In July 2025, 76% of AI Overview citations came from pages in the top 10. As of March 2026, that figure had dropped to about 38%, according to Ahrefs' analysis.
In other words, rank and citations stopped moving together.
Google confirmed why in May, when it rolled out five changes to how AI Mode and AI Overviews select and display sources, according to its own announcement.
Citations now attach to individual passages instead of a page as a whole, rewarding a specific, extractable claim over broad topical coverage.
That claim also has to hold up against what every other source says about the same fact, or a model won't lift it.
A real GEO partner structures content, schema, and cross-source consistency. As a result, a model reaches for that client's page first.
To help businesses find the right partner, we've ranked the 7 best GEO agencies to hire in 2026.
We chose them for their experience, service depth, client results, and ability to earn real AI search visibility.
1. Moburst: Full-Funnel Growth From ASO to AEO/GEO
- Location: Parkland, Florida, United States
- Minimum budget: From $5,000/month
- Notable clients: Google, Uber, Samsung, Reddit, Microsoft
- Services: AEO/GEO, SEO, ASO, CRO, Mobile Strategy, Content, Paid Media
Moburst treats its own AI visibility as a live test case. It reports doubling its brand presence on Perplexity, from 22% to 47%, in four weeks.
The agency runs on a proprietary AI program. Specialists sit embedded across strategy, organic growth, creative, development, and media buying.
Organic growth work spans ASO, SEO, and AEO under one team, backed by paid media and product design.
Success Story: NewDay USA's Climb to Near-First in AI Search
- Challenge: Brand presence sat at just 8.4% of relevant AI responses for NewDay USA, a VA mortgage lender chaired by Admiral Thomas Lynch.
Real offline credibility wasn't translating to AI systems. Three core topics, military home financing, VA loan benefits, and mortgage process, returned zero NewDay presence.
- Solution: Moburst ran a six-month AEO program built on four levers. Content was rebuilt around standalone, citable claims and FAQ structure.
State-specific technical SEO pages targeted VA loan queries directly. VA-specific PR placements ran in outlets like Realtor.com, HousingWire, and U.S. Veterans Magazine.
Content naming Admiral Lynch tied his naval career to veteran homeownership.
Weekly tracking covered presence, rank, and perception across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
- Results: Brand presence in AI answers grew 64%, from 8.4% to 13.8%.
All three zero-presence topics gained coverage. NewDay reached a near-first average rank on Google AI Overviews.
VA cash-out refinance queries hit rank 1.0. ChatGPT presence grew 23.4 percentage points.
2. Searchbloom: AI SEO Built on a Published Citation Framework
- Location: South Jordan, Utah, United States
- Minimum budget: $2,000 - $10,000/month
- Notable clients: Nordstrom, US Bank, Bill.com, Divvy, Sun & Ski Sports, Musicnotes, Punchwork Law, WhLaw
- Services: AEO, GEO, SEO, Technical SEO, Content Strategy, Local SEO
Searchbloom's AI search work centers on getting a brand mentioned by outside sources, not just optimized on its own site.
That means earning citations on platforms AI systems already trust, publishing original research a client can be cited for, and structuring content so AI can pull direct answers from it.
The agency also fixes the technical access issues, like blocked crawlers, that keep AI systems from reading a site at all.
Success Story: Searchbloom Turned Its Framework on Itself
- Challenge: When a buyer asks an AI assistant which search marketing agency to hire, an agency that isn't named isn't on the shortlist.
Searchbloom's answer share sat at 25.5%. Sixty-one other agencies were tracked alongside it, and only three ranked higher. The category leader reached 47.1%.
- Solution: Searchbloom applied MERIT, its AI SEO framework, to its own brand and website. This ran as a case study, not a client engagement.
Content answered the exact questions buyers ask AI assistants, and the site became machine-readable in the process.
The team checked visibility daily across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview.
- Results: In just over 12 months, visibility increased from 25.5% to 48.3%. Searchbloom moved from fourth to first among 62 tracked agencies.
Share of voice grew from 5.8% to 13.2% and AI-assistant sessions increased 3.5X over and far ahead of the 1.9X gain in organic search.
3. Funnel Boost Media: Local SEO That Also Wins AI Citations
- Location: San Antonio, Texas, United States
- Minimum budget: $1,000 - $10,000/month
- Notable clients: JV Law Group, Khalid Auto Group, Bugco Pest Control, Eaton Family Law Group, Beldon Roofing
- Services: SEO, GEO, PPC, Web Design, Branding, CRO, eCommerce Marketing
Funnel Boost Media runs local SEO, content strategy, and GEO for practices and service businesses competing against national chains and hospital systems in crowded local markets.
GEO work is built into the same content strategy as SEO, shaping pages to answer patient questions directly, in the format AI systems pull from, rather than running as a separate track.
Forbes named the agency one of America's Best Digital Marketing Companies. The agency is veteran-owned.
Success Story: Texas Skin and Vein's Climb From Page Three to AI-Cited
- Challenge: Texas Skin and Vein runs two locations, and one doctor has been named Top Doctor for four years running.
Despite that, the San Antonio dermatology and vein practice ranked on page three against national skin care chains and hospital system pages.
Most new patients came through referrals. Daily searches around both clinics went to competitors.
- Solution: Funnel Boost Media mapped the practice's services to how San Antonio patients actually search, building pages around single treatments instead of broad coverage.
Thin pages were rewritten to answer the questions patients ask before booking. Local SEO work strengthened the Google Business Profile for map pack placement.
Separate on-page and technical fixes let authority flow from strong pages into the treatment pages that needed to rank.
- Results: Page-one rankings grew past 200 keywords, with 42 landing in the top 3. Phone calls from search climbed 69%. Organic sessions gained 58%.
Tracked conversions rose 29%. The firm is now cited in Google's AI Overviews for 50 searches, with sessions referred from ChatGPT and Gemini growing to 34.
4. VSURY: Webflow Migrations Built to Protect AI Search Visibility
- Location: Denver, Colorado, United States
- Minimum budget: $5,000 minimum (typical engagements $15,000 - $40,000, plus ongoing retainers)
- Notable clients: Unravel Data, EdgeCore, Praxent, Street Symphony, Vijay Gupta
- Services: Webflow Design & Development, Webflow Migration, SEO, AEO, CRO, Branding, UX/UI
Instead of considering SEO, AEO, and conversion optimization as distinct add-ons, VSURY pairs the platform work with Webflow to develop and migrate websites.
Migrations run through a full AEO audit before anything moves, then close with schema markup, an llms.txt file, and alt tags on every image.
Clients move on to a monthly retainer after launch, covering new pages, content strategy, and ongoing SEO and AEO work.
Success Story: Unravel Data's Migration Without a Ranking Drop
- Challenge: Unravel Data's WordPress site needed a developer for every update. The company was racing to launch a new product, Arvix AI.
It needed a faster site without losing search rankings, lead-routing, or compliance integrations during the move.
- Solution: VSURY migrated the site to Webflow, rebuilding all 80 pages and 400-plus blog posts around a shared design system.
An SEO and AEO audit set the benchmark before migration began. Schema markup was rebuilt, an llms.txt file was added, and every image got an alt tag.
- Results: Six weeks after kickoff, the site was live with search performance intact. Unravel now ranks number one across 35 target search terms in AI and LLM search.
Publish time dropped from weeks to days, and the migration cost roughly 75% less than a typical agency engagement.
5. Estes Media B2B Growth Marketing With an AI-Forward Pitch
- Location: Jersey City, New Jersey, United States
- Minimum budget: $3,000/month
- Notable clients: Malone Roofing, Canva, BlueLinx, Mont Blanc, AEV Solar, Southern Land Co
- Services: GEO, AI Search Visibility, SEO, PPC & Paid Social, Content & Creative, Marketing Automation, GTM Strategy
Estes Media runs as a "done-for-you" marketing team for B2B companies, managing every channel as one coordinated program instead of piecemeal service lines.
GEO and AI search visibility now sit at the center of that program, built on top of the SEO foundation AI engines need before they'll cite a page.
Success Story: WNC Roofing's Path to 40% AI Voice Share
- Challenge: WNC Roofing's content was written for keywords. It wasn't structured for the fact-dense, self-contained answers AI engines pull from.
- Solution: Estes Media rebuilt WNC's content around GEO principles instead of bolting AI optimization onto existing SEO.
The team wrote answer-first content blocks and FAQ sections, each answer standing alone. Schema markup identified WNC as a service business.
Topical depth followed across its core services and service areas, backed by named projects and dated examples.
- Results: WNC Roofing now holds 40% voice share among AI search results for its core services and markets.
That's roughly four times out of ten, ahead of every competing contractor. Its existing organic rankings held steady throughout.
6. eSEOspace: GEO Built Alongside the Website
- Location: San Diego, California, United States
- Minimum budget: $10,000 - $25,000/month
- Notable clients: Executive Partners, Atlantic Partners Corp, onePRgroup, CalMuni Advisors, Canyon Plastics
- Services: SEO, GEO, AEO, Web Design, Web Development, eCommerce Development, CRM Consulting
eSEOspace runs website design, development, and SEO under one team. GEO and AEO specialists sit inside that team.
Consultants study a client's goals, industry, and competitors. Then they build a strategy from that. A separate in-house team handles branding, design, and content.
The agency has spoken at GEO-specific industry events. Ai4 2026 in Las Vegas and the GEO Conference in San Francisco are two recent examples.
Success Story: DrLewis.com's Path From Page 6 to Page 1
- Challenge: Dr. Beata Lewis's integrative psychiatry practice, DrLewis.com, ranked on page six of Google for its core terms, with monthly organic clicks stuck around 79.
- Solution: eSEOspace deployed schema markup across 592 pages. The team built 100 AEO-formatted FAQs designed to surface in AI Overviews.
Three automated nurture campaigns ran alongside that work.
- Results: Organic clicks grew 27x over twelve months. That's 79 a month to over 2,150. Impressions grew 100x, from 7,000 to over 700,000 monthly.
The average position moved from page 6 to page 1.
7. Intero Digital: AI Visibility Backed by Patented Technology
- Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States
- Minimum budget: $1,000 - $10,000/month
- Notable clients: Jaguar, Land Rover, Ace Hardware, Don Julio, Christy Sports
- Services: SEO, GEO, PPC, Content Marketing, Digital PR, Social Media Marketing, Amazon Marketing
Intero Digital runs GEO through a framework called Intero GRO™. It connects entity development, content structuring, and technical optimization into one program.
The Retrievability Framework breaks AI visibility into four factors: relevance, authority, structure, and engagement.
InteroBOT®, the agency's patented technology, backs that work.
Google All-Star and Premier Partner, Meta Blueprint Agency, and Microsoft Advertising Agency partner status round out its credentials, alongside an Inc. 5000 honor.
Success Story: Freshpet's Shift From Invisible to Category-Leading in AI Search
- Challenge: Freshpet needed to become the authoritative source for fresh pet nutrition inside AI-generated answers.
There was no established way to measure that kind of visibility, and specific AI prompts were surfacing uncorrected misinformation about the brand.
- Solution: Intero Digital built a GEO strategy around three pillars: presence, demand, and action. The team aligned nutrition messaging to the questions pet parents ask.
A technical audit fixed crawl and indexation issues limiting AI discoverability.
Key pages were restructured with FAQs matching natural-language prompts, and Freshpet's scientific credibility signals were reinforced.
- Results: Appearances in Google AI Overviews rose 645% in six months. AI referral traffic grew 46%.
Key actions from AI referrals, like store locator visits and delivery sign-ups, rose 44%. Branded search visibility increased 37%.
Find the Right GEO Agency for 2026
The top GEO agencies build the entity signals, structured content, and citation-worthy sources that decide whether a brand gets named inside an AI-generated answer, or left out of it entirely.
That distinction now carries real revenue. A page can still rank first and lose the customer to a competitor's paragraph inside the same AI response.
To explore even more leading agencies by specialty, discover our top firms to hire for:
