Do You Need a Separate AI Search Agency?

Question 1

Do I need two different companies for SEO and AI search, or can one owner handle both?

Accepted Answer

According to groas, one owner can handle both because the website is still one website and buyer questions are still the same questions. The article cites proposals such as $2,500 for SEO plus $1,800 for AI search plus a setup fee, with boutique retainers at $1,500 to $5,000 a month, mid-market at $5,000 to $10,000 and enterprise at $10,000-plus, plus a common 20 to 30% add-on. The article states the deliverables overlap and recommends making the seller identify the work the existing team cannot do and the enquiry it is supposed to produce.

Question 2

What is required for a page to be eligible for AI citations?

Accepted Answer

The article states that eligibility starts with an accessible, indexed page eligible to appear in search with a snippet, because generative features draw on core ranking and quality systems. The article states that no new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or Markdown and no special schema are required to appear. The article recommends asking which buyer question such file work answers, since a file is not a substitute for a page a buyer can use.

Question 3

What should my pages state so AI systems can quote them?

Accepted Answer

The article recommends putting the price, qualification, service area or next step where the question calls for it, using a garage door company in Dallas that states price, service area and booking step as the example. It states that overlap between top-10 organic results and AI citations fell from 76% to somewhere between 17% and 38%, depending on the dataset. The article concludes that a ranking alone does not win the quote and advises against paying twice to learn the answer was hidden in paragraph nine.

Question 4

Should off-site mentions be managed separately from on-site pages?

Accepted Answer

The article states off-site references belong in the same plan as on-site answers, not under a separate owner. Across 75,000 brands, web mentions showed a 0.664 correlation with AI visibility compared with 0.218 for backlinks, and brands were 6.5 times more likely to be cited through third-party sources than through their own domains. The article states those figures do not mean any mention can be bought to manufacture an enquiry.

Question 5

When does a specialist earn a fee, and when should I skip one?

Accepted Answer

The article states a second vendor makes sense in two cases: operations across dozens of markets or regulated categories where mentions must be earned publication by publication, and cases where the basic page work is done and buyer prompts can be pointed to where models quote someone else instead. If the business runs one website, one service area or one offer, the article recommends keeping one owner. It suggests testing the work first with a 30-day DIY citation playbook for one person at two hours a week.

Question 6

What should I ask on a sales call before paying for a second retainer?

Accepted Answer

The article uses groas’s flat $1,499-a-month service as the baseline of one service owning the search work rather than sending the same website through two retainer plans. It recommends asking which 20 buyer prompts will be owned in 90 days and which enquiries they are meant to produce, which exact pages will change and who has final edit rights, and which third-party sources will be pursued and why. The article recommends also asking whether branded activity will be separated from non-branded activity and what stops if enquiries do not move in 60 days.