That's the whole filter. The rest of this article is how to apply it in a 30-minute sales call without needing to be an SEO yourself.
Why is "best AEO agency" the wrong question for a contractor?
Search for AEO agencies and the lists you'll find are crowded with firms built for software companies and online stores. Their playbook makes sense for those clients: hundreds of informational articles, comparison pages, thought-leadership pieces aimed at people researching a purchase over weeks.
A plumbing company in Indianapolis has a different problem. It needs to be the name an assistant gives when a homeowner in Carmel asks who can fix a slab leak today, or when a facility manager asks Perplexity which commercial plumbers in the area handle backflow testing. Fewer queries. Much higher stakes per query. And a big share of the signal lives off your website entirely, in your Business Profile, your reviews and the directories and local sites that mention you.
Google's own position is blunt. Its guide to generative AI search says optimizing for it "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" (Google Search Central, updated July 10, 2026). We agree, with one amendment for local trades: AEO for a contractor is local SEO plus entity cleanup plus earned mentions, measured in a new way. An agency that sells it as a separate magic layer on top of nothing is selling a label.
What are the two lanes, and why does it matter which one an agency works?
Lane one is Google. AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google's core ranking systems. To show up as a supporting link, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet, and Google adds that a site must be included in generative AI features in Search Console to be eligible at all. Google also names Business Profile data as something that can surface local businesses in AI responses. In this lane, your profile, your reviews and your site's ordinary SEO health do most of the work.
Lane two is everyone else. ChatGPT search partners with third-party search providers and will rewrite a "near me" request into a location query, according to OpenAI's help documentation. OpenAI states that sites opted out of its OAI-SearchBot crawler won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Perplexity says the same about PerplexityBot. Neither one reads your Google Business Profile the way Google does.
There's a technical trap in lane two that most contractors never hear about. When Vercel and MERJ analyzed AI crawler traffic in December 2024, they found none of the major AI crawlers executed JavaScript (Vercel). If your website builds its text in the browser, the way many modern site builders do, an AI crawler may receive a nearly empty page. We found exactly this problem on our own site in 2026 and had to move our page text and metadata to the server before AI crawlers could read it.
Whitespark's 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey captured the split well. Darren Shaw wrote that he'd score Google Business Profile additional categories a zero for ChatGPT but around a three for Google's AI Mode, because only Google can see that data (Whitespark, November 6, 2025). Same factor, two different answers. Your agency should be able to explain that difference without notes.
Test 1: Will they split the plan by lane?
Ask for a one-page plan with two columns: Google AI features, and independent assistants. Every task should land in one column or both, with a reason. A strong agency will put Business Profile categories, services and review work mostly in the Google column, and crawler access, server-rendered text and third-party mentions mostly in the other. A weak one will hand you a single list called "AI optimization."
Test 2: What changes on your site in the first 30 days?
The first month should be unglamorous. Expect them to confirm your robots.txt allows Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, verify that your service text appears in the raw page source, fix indexing errors in Search Console, and make sure each core service has its own page. Whitespark's experts ranked a dedicated page for each service as the second most important factor for AI search visibility, behind only presence on expert-curated "best of" lists. If the 30-day plan is mostly "content calendar," they skipped the plumbing.
Test 3: How do they earn mentions you don't control?
Of the top four AI visibility factors in that same Whitespark survey, three are about other websites: best-of lists, prominence on industry-relevant domains and citations in news, blogs, government sites and associations. So the agency needs a real answer for how you get onto local best-of lists, supplier dealer locators, trade association member directories and local news. Ask what they won't do, too. Google warns that chasing inauthentic mentions isn't as helpful as it might seem, and its spam systems sit underneath its AI features. Paid placement on a network of fake "top 10" sites is the 2026 version of buying links.
Test 4: Can they show you the measurement?
There's no AI rank tracker that sees inside these systems. Google says so directly: no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems. What an honest agency can show you:
- Impressions from the Generative AI performance report in Search Console, which Google rolled out to all sites on August 31, 2026. It counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, not clicks.
- Referral visits from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai in your analytics.
- A monthly prompt log: the same set of questions run in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, with who got named and which sources were cited.
- Calls and booked jobs, because impressions don't pay for trucks.
If their report is a single "AI visibility score" from their own tool with no method behind it, ask how it's calculated. Watch the pause.
Test 5: Do they understand your trade?
Commercial and residential plumbing are practically different businesses online. A facility manager asks about backflow test certification, grease trap service schedules, after-hours response commitments and insurance. A homeowner asks about price ranges, same-day availability and whether you'll deal with the city permit. Assistants answer with whoever publishes clear, specific answers to those exact questions. An agency that can't list the ten questions your buyers ask before calling won't write pages that get cited.
Test 6: What do they guarantee?
The right answer is nothing about rankings or citations. Google's hiring guidance says no one can guarantee a top ranking, and its separate guidance on third-party SEO advice (June 5, 2026) tells business owners to check AEO and GEO claims against official documentation. Guarantees of process are fine: what gets fixed, by when, and what you'll see in the report.
What about a contractor who wants AEO and standard local search together?
Good. That's the only version that works. A contractor in Indianapolis, Kansas City or anywhere else doesn't need two vendors fighting over the same Business Profile. The local SEO foundation (categories, services, service pages, reviews, consistent listings) is also the AI foundation. The extra AEO work is crawler access, answer-first page structure and earned mentions. If you're comparing firms in central Indiana, our Indianapolis plumber marketing page shows how we scope that combined work by suburb.
Where LeadValets fits, honestly
We work only with plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors, and we take one company per trade in each service area. That means we're the wrong call for a software brand or a national retailer, and we'll say so. Our Search Authority Flywheel runs Business Profile, website and AI citation work as one system, and we expect to be held to the same six tests above. For the broader version of this checklist, see what to look for in an AI search optimization agency and our list of marketing agency red flags.
Your next five moves
- Run five buyer questions ("emergency plumber near me," "best commercial plumber in [city]," and three job-specific ones) in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode. Write down every company named and every source cited.
- Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and confirm nothing blocks Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot.
- Right-click a service page, choose "View page source," and search for a sentence from the page. If it's not there, AI crawlers probably can't see it.
- Check Search Console for the Generative AI performance report and note your baseline impressions.
- Print the six tests and use them on every agency call, including ours.
Before your next agency call, run the free Search Authority Audit. It takes about a minute and scores your site on the seven signals AI engines use to decide who to recommend, so you walk into the meeting already knowing your gaps.
Frequently asked questions
What does an AEO agency do for a contractor?
An AEO agency works to get your business named and cited when people ask AI assistants for a contractor. For a local trade, that means fixing crawler access and page structure on your website, cleaning up your Business Profile and listings, and earning mentions on sites the assistants trust. It overlaps heavily with local SEO.
Do I need a separate AEO agency if I already have an SEO company?
Usually not. Ask your current SEO company the six questions in this article. If they can split their plan by lane, confirm AI crawlers can read your site and show you a prompt log, they're already doing AEO. If they can't, that's a gap to close, not a reason to hire a second vendor.
How long does it take to get cited in ChatGPT or Perplexity?
There's no fixed timeline, and anyone quoting one is guessing. Crawler access fixes can take effect quickly once the bots revisit, while earning third-party mentions takes months. Measure monthly with the same prompts, because AI answers change from day to day.
Can an AEO agency guarantee AI assistants will recommend my business?
No. No outside company controls how Google, OpenAI or Perplexity choose sources, and Google states that third-party tools have no access to its internal ranking data. Treat any citation guarantee as a red flag.
Does AEO work for commercial plumbing companies?
Yes, and the opportunity is often bigger because fewer commercial plumbers publish detailed answers. Pages covering backflow testing, grease trap maintenance, after-hours service terms and service area specifics give assistants something concrete to cite when facility managers ask.
About the author
Jonathan Floyd is the Founder and President of LeadValets and the creator of the Search Authority Flywheel, the framework his team uses to build local visibility across Google Business Profile, Google Maps, and AI search.
LeadValets works only with plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors and takes one company per trade in each service area, so the tests in this article are the same ones his team runs on contractors' own profiles, sites and AI answers before recommending any work.
He will also tell you when local search isn't going to move your numbers. That's a shorter conversation than most agencies are willing to have.
Connect on LinkedIn | jfloyd@leadvalets.com | 314-561-7101 | leadvalets.com
Written with AI as the framework: written, edited, developed and fact-checked by Jonathan Floyd.
Related reading
Owners ask this next. These are the answers: