The GEO Buyer's Scorecard: How to Hire an AI Search Agency Without Paying for Hype

Hire an AI search agency on evidence, not promises. For owners, CMOs and marketing leads about to pay for "GEO", "AEO" or "AI SEO". Same label, prices from $333 to $25,000+ a month AI search agencies are everywhere, and the published prices for services sold under the same name differ by more than seventy times. Some proposals are solid search work. Some sell things the AI platforms themselves say you do not need. This guide gives you a neutral way to tell them apart before you sign. What it covers • What you are actually buying: what Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Perplexity and Anthropic each say in their own documentation about how their AI answers pick sources, checked 3 October 2026. None of them sells a paid route into organic answers. • Do you need an agency at all: five free checks you can run in an hour, so you have your own baseline before anyone pitches you. • The brief: a one-page brief and a "send back" list that makes proposals comparable. • 40 questions: on method, measurement, tactics, reporting, people and terms, with what a good answer sounds like. • The scorecard: six weighted criteria with a written 1 to 4 rubric. • 10 red flags: each tied to what a platform or a study actually says. Five should end the conversation. • The contract and the first 90 days: what the agreement should say, fair asks, and a 90-day review with agreed measures. What you get • The guide: 37-page fillable PDF with 6 worksheets • Agency Scorecard (Excel): weighted scores for up to four agencies, red flag count, committed cost over the term, and a 90-day review. Includes a filled example with fictional agencies • Brief and Question Pack (Word): ready to send to every agency • Contract Checklist (Word): for you and your lawyer Written to be used on us too Lucidens is an organic growth consultancy, so we sell this kind of service. Every test in this guide applies to any provider, including us. Agency prices are quoted from the agencies' own pages with the date we read them. Not legal advice. Have a lawyer review any agreement before you sign. Platform and company names are used descriptively; Lucidens is not affiliated with any of them. FAQ Is GEO just SEO with a new name? Mostly, and Google says so in its own guidance. Some measurement work is genuinely new. The guide shows you which is which. Do I need technical knowledge? No. The free checks take an hour and are explained step by step. Can I share the questions with agencies? Yes. That is what the Word pack is for. Will it go out of date? Every platform fact is dated. We update the guide when the sources change. By Lucidens. Version 1.0, October 2026. Instant download: PDF plus editable Excel and Word files in one ZIP.