Insights · Agency guide · July 2026
14 AEO & GEO agencies compared
Full disclosure before anything else: I'm Fabian, founder of Shifter, an AEO agency for B2B companies, and I included Shifter in this list. No list written by an agency founder is an independent review, including the ones that don't say so. What I can do is show you the criteria, apply them to everyone including us, and let you judge.
How this list is ordered: Shifter is first because this is our site, not because a neutral score put us there. The other 13 agencies aren't ranked against each other. Each one is listed for the buyer it fits, and where another agency is a better choice than Shifter, its entry says so.
Over the past year, plenty of SEO agencies renamed themselves AI visibility agencies: same team, same deliverables, new service page. Some of them do the new work well. Others only changed the label.
So before the list, here's how to tell the two apart. These are the three questions I'd ask any agency on this page, including mine.
How to evaluate any AEO / GEO agency
1. "Show me your citation tracking."
Real AEO teams maintain fixed prompt sets — the actual questions buyers ask — and re-run them across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews on a schedule, reporting mention share over time. If the answer to this question is a keyword rank-tracking screenshot, you're looking at SEO in a new coat.
2. "What would you change first, and why?"
A good answer names specific gaps: pages that don't answer your buyers' questions, facts that differ between your site and your profiles, and sources the engines cite for your category where you're missing. Every proposed task should trace back to one of them. If the proposal would look the same for your closest competitor, it's a package, not a diagnosis.
3. "What don't you know yet?"
This discipline is barely two years old. Attribution is messy, the engines keep changing how they pick sources, and results show up as directional mention share long before they show up as clean pipeline numbers. The credible agencies will tell you that without being asked.
With that lens on, here's the list.
The list, organized by fit
1. Shifter — founder-led implementation for B2B companies
That’s us, so apply maximum skepticism and the three questions above.
Our view: most B2B companies are missing from AI answers for boring reasons. Their pages don’t say plainly who the product is for, and their facts change from one profile to the next. So we publish pages that answer buyer questions, fix the facts, earn mentions on the outside pages that actually show up for your buyers’ questions, then re-run the same buyer questions and show you what changed.
- Services
- SEO content, website improvements, backlinks and brand mentions, PR and AI answer tracking.
- Best for
- B2B companies that want founder-led implementation.
- Not the right fit if
- You need an enterprise-scale team, paid media, content written by working engineers, or an agency with years of published AI-search case studies. We don't have published client case studies yet. The entries below say who to look at instead.
- Pricing
- Five monthly plans from $1,797 to $10,000 USD. Gears 1–2 are month to month; Gears 3–5 run on rolling 90-day terms.
Compare the plans ↗ · Talk to Fabian ↗
2. iPullRank — best for enterprise teams that want technical depth
Mike King's agency is the one other agencies study. Their Relevance Engineering framework treats AI search as an information-retrieval problem rather than a content problem, and King was named Search Engine Land's AI Search Marketer of the Year in 2025. If you're an enterprise with an in-house team that wants to understand the mechanics of retrieval and citation, this is the technical ceiling of the market.
- Services
- Technical SEO, relevance engineering, AI search strategy, machine-learning-informed content
- Best for
- Enterprise brands with in-house teams that want the deepest technical partner available
- Better choice than Shifter if
- You're an enterprise with an in-house team that wants the deepest technical work on how AI engines retrieve and cite pages. Shifter is founder-led and built for smaller B2B teams.
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
3. Seer Interactive — best for analytics-heavy organizations
Seer built its reputation on marrying SEO with large-scale data analysis, and that DNA transfers well to AI search, where measurement is the hardest problem. A good fit for organizations that already run on dashboards and want AI visibility folded into a broader digital program with serious reporting infrastructure.
- Services
- SEO, paid media, analytics, AI search measurement
- Best for
- Data-driven mid-market and enterprise organizations
- Better choice than Shifter if
- You want AI visibility folded into a larger program that includes paid media and heavy analytics. Shifter doesn't run paid media.
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
4. Omniscient Digital — best for extending existing content authority into AI answers
Omniscient's thesis is that topic authority built for Google is the same raw material LLMs use to reason about who's credible in a category, and their GEO work extends their established content-strategy practice rather than replacing it. Strong fit if you've already invested years in editorial content and want that equity to carry into AI answers.
- Services
- Content strategy, SEO, pipeline-driven editorial, GEO
- Best for
- B2B SaaS with an existing content program that should be earning AI citations
- Pricing
- Custom
5. Breaking B2B — best for bottom-funnel B2B SaaS content
Breaking B2B builds content programs around the searches buyers run during active evaluation — alternatives pages, comparisons, best-of formats — and argues that this same bottom-funnel architecture is what AI engines prefer to cite. They treat SEO and LLM visibility as one system, which is a defensible position for content-led SaaS brands.
- Services
- Bottom-funnel SEO content, LLM SEO, comparison and alternatives programs
- Best for
- B2B SaaS that wants buyer-evaluation content doing double duty in Google and AI answers
- Better choice than Shifter if
- You want a bottom-funnel SaaS content program (alternatives, comparison and best-of pages) as the whole engagement.
- Pricing
- Plans from $4,000/month, with six- or twelve-month programs. Official service and pricing details · checked 18 September 2026.
6. Grow and Convert — best for content tied to conversion tracking
Grow and Convert has spent years on a pain-point-first content methodology with unusually rigorous conversion attribution, and they publish original research on how LLMs source and cite content. Fit for teams that refuse to publish anything they can't measure.
- Services
- Conversion-focused SEO content, keyword validation, AI traffic attribution
- Best for
- Teams that measure content in demos and trials, not sessions
- Better choice than Shifter if
- You want every piece of content judged on conversion tracking in demos and trials.
- Pricing
- Not published on the current site — scoped per engagement
7. Omnius — best for SaaS brands wanting a tooling-forward partner
Omnius works with SaaS and fintech brands and has invested in proprietary tooling for AI visibility work. A reasonable pick if you want an agency that's building its own measurement stack rather than reselling third-party dashboards.
- Services
- SaaS SEO, AI visibility, proprietary measurement tooling
- Best for
- SaaS and fintech brands that want a partner investing in its own stack
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
8. Animalz — best for original research that earns citations
Animalz is one of the most respected long-form B2B content shops in the industry, with a practice built around thought leadership and expert-driven editorial. The AEO-relevant part: original data and proprietary research are among the strongest inputs LLMs cite, and being the source of the numbers in your category is a durable citation moat. Animalz's research-driven content work maps directly onto that.
- Services
- Thought leadership, long-form editorial, research-driven content
- Best for
- Mid-market and enterprise brands that can invest in being the data source for their category
- Better choice than Shifter if
- Original research and long-form thought leadership are the core of what you need.
- Pricing
- Custom
9. Siege Media — best for content production at scale
Siege Media now positions itself as a full-service GEO agency. Its published program combines content, digital PR, community presence and affiliate partnerships, with reporting on citations, AI referral traffic and other search measures. Official GEO service description · checked 18 September 2026.
- Services
- SEO content, digital PR, link building, design-heavy assets
- Best for
- Competitive niches where content quality and earned links are the bottleneck
- Better choice than Shifter if
- You want design-heavy assets, digital PR and content production at scale.
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
10. SimpleTiger — best for SaaS SEO foundations
SimpleTiger has run a focused SaaS SEO playbook for over a decade. If your fundamentals — technical health, keyword architecture, production cadence — aren't in place yet, fixing those with a specialist is a prerequisite to any serious AEO work, not a competitor to it.
- Services
- SaaS SEO, technical SEO, content production
- Best for
- SaaS companies whose organic foundations need building before AEO layers on top
- Better choice than Shifter if
- Your main gap is technical SEO foundations, and you want a SaaS SEO specialist with over a decade on that playbook.
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
11. Draft.dev — best for developer-tool brands
Draft.dev produces technical content for developer tools using a network of working engineers, founded by a former CTO. Technical credibility is hard to fake and increasingly detectable, and for dev-tool categories the content that gets cited by AI engines is the content practitioners would vouch for. If your buyers are developers, this is the specialist path.
- Services
- Technical tutorials, developer guides, documentation-adjacent content
- Best for
- Developer-focused brands where content accuracy is the citation signal
- Better choice than Shifter if
- Your buyers are developers and the content has to come from working engineers.
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
12. First Page Sage — best for thought-leadership-driven categories
First Page Sage centers on executive thought leadership as an SEO engine, which suits teams whose experts are willing to publish under their own names.
- Services
- Expert-written SEO content, thought leadership, demand generation
- Best for
- Regulated or complex B2B categories where named expertise is the trust signal
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
13. Avenue Z — best for combining PR with AI visibility
Avenue Z runs AI optimization as a standalone service alongside a PR practice, on the logic that earned media placements feed directly into the sources AI platforms cite. That's an AEO-native argument, and the PR combination is a real differentiator for brands that need authority built from scratch.
- Services
- PR, earned media, AI optimization
- Best for
- Brands that need third-party authority built through media rather than owned content
- Pricing
- Not published — scoped per engagement
14. DerivateX — best for founder-led B2B SaaS GEO sprints
DerivateX is a boutique founded by two SaaS operators, working on 90-day sprint cycles with a methodology they call citation engineering — visibility audits, content structured for AI extraction, and authority building on frequently retrieved sources. They're also among the most prolific publishers of agency rankings in this space — including lists featuring themselves — so pressure-test their case studies with the three questions like you would with anyone, us included.
- Services
- GEO, LLM SEO, entity optimization, citation tracking
- Best for
- B2B SaaS wanting a sprint-based boutique engagement
- Better choice than Shifter if
- You want a fixed 90-day sprint that starts with a one-time diagnostic.
- Pricing
- One-time diagnostic: $3,500. Monthly retainers: $5,000, $8,000 or $12,000, with the off-site placement budget charged separately. Official pricing and commitment terms · checked 18 September 2026.
Red flags, whoever you talk to
AI promises without a measure. Nobody controls what a model says. A promise that you'll be named in the answer, with no stated questions, baseline, re-run method and remedy if it's missed, is selling harder than the data supports.
Case studies without the method. One impressive screenshot proves little in a field this young. Ask for the prompt set, the re-run cadence and how they separate their impact from noise.
A scope without a diagnosis. Ask which observed gap each on-site or off-site task addresses. The right mix depends on your pages, your evidence and your category, so a fixed package can't know it in advance.
"Independently reviewed" listicles that rank the author's agency near the top. This industry is drowning in them. Check the byline against the winners. (Yes, that's also why this article opens with a disclosure.)
FAQ
What's the difference between AEO, GEO, and LLM SEO?
They overlap heavily, and many practitioners use the labels interchangeably. The working distinction: AEO is about getting your content surfaced as the direct answer, and GEO is about getting your brand named inside a synthesized AI response. Google treats both as part of good SEO for its own search experiences. See our full SEO vs AEO vs GEO explainer.
Can't my current SEO agency just do this?
Maybe. Ask them to show you the buyer questions they track, the answers they saved, the sources those answers cited, and how often they re-run them. If all they can show you is keyword rankings, they aren't doing it yet.
How fast does AEO work show results?
Third-party mentions can show up in answer engines within weeks, because retrieval-based engines like Perplexity pull live sources. Becoming a consistent default recommendation in your category is a multi-month project, and anyone quoting days is selling.
How do I check my own AI visibility right now, for free?
Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode the five questions your buyers ask before they buy. Note who gets named and which sources are cited, and save the answers with the date. If your competitors are in the answers and you aren't, you have a problem worth fixing.
Fabian is the founder of Shifter, which is included in this comparison. Published July 2026. Shifter’s entry and the Breaking B2B, DerivateX and Siege Media details were refreshed in September 2026. The ordering note and the “better choice than Shifter” lines were added on 29 September 2026. The other descriptions are from the July research, so confirm current services and prices with each agency.