Most AEO agencies say they get clients into ChatGPT. Fewer than a third show it.
A check of 352 answer engine optimization providers found 230 that claim AI search results without publishing a single example. The agencies that do show proof are the minority, and the evidence varies a lot.
Photo: Humanoid robot typing on a laptop next to a businessman in a suit. // GaaS NewsAEO agencies sell one promise above the rest: when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews who to hire, the client's name comes back. A new count of what those agencies publish about their own work suggests most of them are asking buyers to take that promise on faith.
The study of 394 AEO providers, published by the ranking site EliteAEO with data as of October 4, 2026, went through each provider's own site and its independent directory profiles page by page. Of the 352 providers eligible for its rankings, 105 publish proof of AI search results for a client. Another 230 say they get clients named in AI answers but show no example and no numbers. The last 17 say nothing about AI results at all.
What counts as proof of AI search results
Proof of AI search results, in the report's terms, means a client named, cited or recommended by an AI engine and documented on a public page. A provider showing off its own visibility in ChatGPT does not count. Only client results do.
Even inside the 105, the evidence varies a lot. 38 providers publish an AI outcome case study with a baseline and a method, the most complete kind of proof the report recognizes. 35 show tracked AI visibility gains for a client. 32 show an AI answer or a single measured result for a named client, which is evidence, but thin.
The more telling number sits next to those. 271 of the 352 publish at least one case study with measured search results of some kind. So these firms are not short on case studies. Most have case studies, many of them from classic search work. What most of them do not have yet is a case study about the thing their sales pages now lead with.
Reporting AI visibility to clients
Reporting AI visibility to clients is something 199 of the 352 eligible providers say they do, whether as citations, mentions or share of voice inside AI answers. 33 say plainly that they do not. The other 120 do not say either way. Not tracking citations was the second of the warning signs that a GEO agency is about to rip you off in a column here in July, and by this count 153 eligible providers either rule it out or stay silent on it.
The report labels this as a statement of practice and nothing more. It records what a provider writes on its own site about its reporting. It does not test whether the reports exist or what is in them.
AEO agency pricing stays behind the sales call
AEO agency pricing is mostly hidden. 99 of the 352 eligible providers publish a starting price, and 87 of those are monthly fees. The median monthly figure is $1,500, and the middle half of published monthly prices runs from $750 to $2,600.
The vertical splits are where it gets interesting. Providers ranked for B2B SaaS publish the highest median, $2,250 a month across 22 published prices, and they are also the group most likely to show proof: 41 of 76 SaaS providers publish evidence of AI results for a client. Local business providers sit at the other end, with a $1,299 median across 41 prices and proof from 30 of 127. The report does not claim one causes the other, and a gap of that size could come from client mix as easily as from skill.
Why this matters for agent-driven buying
Agent-driven buying is the reason this small services market deserves attention from people who follow agentic AI. As assistants take over more of the research step in a purchase, the name an AI engine returns turns into a sales channel of its own, and an industry has formed to sell access to it. Nearly all of it is service work: 340 of the 352 eligible providers sell full-service AEO, three work on an advisory basis and nine sell content.
That industry is also selling against a quiet counterpoint from the largest engine in the room. Google's own documentation for site owners says there are "no additional requirements" to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and points them back to standard SEO best practices for AI features. ChatGPT and Perplexity run on different systems, and Google's guidance says nothing about them. But an agency charging a premium for "AEO" on top of SEO has to explain what the extra money buys, and a published client result is the most direct way to do it. Most have not.
What the report does not establish
What the report does not establish is whether any given agency gets results. It measures what providers publish, not what they deliver. Agencies commonly work under client agreements that keep names off their websites, so some of the 230 firms with no public example may have real results they are not allowed to show. In the other direction, finding a proof page is not the same as auditing the outcome behind it.
The method is stated on the page. Every data point comes from a public source: the provider's site or an independent profile. The report says it uses no private submissions from providers, and that paid placements on the ranking site do not change any figure in it. Coverage is selective as well. 79 of 270 possible vertical and metro combinations met the publication bar, across 21 metros. 167 eligible providers have a confirmed office in a tracked metro, led by New York with 19, and 31 are headquartered outside the United States.
The full dataset, one row per profiled provider, is free to download and reuse under a CC BY 4.0 license with credit. That makes the 230 figure checkable by anyone willing to open the spreadsheet. It also gives buyers a straightforward question for the next agency pitch: which client, which engine and which prompt.