AI search
Is AI Search Visibility Worth Paying For Yet?
Led growth at cnvrg.io before its acquisition by Intel.
Every vendor says AI search is the future and you should start now. You run a niche B2B company with a limited budget, and you are not sure your buyers use AI assistants to choose suppliers at all. You want an honest way to decide before you spend.
15 minutes. You leave with the first 3 moves even if we don't work together.
Why the decision feels hard
The question is reasonable, and the market does not make it easier.
Most of what you read is sold by someone
Tool vendors and agencies, including me, have a reason to say every company needs GEO now. Very little of that comes with evidence about your market.
AI traffic is hard to see in analytics
Buyers who read an AI answer can arrive later by typing your name, so the visit shows up as direct or branded search. The channel can matter more, or less, than the reports show.
Results move slowly and vary
AI answers change between runs and over time. A project can be working before the numbers show it, or look good on one run and not on the next.
Much of the work overlaps with good SEO
Readable pages, clear answers and a consistent entity help both. Paying twice for the same work is a real risk.
Check it yourself before you buy anything
These checks cost a few hours and tell you whether GEO deserves a budget line now.
- Ask your last ten customers how they researched suppliers. Count how many mention ChatGPT, Perplexity or another assistant.
- Add "where did you first hear about us?" to your forms, with AI assistants as an option, and read the answers for a month.
- Run your five most important buyer questions in two engines and record who gets named.
- Check whether competitors you lose deals to appear in those answers.
- List what your SEO work already covers: crawl access, page answers, structured data. Do not pay for those twice.
How to decide
If buyers are not using assistants yet and competitors are not named either, keep the basics in your existing SEO work and re-check every quarter. That costs little and keeps the option open.
If buyers do mention assistants, or competitors are being named for questions you should win, it is worth acting. Someone still has to fix pages, entity data and outside mentions. That can be your team with a clear plan, or outside help for a defined period. The GEO expert hiring questions help you judge who to bring in.
Whichever path you take, decide on the questions and engines you will track before you start, so you can judge the result later.
No client GEO result yet
I have no published client GEO result, so I will not tell you GEO pays off for a niche company. The free AI visibility audit gives you a first observation at no cost: it asks Perplexity 8 buyer-intent questions live and shows who it names instead of you.
When the checks say yes
When the checks show buyers use assistants and your team has no time to act on it, talk it through. Fifteen minutes is enough to judge whether the work is worth it for you. GEO work is scope-dependent.
15 minutes. You leave with the first 3 moves even if we don't work together.
Questions about whether GEO is worth it
Should we buy a GEO tool or hire someone?
A tool records answers; it does not change them. Buy one when you have someone who will act on what it shows. Hire help when you need the fixes done.
Can we do GEO ourselves?
Much of it, yes: crawl access, clear answers on your pages and consistent company data. Earning outside mentions takes longer and is where teams most often ask for help.
How do we measure whether it worked?
Track the same buyer questions on the same engines over time, plus what buyers say on your forms and in calls. Do not judge on a single answer.
What does GEO work cost?
The free audit costs nothing. Paid audit and implementation fees are agreed after a scope review, and depend on how many pages and off-site sources need work.
Is this only for SaaS companies?
No. Any company whose buyers ask assistants for options can be affected. The checks above tell you whether yours do.
Work with Yaniv
Fractional Head of Growth for B2B SaaS, B2C, and e-commerce. Revenue that compounds, not spikes. Any channel, any motion, any stage.