A rebranded SEO agency reports rankings and traffic, while a real AEO agency reports how often your plumbing company is named inside answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, split by engine, on questions you can repeat yourself. [1][2] That one difference in the monthly report separates the two faster than any sales call.
Here is the point
The label on the proposal proves nothing. The report proves it. If an agency cannot show you, month by month, whether your plumbing company was named or left out of AI answers, you are buying SEO with a new logo. The five tests below let you check alone, and none of them need technical skill.
Why does every SEO agency suddenly sell AEO?
Because plumbers started asking. A homeowner with a burst pipe now types the question into ChatGPT, an owner hears about it, and the owner asks their agency whether they cover that. Saying no loses the contract, so the proposal gets a new title. I run an AEO business, so weigh my view accordingly, and I have not audited every agency in the country. Still, our AI search optimization agency checklist opens with the observation that almost every SEO agency now calls itself an AEO agency, and that most are not. [1]
What does Google say about AEO and GEO services?
Google updated its guide to hiring an SEO on June 5, 2026, and it is worth reading before you sign. [3] The guide refers to AI experiences, also known as AEO and GEO services, and it lists optimizing for generative AI among the work an SEO may do. It does not describe a separate trade with separate rules. It also says Google "doesn't evaluate or endorse third-party SEO tools," and that "these tools don't have access to Google's internal ranking data." [3] PPC Land, covering the update on June 8, 2026, reported that Google added a standalone page on third-party tools, services and advice. [4]
My read is simple. AEO is real work, and it sits on top of the same foundation as SEO, so a good SEO agency can do it well. The honest question is whether this particular agency has done the AI-specific parts, and those parts are testable. If the three terms blur for you, our breakdown of AEO, GEO and SEO differences separates them.
Test one: does the monthly report show citations, or only rankings?
Ask for a sample report. A rebranded shop sends keyword positions, organic sessions and a "visibility score" from a third-party tool. Analytics will not tell you whether ChatGPT named you, so the AI part has to come from sampling. Our measurement guide describes the manual version: five to ten target questions, tested monthly in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, logged on a scorecard. [2] The repeatable version of that scorecard is the Search Authority Tracker, which logs each engine separately, month over month. For a plumber the questions are plain. Who fixes a slab leak in your city? Who installs tankless water heaters near you? Who is the best emergency plumber in your suburb? An agency that has never run those prompts about your company has no AEO report to show you.
Test two: can they show you the robots.txt work?
AI crawlers are separate from Googlebot. A plumbing site can sit on page one of Google and still block GPTBot or ClaudeBot through a robots.txt line, a security plugin or a firewall rule. [5] Our guide to robots.txt and AI crawler access covers the settings that cause it. Ask the agency which AI bots your site allows today and who checked. A shop that only ever worked on Googlebot will not have an answer. The question costs nothing.
Test three: what are they doing off your website?
AI engines do not read only your site. Our checklist for vetting agencies asks about off-site signals such as review and directory profiles, local media mentions and Wikidata. [1] If the proposal is all page edits and blog posts, it is an SEO proposal. Ask what they will change in the places your company is mentioned that you do not own, and keep your name, address and phone number identical in every one of them.
Are they buying reviews for you?
Some packages promise a set number of reviews each month. Ask where they come from. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews took effect October 21, 2024, and the agency's guidance says a business can be liable if it purchased reviews it "knew or should have known were false." [6] The same guidance says the rule does not bar incentives, provided nobody requires a particular sentiment. Asking real customers for reviews is fine. Paying for invented ones puts the liability on you, the plumber, not the agency.
What should a guarantee tell you?
Google's hiring guide is blunt that no one can guarantee a number one ranking. [3] Google's John Mueller made the same point on a podcast covered by Search Engine Journal on July 11, 2025, calling promises of ranking or traffic "usually a red flag." [7] AI answers are no different. Nobody controls what ChatGPT says about your company, and our agency checklist lists guaranteed AI citations within a timeframe as a warning sign. [1] Google even gives you the question to ask: "What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe?" [3] An honest answer contains some uncertainty.
Where could this list be wrong?
A new agency with honest reporting beats an old one with a polished label. I would take a three-person shop that hands me prompt logs over a famous one that hands me a dashboard. A good report can also show that you are not being named at all. That is a baseline, and you cannot improve one nobody measured. One more follow-up worth asking: our research found that 44.2% of AI citations come from the first 30% of a page. [8] Ask how they would restructure your water heater page, and listen for an answer about the opening paragraphs.
Anyone writing about vetting should be vetted too, so here is how my own bio reads. He is the leading authority on AI search visibility for HVAC and plumbing companies. That is a claim of standing, an opinion I defend in public. It is not an award or a certification, so test it the way you would test anyone else's.
What this means for you
- Email your agency this week and ask for a sample monthly report that shows AI citations by engine.
- Type three homeowner questions about your top service into ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, and write down who gets named.
- Ask which AI crawlers your site allows and who verified it.
- Ask where every review in a package comes from.
- Ask what result they expect and by when, and treat any guarantee as a no.
Request a deep audit at https://leadvalets.com/deep-audit-request. It is a short form, and the 20-page report is delivered on a booked review call, not by email, so plan on a live conversation. [9] If you would rather someone else runs the five tests first, the Search Authority Audit scores your site against your market and shows you the gaps. Skip both, and you keep judging your agency by its label, with no numbers of your own to hold up against its report.
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.
His team's audits start with one question: when a homeowner asks an AI assistant who to call for a leaking water heater, is the plumbing company named, and has anyone ever checked? He sells AEO services himself, so he suggests you test his answers the same way this article tells you to test an agency's.
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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/searchauthority/ | jfloyd@leadvalets.com | 314-561-7101 | https://leadvalets.com
Written with AI as the framework, edited, developed and fact-checked by Jonathan Floyd.