Before hiring a GEO agency you need three kinds of access (site admin, analytics, domain DNS), a current page list, and verified product/price/contact facts — most engagements start by running those inputs through a 24-item AI-visibility audit (free) before any work is scoped.
What do I need to prepare before hiring a GEO agency — access, content, data?
Four things, no more. Agencies that ask for access beyond the three types below are asking for more than the work requires — that's worth flagging on the sales call, not after you've signed.
| Item | Why it's needed | If you don't give it |
|---|---|---|
| Site admin | Edit pages, structured data, robots.txt | Agency can audit but not implement |
| Analytics | Referral traffic from AI platforms, before/after comparison | No way to measure whether anything changed |
| Domain DNS | Ownership verification, subdomain setup | Some verification steps can't be completed |
| Current page list | Scope which pages need rewriting | The audit can miss pages you forgot exist |
| Product/price/contact facts | Source of truth for what AI engines say about you | Outdated or vague details can end up in what AI repeats about you |
Three kinds of access only: site admin, analytics, domain DNS
Site admin
Used to edit pages, add structured data, and adjust robots.txt rules that govern which AI crawlers can read your site — see the AI crawler access checklist for which bots to allow. Without this access, an agency can hand you a report but can't ship any of the fixes in it.
Analytics
Analytics tools such as Google Analytics don't see AI crawlers — crawlers don't execute the tracking script that analytics relies on. So analytics access has exactly two uses: checking referral traffic that arrives from AI platforms, and comparing traffic before and after changes go live. Whether a crawler actually visited your site is a separate question, answered by server log files, not by an analytics dashboard.
Domain DNS
DNS access is used for two narrow things: verifying domain ownership (for example, adding a TXT record so Search Console confirms you own the domain), and configuring a subdomain if the project needs one. DNS is not where AI-crawler blocking usually happens — when a crawler is blocked, it's typically a rule in robots.txt or a bot-management setting on a CDN or firewall, not a DNS record. If you're not giving DNS access, say so upfront; some verification steps simply won't be possible without it.
Without any of these three, an agency is left running the 24-item AI-visibility audit (free) and handing you a report with no path to act on it.
Content inputs: current page list; product/price/contact facts
- List every live URL on the site — not a sitemap export alone, the pages actually in the navigation and linked from them.
- Pull current product names, prices, and specs from whichever system is the source of truth (CMS, spreadsheet, POS) — not from memory.
- Confirm contact details: phone, address, hours, service areas, and any claims (certifications, delivery times) that show up on the site.
These three inputs are what an agency checks pages against during the audit — stale prices or an outdated address get flagged as mismatches regardless of how the page reads.
First-month delivery checkpoints and what to check at acceptance
Month one should produce an audit report scored against the 24-item AI-visibility audit (free) checklist, followed by edits to whichever pages failed it. What month one should not promise is citations — in answers from AI engines, those usually take 2–8 weeks to show up once the underlying pages are fixed, per how long until AI mentions you. If the site sits on a brand-new domain, budget about 3 months of observation on top of that before judging results, per the same source.
- Audit report lists pass/fail against the 24 checks, not a vague score
- Structured data and robots.txt changes are live and verifiable by viewing source, not by screenshot
- Server logs show at least one crawl from an AI bot since the changes went live — this is checkable now; citations aren't yet
What GEO onboarding looks like for a small business website
Onboarding usually maps to one of the pricing tiers described in GEO pricing: ฿12,900 / ฿14,900 one-time; ฿49,900/mo — covering a one-time retrofit of an existing site, a one-time new-site build, or an ongoing monthly engagement, respectively.
The sequence is the same across tiers: hand over the three access types, hand over the page list and fact sheet, let the agency run the audit, then check the fixes against the acceptance list above before judging citation results on the 2–8 week (or 3-month, for new domains) timeline.