What it costs to get cited by AI.
AEO, answer engine optimization (what some call GEO), is the newest line item in marketing and the most secretive about price. The category mostly hides behind discovery calls, partly because the work is new and partly because vague pricing is easier to inflate. Here's what the numbers look like where they exist, and why we price it the opposite way.
Answer engine optimization (AEO, also called GEO) is mostly sold by discovery call, but where prices exist: a one-time audit runs $1,500-$5,000, mid-market retainers $3,000-$8,000/mo, and enterprise $10,000-$30,000+. Most agencies bolt it onto SEO as a 20-30% surcharge. Space & Story bakes AEO into every build and plan, from the $60 Care plan up, and runs the off-site citation work on the Authority plan.
of US searches now end without a click
Semrush, 2025
of Google searches show an AI Overview, up from ~4% a year earlier
Semrush / Ahrefs, 2025
higher conversion from AI-search visitors than from a Google click (vendor-reported)
Conductor / ALM, 2025
year-over-year growth in AI referral traffic in 2025
Digiday / Superprompt, 2025
of CMOs plan to increase AEO/GEO investment in 2026
Conductor State of AEO, 2026
of all AI referral traffic comes from ChatGPT
Digiday, 2025
What actually drives the price.
On-site vs off-site
Adding schema and an llms.txt to your own site is the cheap, table-stakes half. The expensive, effective half is off-site: getting mentioned where the models actually pull from. An agency selling you "AEO" by adding schema is doing a fraction of the job.
Measurement
You can't improve what you can't see, and the tools to watch AI visibility run $29-$499/mo on their own. That cost is usually invisible until you're already paying it on top of a retainer. Ours is included.
Content built to be quoted
AEO copy isn't keyword copy. It's answer-shaped, written so a model can lift a clean, correct paragraph straight into its response, and it carries schema and entity grounding. That's more work than a blog post, which is part of why the category charges a premium.
What the AEO / GEO market charges in 2026
A report and a fix list. Some gig-economy audits go as low as $150.
Basic AI-visibility tracking plus foundational optimization.
Tracking, competitive analysis, content, and schema. The credible center.
Full coverage across every engine, technical implementation, infrastructure.
The most common model: a surcharge on an existing retainer.
Otterly, AthenaHQ, Profound. Monitoring only, with no one acting on it.
How we price it: we don't
Everyone else sells AEO as a tax on top of SEO. We build from it. The structured data, llms.txt, AI-bot allowlist, and answer-shaped copy that make a site citable are in every build at no extra charge, and the monthly AI-traffic report is in every plan from $60/mo up. The off-site half, the part that moves the needle, lives on the Authority plan.
- On-site AEO (schema, llms.txt, allowlist, answer-shaped copy): included in every build
- Monthly AI-traffic report across 10+ crawlers: included from the $60 Care plan
- Off-site citation work (Reddit, Wikipedia, digital PR, research): the Authority plan
- Most AI citations come from third-party sources, not your own site, so the off-site work is where the gains are
What the market bills separately.
The sticker price is rarely the real price. These are the add-ons that show up later on someone else's invoice, and don't on ours.
The rule of the house
Whatever the market charges, we quote below what you're paying now. Tell us your current spend, we'll send back our number. The math works in your favour.
Questions, answered straight.
What is AEO and how is it different from SEO?
AEO, answer engine optimization, is the work of becoming something an AI engine will cite by name when it answers a question, instead of a blue link on page two. It's structured data, clean HTML, entity-grounded copy, and answer-shaped paragraphs a model can lift directly. The same work tends to lift your ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview presence together.
How much does AEO or GEO cost?
The category is deliberately vague on price, but where numbers exist: a one-time AEO audit runs $1,500-$5,000, mid-market AEO/GEO retainers $3,000-$8,000/mo, and enterprise $10,000-$30,000+. Most agencies sell it as a 20-30% surcharge on an existing SEO retainer. We build from AEO instead of taxing it on top, and it's included at every tier.
Why does AEO matter now?
Because the click is disappearing. Around 58% of US searches now end without one, AI Overviews show on roughly a quarter of Google searches, and AI referral traffic grew several hundred percent in 2025. The traffic that does come through AI converts far better than a cold Google click. Being the brand the AI recommends is the new shelf position.
Can you prove AEO actually works?
We run it on ourselves. About 32% of Space & Story's own traffic comes from AI engines, more than its SEO traffic, which is the bar we build everyone else against. No other studio selling AEO shows that on its own analytics.
Most AEO happens off your own site. Do you do that part?
Yes, on the Authority plan. The majority of AI citations come from third-party sources, not your website: Reddit, Wikipedia, and earned media. Adding schema to your own site is the start; we also do the Reddit and Quora seeding, Wikipedia entity work, digital PR, and original research that earn the off-site citations.
What tools do I need to track AI visibility?
None separately. Standalone AI-visibility tools run $29-$499/mo (Otterly, AthenaHQ, Profound). Your monthly AI-traffic report, covering Human, SEO, and AI traffic across 10+ crawlers, is included via our own cite-met platform from the $60 Care plan up.
website.
Lower invoice.
Get a free 24-page AEO audit. No card. No call. Just the report.
We rebuild small business websites for AI search and keep them ranked monthly. The audit is free, the proposal comes in below your current spend, and the work is verifiable on four live case studies.