Best Practices for Selecting an AEO Agency in 2026: The Checklist

And yes, I know. Our editor, David Quaid, has spent years telling people that SEO is a system, not a checklist. He is right. A checklist for doing the work is a myth. A checklist for the person paying for it is just due diligence.

So if you find yourself in a meeting and somebody is pushing snake oil across the table, this is the page to have open. Tick the boxes. If an agency misses more than two of its own, keep looking.

Before selecting an AEO agency: take your own baseline

Before selecting an AEO agency, take your own baseline, because you can't judge a pitch without one.

• Write down 20 to 30 questions your buyers would ask an AI engine. Include "best X for Y" and "X vs Y".
• Run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google. Note who gets named and which pages get cited.
• Run them again next week. Answers move. In our September 2026 AI Visibility Index, only 23 of the 426 agency recommendations we recorded were made by all four engines.
• Check Bing Webmaster Tools and Search Console for the pages that already show up in AI answers. Both reports are free.

Best practices for checking an AEO agency's evidence

The best practice for checking an AEO agency's evidence is to ask for it in writing and open every link yourself.

• They rank for something themselves. Search for them. If they can't be found, how will you be?
• They name a client in your industry, with results. A service page that says "we work with dentists" is not a case study.
• They show proof of AI search results: the questions, the engines, the dates. 104 of the 345 providers eligible for an EliteAEO ranking publish this.
• They can name who does the technical SEO, the content and the links.
• They show you a real client report, with the prompts and the cited sources in it. Not a "visibility score" with no method behind it. Google's advice is to think critically about any claim you hear, and that includes a score.
• They have reviews or profiles on sites they don't control.

Best practices for the AEO agency contract in 2026

The best practice for an AEO agency contract in 2026 is to keep the first one short and specific.

• The price is in writing. 99 of the 345 eligible providers publish a starting price, and the median monthly fee is $1,500.
• The prompt set, the engines and the report format are written into the contract.
• The first term is 90 days, with a way out.
• You own the tracking data, the accounts and the content.
• No result is "guaranteed". Google's own advice on hiring an SEO says "no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google". Nobody can guarantee a ChatGPT answer either. A refund clause is a different thing: that is a promise about the contract, and a good sign.

Selecting an AEO agency: the answers that end the meeting

When you are selecting an AEO agency, a few answers should end the meeting on the spot. No boxes for these. One is enough.

• "AEO replaces SEO." Google says optimizing for AI search is "still SEO".
• "We have a special relationship with Google." Or with OpenAI. They don't.
• "Our llms.txt file gets you into AI answers." Google Search ignores those files, and says so.
• "We ranked first on our own list of the best AEO agencies." Oh, dear.

That is 15 boxes: 4 for you and 11 for the agency. An agency that ticks 9 or more of its 11 is worth a second call. Start with the ones we have already checked: you can search every AEO agency profile by industry and location, and the longer guide to evaluating an AEO agency shows what a strong answer looks like on each point. The dataset figures come from the State of the AEO Agency Market 2026.

References

• Google Search Central: Do you need an SEO?
• Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search