A practical question list for Indian B2B companies hiring an agency to improve how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI features describe them, with price benchmarks from published pages.
Short answer: Choose a GEO agency that can show you exactly what it will change on your site, how it will measure AI mentions across tools, and why. It should refuse to guarantee citations, build on solid SEO and explain its pricing in writing. The 12 questions below help you test this, and the benchmarks show what Indian agencies publish.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of making your company easier for AI search tools, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews, to find, understand and cite. If you are new to the idea, start with our practical guide to GEO.
Because the term is new, agencies use it for very different services. In practice, credible GEO work covers five areas:
The 12 questions below test whether an agency can do each of these, and whether it is honest about what nobody can control.
GEO is a broad label. Some agencies mean technical fixes and schema; others mean content, digital PR or prompt tracking. You need to know what you are buying.
There is no Search Console for ChatGPT. Measurement usually means running a fixed set of buyer prompts across several AI tools and recording what appears.
No one controls what an AI system generates. Even agencies selling GEO say so: NextAxis, for example, states on its pricing page that no one can guarantee what an AI assistant says.
AI companies run several different bots. OpenAI documents that OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT search, while GPTBot crawls content that may be used to train its models. Perplexity documents that PerplexityBot surfaces and links sites in its search results and is not used to crawl content for foundation models.
llms.txt describes itself as a proposal for a file that helps AI agents use a website. Google states that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in its AI features.
AI tools and search engines need to recognise your company as one consistent entity. Google's Organization structured data guide covers properties such as legal name, address, logo and sameAs links to official profiles.
For B2B manufacturers and service firms, the content that gets quoted is specific: specifications, standards, processes, pricing logic and clear answers to buyer questions. That knowledge sits with your team.
AI answers often draw on sources beyond your own site, such as directories, industry publications, comparison pages and forums.
Google says that SEO best practices remain relevant for its AI features, and that a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
GEO prices in India vary widely, and scope varies even more. Compare deliverables, not just the monthly figure. The benchmarks below show what agencies publish.
Some agencies publish minimum terms; others do not. You should own your content, schema, prompt-tracking history and any accounts set up for you.
The research paper that introduced the term, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (Aggarwal et al., accepted to KDD 2024), reports that its methods boosted visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40% in its benchmark. That is a research result, not a promise. Ask for evidence the agency applies its methods.
Few Indian agencies publish GEO prices. The table lists the figures we found on agencies' own pages in November 2026. They are each agency's stated prices or estimates, not audited market data, and scopes differ, so use them as a reference for questions, not as a quote.
| Source | Type of figure | Published amount | Notes from the page |
|---|---|---|---|
| NextAxis Digital | Own packages | From ₹25,000, ₹50,000 and ₹1 lakh per month (Startup, Growth, Enterprise) | Excludes applicable taxes |
| Mediaverse Digital | Own packages | ₹40,000 per month (Foundations); ₹75,000 per month (Authority) | 3-month minimum, then monthly; GST extra |
| Digital Prahlad | Own price list | GEO services ₹40,000 per month; AI visibility audit ₹45,000 one-time | Exclusive of GST; retainers rolling monthly |
| Nico Digital | Indicative tiers | ₹55,000–80,000; ₹90,000–1.5 lakh; ₹1.6–2.6 lakh; ₹3 lakh+ per month | Described as indicative pricing tiers |
| upGrowth | Market benchmark article | ₹75,000–3.5 lakh per month for mid-market retainers; audits ₹1.5–8 lakh | The agency's own benchmark estimate |
Two things stand out. First, the entry points differ by about three times, from ₹25,000 to ₹75,000 a month, so compare scope carefully. Second, minimum terms are not always stated; ask. Big Leap does not currently publish a GEO price; we scope after an audit and put the price and deliverables in writing.
For a manufacturer or exporter, the prompts that matter are specific: "suppliers of [product] in India with [certification]", "[component] manufacturers for automotive OEMs", "Indian exporters of [product] to the UAE". For a B2B service firm, they look like "best [service] companies in India for [industry]". In both cases the answer depends on whether your product, capability and certification details exist in clear, crawlable text, and whether other credible sites mention you.
That is why GEO for B2B usually starts with unglamorous work: indexing, product and service pages with real detail, consistent company information, and a short list of industry publications and directories. Our export website checklist covers the on-site basics for manufacturers.
If you want an agency to run this for you, our generative engine optimization service is built for B2B manufacturers, exporters and service firms in India. We are happy to be asked all 12 questions.
A GEO agency works to make your company easier for AI search tools to find, understand and cite. Typical work includes technical and indexing fixes, structured data, consistent entity information, content that answers buyer questions clearly, earning mentions on relevant third-party sites, and tracking how tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews describe you.
Published figures vary widely. On the pages we reviewed, entry-level monthly GEO retainers started at ₹25,000 with NextAxis and ₹40,000 with Mediaverse Digital and Digital Prahlad, while benchmark articles from Nico Digital and upGrowth describe mid-market retainers from about ₹75,000 to ₹3.5 lakh a month. Compare scope, not only price.
They overlap heavily. SEO aims to rank pages in search results; GEO aims to have your company named or cited inside AI-generated answers. Google says SEO best practices remain relevant for its AI features, so a GEO programme built on weak SEO foundations, such as unindexed pages, is unlikely to work.
No. AI tools generate answers from their own systems, answers vary between runs, and no agency controls them. A credible agency will promise specific work and transparent reporting, not citations. Treat any guarantee of placement in AI answers as a reason to look elsewhere.
There is no reliable fixed timeline. Changes to your own pages count only after they are recrawled, and third-party mentions take longer to earn. Ask the agency to agree a prompt set at the start and report against it monthly, so you can see movement, or the lack of it, as it happens.
Big Leap's generative engine optimization service starts with an audit of your site and a fixed set of buyer prompts. Ask us the 12 questions too.
Every figure in this article comes from the page listed here. We read each page while writing this article (November 2026); pages can change after that.
About the author. Monil Bhardwaj is the founder of Big Leap, the brand of Big Leap Digital Services Pvt Ltd, a B2B marketing company in Gurugram founded in 2020. About Big Leap →
We will answer each one in writing for your business, including what we would not do and what we cannot promise.
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