How Agencies Can Start Offering GEO: From the First Baseline to Monthly Reporting

More clients are asking their agency a question a ranking report can't answer: "Why doesn't ChatGPT ever recommend us?" GEO (generative engine optimization; see the beginner's guide) deals with exactly that: getting a brand mentioned and recommended in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Agencies already have the SEO, content and social skills involved; a GEO service mostly extends that work to AI answers and adds measurement.

This is a practical workflow for advertising agencies, digital marketing firms and SEO or social media agencies. We build a measurement tool, GEO by TriloAI, so we use it as the example; the workflow itself applies to other tools too.

Decide what you are selling: measurement, optimization, or both

• Measurement: ask AI the same set of questions on a schedule and deliver a report. A good way into a pitch, or an add-on to an existing SEO report.
• Optimization: act on the report by improving content, tidying up the facts on the client's site and earning third-party mentions. This is the work agencies already do well.
• Both: measurement as the baseline and optimization as the service, re-measuring with the same questions each month so the client can see before and after.

A tool measures; people make the improvements. That is also how we split the work: GEO by TriloAI is a measurement tool, and hands-on optimization is the agency's service. Reports can carry the agency's own brand and be resold to clients, and we don't contact an agency's clients directly (see the agency plan).

Step 1: measure your own company first

Before measuring a client, run an analysis on your own company. You'll learn what each section of the report means, and you'll run into things you only discover by doing it. That is how we started too (see our own case study).

One example we ran into ourselves: in an October 2026 analysis of our own product, Perplexity did include us in its recommendations for a question about AI visibility tools in Taiwan, but under our company name, TriloAI, not the product name GEO by TriloAI. We hadn't entered that alias, so the report counted it as not mentioned. Client brands are the same: English names, abbreviations, parent-company names and former names can all be what an AI actually uses.

Step 2: pick one pilot client and set a baseline

1. Choose the client: pick one who is willing to cooperate and has clear competitors showing up in AI answers. Start with a market the client already sells in, so the numbers have something to be judged against.
2. Write the questions: use the words the client's buyers actually use, and never include the client's brand name, which would prompt the AI rather than measure it. The GEO by TriloAI setup flow drafts questions across seven types (recommendation, comparison, price, concern, location, long-tail and switching); someone should read every one and ask whether it drifts into an unrelated industry and whether the target audience would really say it. Edit the ones that don't fit or add your own; questions you type yourself are used as written.
3. Add aliases and competitors: in the advanced settings, enter the client's aliases (English name, abbreviation, parent company) and the competitors you want compared. On the brand page you can also pin up to 10 competitors so every later analysis compares against them. The rivals an AI lists aren't always in the same category; social listening tools and AI visibility tools often end up on the same list, and naming competitors keeps the comparison like for like.
4. Choose the market and report language: Taiwan, the US, Japan, Korea, China and Global are supported, and reports can be produced in English, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese or Simplified Chinese. For a client's Japan or Korea market, questions are asked in the local language with local cities (why translated questions don't work).
5. Run the first full analysis: it queries five AI platforms, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude (three for the China market: DeepSeek, Kimi and Qwen), with up to 15 questions and uses 3 credits. That report is your baseline.

Step 3: turn the report into three sentences a client understands

Clients don't need every page. Lead with three things: whether AI mentions and recommends them; who they lose to, and on which questions; and which websites the AI cites. The full walkthrough is in how to present an AI visibility report.

Step 4: design the monthly deliverable

• Keep the questions fixed: before each monthly re-run, check that the questions match last month's. The report only compares against an earlier run whose questions overlap enough, and shows no before-and-after if too many changed; to be sure, enter the same set of questions yourself in step 4 of the setup flow.
• Run several clients together: on the brand page you can group clients with tags and select several brands for one batch analysis.
• Read trends, not single runs: AI answers vary every time, so the report shows a 95% range for the mention rate and marks results "needs confirmation" when that range spans more than one level. In a monthly report, only treat changes whose ranges don't overlap as real.
• Delivery: enter your company name, logo and brand color in account settings and exported PDFs carry your brand in the header and footer. You can also create a share link with an expiry (7, 30 or 90 days, or none), your company name and logo, and the copy, SEO or competitor sections hidden, and revoke it at any time. Share links still live under geotriloai.com, so if the client must not see the tool's name, send the PDF. Whether PDF export and share links are included is spelled out in the quote.

Step 5: pricing and tool costs

How agencies charge clients for GEO varies. One structure that is easy to explain is to quote a one-off audit, a monthly measurement report and optimization work separately, so the client can see what each part pays for. Tool cost is easiest to plan per client per month: each full analysis in GEO by TriloAI uses 3 credits, so 10 clients analyzed once a month means 30 credits a month. Our pricing is by quote, based on the number of brands, markets and analyses per month (plans and quotes); pricing models across the category are compared in how GEO tools charge.

What not to promise a client

• Don't guarantee rankings, timeframes or a percentage lift: AI platforms don't publish their full ranking logic, and answers change from run to run.
• Don't treat one run as a trend: in an internal test in September 2026, we re-asked the same 14 questions once and the mention rate moved from 31.5% to 41.7%.
• Don't claim that llms.txt or structured data gets a brand recommended: Google states that no special files or markup are needed to appear in its AI features (source).
• Don't watch only one platform: within the same scan, results can differ by more than 3x between platforms (our test).

Working with GEO by TriloAI

• We don't compete for your clients: reports can carry your own brand, you can resell them, and we don't contact your clients directly.
• Trial: apply through the agency plan page; once approved, we enable one full analysis (3 credits) on your account.
• Quote-based pricing: fill in the quote form and someone will contact you within one business day; quotes depend on the number of brands, markets and analyses per month.
• Free quick check: the free quick check looks at ChatGPT only and is useful for a first look before a pitch; it is limited to one per email address, so for several client pitches use the agency trial instead.
• Contact: service@triloai.org.

FAQ