations are excluded.
The hypothetical €900 diagnosis allocates €150 to scope definition, €300 to baseline observation, €250 to reviewing information and pages, and €200 to priorities and explanation. The €950 monthly fee allocates €400 to content, €250 to page improvements, €200 to monitoring and €100 to coordination. These are planning assumptions for comparing work, not published LTM rates.
| Item | Illustrative calculation | Three cycles |
|---|---|---|
| Initial preparation | Diagnosis and baseline capture | €900 |
| Monthly work | €950 × 3 months | €2,850 |
| Software allowance | €70 × 3 months; supplier to confirm | €210 |
| Illustrative total | Setup, three cycles and allowance | €3,960 |
The software allowance is not a selected licence or a guarantee that a particular product provides sufficient capacity. A real proposal must identify the tools, limits and payer. This exercise excludes advertising, link purchases, paid placements, translation and public relations. Work involving external sources would need a separate brief with its own scope and approval.
What should reporting show?
Request the exact question, date, engine, query mode, language and available session conditions. Retain answers, sources and classification criteria. Where a model version is not exposed, record that limitation. A failed query must not become a negative answer: report it as an attempt without a valid observation.
| Evidence | What to observe | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Brand mention | Name within a recorded answer | A website link or positive recommendation |
| Own-domain citation | Your URL among linked sources | A visit to that page |
| Accurate description | Details checked against approved information | Control over every future answer |
| Identified visit | An available referral in analytics | All traffic influenced by AI |
| Commercial enquiry | A contact with available source records | An automatically attributable sale or causal effect |
This distinction prevents a mention being presented as a sale. It also exposes an inaccurate description even where name frequency increases. Reports should include favourable and unfavourable examples and explain method changes. If a surface changes behaviour or becomes unavailable, identify the break before presenting percentages as a continuous comparison.
Make the denominator visible
Consider a fictional capture with 120 attempts, ten failures and 110 valid answers. If twenty-two mention the brand, the observed proportion is 20%. If eleven include an own-domain link, the proportion containing that citation is 10%. One answer containing three own-domain links still counts once for this indicator.
These calculations describe that panel, those conditions and that period. They do not mean 20% of all users see your business or that it has won a global market share. Compare captures by engine and question, showing valid observations and failures. With small samples, a modest change may merit investigation before being turned into a commercial conclusion.
Business reporting should separately identify known visits, qualified enquiries and completed sales. Some influence may never appear as an AI referral. Someone can discover the brand in an answer and return through another channel, leaving incomplete attribution. Recognising that limitation is more useful than assigning every additional sale during the period to GEO.
Coordinate SEO and implementation
A page improvement can help a visitor understand the service and also form part of search-related work. Assign one owner and a shared delivery when the SEO agency, web team and GEO supplier overlap. The proposal should identify what is implemented, who reviews it and where changes are recorded, avoiding duplicate tasks or contradictory published information.
Costs increase with additional languages, countries, brands, extensive catalogues or missing approved documentation. They also change when the agency must develop functionality the internal team cannot provide. Requesting a retainer without showing the starting condition leaves it unclear whether quotations concern monitoring, content delivery or an overdue rebuild. Diagnosis should therefore end with actionable priorities and named responsibilities.
Review evidence before renewing
Three cycles let you inspect the agreed work and observations; they do not guarantee a number of mentions within three months. At closure, check what was published, which errors were corrected and what evidence changed. Continuing might require another panel, more documentation or simply keeping existing pages accurate. Renewal should follow a decision rather than an unverifiable promise.
Request an example report before signing. It can use anonymised or fictional information, provided that status is explicit. You should be able to follow a result from the summary to the question and recorded answer. If the agency supplies only an unexplained visibility score, ask for its definition, underlying observations and treatment of missing results.
Agree the handover too: question list, recorded observations, approved final content and change log, within the agreed usage terms. Clarify whether access to a software dashboard ends when the service stops and which records remain exportable. Ownership and continuity matter when comparing a lower monthly fee with a proposal containing more durable evidence.
Separate research from demand
The proposed panel records questions the business considers relevant. Its existence does not establish how many people ask them. Sales conversations and available search information can help prioritise the list while leaving that uncertainty explicit. Ask the supplier why these buying decisions were selected and what evidence would justify changing priorities or stopping the work.
A one-off demonstration can help explore a commission, but it is different from repeated observation. The agency should identify whether it is showing an isolated screenshot, a complete panel or a comparable time series. Checking that a description matches your documentation also does not prove that buyers will encounter it through any other question they might choose.
Finally, make review responsibilities practical. Name the person who can approve descriptions, supply evidence and consolidate feedback. If a claim cannot be supported, the content should reflect that limit rather than fill the gap with an invented case. Approval delays and missing materials affect delivery; record dependencies when agreeing the first cycle instead of treating the agency fee as an unlimited content request.
Prepare a useful agency brief
Send the domain, markets, languages, priority services, available documentation and the person implementing website changes. Explain existing SEO contracts and who validates technical or commercial claims. That allows the proposal to distinguish shared work from additional delivery and to identify what must happen before any observation can be interpreted meaningfully.
Our guide to visibility in AI answers provides broader context. To define investment and deliverables for your company, request an initial review. We can specify what will be measured, which work will be delivered and how the service will be assessed, alongside its scope and limitations.