AEO Terms Agencies Need to Price Retainers: Monitoring vs Execution

Question 1

What is the difference between AEO and GEO when scoping agency work?

Accepted Answer

The article defines AEO as structuring content so an answer engine can lift a clean, correct answer from it, using short answer blocks, clear headings, tables and schema. According to groas, AEO is the extraction layer and GEO is the authority layer, both built on SEO rather than replacing it, with GEO covering citations, mentions, consistent entity data, reviews and coverage. The article cites one research breakdown pricing AEO at $160.9M and GEO at $1,089.3M for 2026, a 6.8x gap, and recommends asking which engines the work covers and what the vendor publishes or fixes off-domain.

Question 2

How can an agency tell if it is buying monitoring or execution?

Accepted Answer

The article states that if the vendor leaves writing the fix and putting it live to the agency, the agency is buying monitoring, not execution. According to groas, agency owners should read terms in the order they appear while building a retainer and ask to see one client page before and after the vendor changed it, plus where that page was cited. If the answer is only a score, the article positions that as the boundary of the product.

Question 3

What does AI SEO white label actually include?

Accepted Answer

The article states AI SEO means using AI to do SEO work faster until a vendor specifies which work it does. According to groas, a search for AI SEO white label can return a content writer that drafts posts the team must edit and publish, a tracker that puts a logo on a report, or an execution platform that writes, fixes and publishes under the agency brand. The article recommends asking whose hours put the fix live after the software flags a gap, because reselling the first or second product as the third leaves fulfillment work with the agency.

Question 4

What is the difference between citation share and mention rate?

Accepted Answer

The article defines citation share as how often you are a cited source in tracked answers, while mention rate counts how often your name appears in their text. According to groas, vendors mix the two because mention rate tends to look bigger, but for a retainer sold on citations that difference is the deliverable. The article recommends asking for cited share on money prompts, split by engine, and which competitor took the citations lost.

Question 5

What does content execution include that a content brief does not?

Accepted Answer

The article states that a content brief tells a team what to write, while content execution gets the page live. According to groas, many tools stop at an outline with entities and headings, leaving writers, editors and approvals to the agency, which erodes margin if an outcome was sold. The article says execution needs a publish step and an action log showing pages drafted, schema added, internal links made and changes shipped.

Question 6

What does done-for-you mean in an AEO retainer and how should agencies price it?

Accepted Answer

The article defines done-for-you as selling the retainer while the vendor fulfills the agreed work under the agency's name, which for AEO could mean tracking prompts, mapping pages, writing content, shipping fixes, working on citations and sending a branded report. According to groas, agencies should put hours beside the label: at $2,000 per month per client with fulfillment taking six hours at $75 an hour, $1,550 per client remains before other costs or revisions. The article recommends asking for live URLs, dates and action logs showing what shipped without agency staff.