The first wave of businesses asking AI tools who the best agencies are in their category are already doing it. The ones who show up in those answers are not necessarily the biggest agencies or the longest-tenured. They are the ones who did the right work early. If you are trying to find an agency to help you get there, here is what that work actually looks like, and how to tell whether the agency in front of you knows how to do it.
The market for AI visibility agency services is growing fast, and so is the noise around it. Every digital marketing agency in Scottsdale, Phoenix, and the surrounding metro has quietly updated their homepage to include phrases like “AI search optimization” and “generative engine optimization.” Most of them are applying the same SEO tactics they have always used and hoping the new terminology sticks.
The problem is that AI visibility and traditional SEO are different disciplines. They share some overlap. Good content and schema markup help both. But the core work is distinct. SEO optimizes pages for a ranking algorithm. AI visibility optimizes entities for synthesis and citation. An agency that has not done entity optimization, structured citation audits, platform-specific testing, and AI-cited content creation is not an AI visibility agency. It is an SEO agency with a new headline.
Cited Co is a boutique AI visibility agency founded by Lauren Lerner in Scottsdale, Arizona. We specialize in generative engine optimization for service businesses: entity optimization, AI-cited content, schema implementation, and monthly visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. We built this practice from the ground up specifically for AI, not as an add-on to an existing SEO service. What follows is an honest breakdown of what real AI visibility work involves, so you can evaluate anyone you are considering hiring, including us.
What a Real AI Visibility Agency Actually Does
The core job of an AI visibility agency is to build and reinforce a structured, credible, consistent entity identity for your business across every surface where AI tools look. That is a meaningfully different task than getting a page to rank.
The work falls into four areas.
Entity optimization means establishing your business as a named, structured entity with consistent attributes across your website, Google Business Profile, industry directories, press mentions, and any other platform that feeds into AI training data. This includes your business name, location, credentials, specialties, and what makes you authoritative in your category. AI tools synthesize from many sources. If your entity information is inconsistent or thin, the synthesis comes back thin or wrong.
Schema markup implementation is how you make those entity attributes machine-readable. A LocalBusiness schema block with your address, hours, and service categories tells a crawler exactly what your business is. An award or credential listed in a paragraph of text is far less legible than the same information expressed as structured data. A real AI visibility agency implements schema; they do not just suggest it.
AI-cited content is content written specifically to be cited by AI tools in generated responses. It is not keyword-stuffed. It takes clear positions, answers questions completely, uses specific and verifiable details, and reads like a credible expert produced it for a reader who needs to make a real decision. You can tell when you read it. It does not hedge. It does not bury the answer.
Platform-specific testing and tracking means actually running your business through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude with the queries your actual clients would type and recording what comes back. Each platform returns different results. An agency that only checks one platform is missing the picture. An agency that does not check any of them and reports on impressions data instead is not doing AI visibility work.
Entity optimization: Consistent business attributes across all platforms and sources, not just your website. (Non-negotiable foundation)
Schema implementation: Actual structured data on the site, not just a recommendation to add it. (Ask to see examples)
AI-cited content: Content written for citation in generated responses, distinct from SEO content. (Read a sample before you sign)
Platform testing: Regular queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude, not just Google rank tracking. (Ask how they measure it)
Monthly reporting: Reports that show what AI says about you, not just traffic numbers. (If the report does not include AI response screenshots, it is not AI visibility work)
If the agency’s monthly report shows you keyword rankings and organic traffic and nothing else, you are paying for SEO with a new label on it. AI visibility work produces a different kind of evidence.
Five Questions to Ask Before You Hire Anyone
These questions separate agencies that understand GEO from ones that are figuring it out at your expense.
1. Can you show me what AI currently says about a client you work with?
A real AI visibility agency tests this regularly and can show you before and after examples. If they cannot produce a single screenshot of a client appearing in an AI-generated response, that is a meaningful data point.
2. How do you track results?
The answer should include AI-generated response monitoring, not just Google Analytics or search console data. Traffic metrics tell you nothing about what Perplexity is saying about a client when someone asks for a recommendation.
3. What does your schema implementation process look like?
They should be able to describe specific schema types: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, Person. Explain when and why they use each. A vague answer here usually means they are not actually doing it.
4. How do you approach entity optimization differently than on-page SEO?
Listen for whether they distinguish between page-level optimization and entity-level optimization. These are not the same thing. If the answer sounds like standard on-page SEO with different words, it probably is.
5. Which AI platforms do you test and how often?
The minimum is ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude tested monthly. Each platform synthesizes differently and returns different results for the same query. Monthly testing is how you catch changes before they become problems.
Red Flags Worth Walking Away From
The field is new enough that a lot of bad practice is getting dressed up as expertise. A few patterns worth watching for.
An agency that promises to get you ranked number one in AI responses does not understand how generative AI works. These tools do not have ranked positions. They synthesize answers. The goal is to be included, cited, and accurately represented, not to hold a slot.
An agency that cannot distinguish between AI visibility and local SEO is not specialized in either. They overlap in places, but the distinction matters. Confusing them is a sign of a generalist agency that added a service category without adding the expertise.
An agency that has not invested in their own AI visibility is a harder sell. If an agency cannot show up in AI-generated responses when you ask for recommendations in their own service category, that is worth noting. You would not hire a web design firm with a bad website.
What the Work Looks Like in Practice
Living with Lolo, an interior design firm serving the Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona market, started as Cited Co’s first client. The baseline AI visibility audit showed thin entity representation and inconsistent information across platforms. ChatGPT and Perplexity were not citing the firm at all in relevant queries. Gemini had partial information but wrong service details.
The work included entity optimization across directories and platforms, schema implementation on the website, a structured citation audit, and AI-cited content built around the specific queries the firm’s ideal clients were actually asking. Monthly platform testing tracked what changed. You can see the full Living with Lolo case study here.
Lauren Lerner built Cited Co to run this process for a small, intentional roster of service businesses in Scottsdale and across the Phoenix metro. The practice is designed to be thorough rather than scaled, because AI visibility work that is done carelessly does not produce the kind of consistent, credible entity presence that gets cited. It takes actual attention to each client’s specific market, credentials, and positioning.
If you want to know where your business stands right now, the fastest way to find out is to run your own queries across the four major platforms and see what comes back. If what you find is thin, inaccurate, or absent entirely, that is fixable. But it requires someone who actually knows how to fix it, not just someone who changed their homepage copy.
Request a free AI visibility snapshot and we will show you exactly what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude are saying about your business right now.
Frequently Asked Questions
About Cited Co
Cited Co is a boutique AI visibility agency founded by Lauren Lerner in Scottsdale, Arizona. We specialize in generative engine optimization for service businesses: entity optimization, schema implementation, AI-cited content creation, and monthly visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude. We work with a small, intentional roster of clients in high-consideration service categories where reputation drives decisions and AI visibility is becoming a meaningful competitive advantage. If you want to know where your business stands, reach out to an AI visibility agency that tracks these results every month.
Request your free AI visibility snapshot to find out where your business stands today.
What the Research Shows
Gartner (2024) projects a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026 as AI assistants capture queries — creating a new category of specialist agencies focused exclusively on AI visibility rather than traditional search rankings.
BrightEdge Research (2024) found AI-generated answers appearing in more than 58% of Google queries, with the businesses cited most consistently sharing one characteristic: they work with agencies or advisors who actively optimize for AI extraction signals.
Salesforce State of the Connected Customer (2024) reports that 61% of consumers prefer AI tools for initial research, yet most traditional SEO agencies do not track what these platforms say about their clients — a gap that Cited Co was purpose-built to close.
Perplexity AI (2025) reported more than 500 million monthly queries, with recommendation-style queries growing fastest — making AI visibility a measurable business outcome, not just a theoretical advantage.
Cited Co proprietary scan data (2025): In Scottsdale market audits, only 12% of service businesses working with a digital marketing agency had any form of AI-specific citation tracking in place — meaning the majority are flying blind on one of the most important channels in their marketing stack.