As a new company entering the AI visibility space, you are right to ask: Who are the competitors, and what exactly are they selling? The market for helping businesses get cited by AI tools is young, fragmented, and full of agencies using different names for the same core service.
This guide will demystify the competitive landscape, clarify the confusing terminology, and highlight the key services offered by the leading players in what is rapidly becoming the most critical area of digital marketing.
The Competitive Landscape: Agencies and Tools
The market is currently dominated by two types of players: established digital marketing agencies expanding their services, and new, specialised firms focusing purely on AI visibility.
Leading AI Visibility Agencies
The following table summarises some of the key agencies identified as leaders in the Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) space, based on recent industry reports [1]:
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Agency Name
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Key Focus/Term
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Headquarters
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Average Hourly Rate
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Key Differentiator
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42DM
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SAIO / GEO / AEO
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Jersey City, NJ
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$50 – $99 / hr
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Pioneers in B2B SAIO, focus on technical foundation and third-party trust signals.
|
|
Victorious
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Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)
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San Francisco, CA
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$300+ / hr
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Focus on high-value AEO services, emphasizing content restructuring for direct answers.
|
|
Intero Digital
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Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
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Colorado Springs, CO
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$100 – $149 / hr
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Full-service agency with a proprietary framework (Intero GRO) integrating SEO, PR, and AI content structuring.
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Coalition Technologies
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LLM SEO
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Los Angeles, CA
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$50 – $99 / hr
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Combines traditional SEO with "prompt-aware optimisation" and human-written, expert content.
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NoGood
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Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
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New York, NY
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N/A
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Uses a proprietary platform, "Goodie," for real-time AI visibility monitoring and audits.
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As you can see, the market is global and the pricing varies widely, suggesting a lack of standardization in service offerings. Your company, Get Noticed, is well-positioned to enter this space, especially with a UK focus, as many of the current leaders are US-based.
Decoding the Terminology: What Are They Really Selling?
The most confusing aspect of this new market is the acronym soup. Competitors use a variety of terms to describe the service of getting cited by AI, but they all share the same goal: to influence the AI's source selection process.
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Term
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Full Name
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Core Focus
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SAIO
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Search Artificial Intelligence Optimisation
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The broadest term, covering optimisation across all LLMs and AI search engines.
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|
GEO
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Generative Engine Optimisation
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Optimisation specifically for LLM platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
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AEO
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Answer Engine Optimisation
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Focusing on content structure to appear as direct, concise answers in AI-driven queries (e.g., Google's AIOs).
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LLM SEO
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Large Language Model SEO
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Tailoring content for how LLMs fetch, interpret, and cite information.
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The Takeaway for Get Noticed: All these terms describe the same fundamental shift: moving from optimising for a keyword-based ranking algorithm to optimizing for an entity-based citation model. By focusing your messaging on the clarity of "helping companies be found on AI tools like Manus and ChatGPT," you cut through the jargon and speak directly to the core problem.
The Winning Strategy: Focus on Authority and Structure
The common thread among all successful AI visibility strategies is a dual focus on technical structure and brand authority.
1.Technical Structure: This involves implementing Schema Markup (especially FAQ and HowTo) and ensuring your content is clean, fast, and easily crawlable. AI models favor content that is explicitly labeled and easy to parse [2].
2.Brand Authority (E-E-A-T): AI tools are trained to prioritise high-quality, trustworthy sources. Agencies succeed by building up their clients' Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-E-A-T) signals through author credentials, third-party mentions, and high-quality, fact-based content.
By positioning Get Noticed as the expert in both the technical implementation of AI-friendly structure and the strategic building of brand authority, you can effectively compete with the established players and capture a significant share of this emerging market.
References
[1] 42DM. (2025, June 11). Get Cited in AI: Top 10 AI Visibility Optimisation Agencies Globally. https://42dm.net/10-best-generative-engine-optimization-agencies-globally/ [2] Kidd, S. (2025, July 9). AI Stole My Clicks — 9 SEO Strategies to Boost AI Visibility in 2025. LAIRE Digital. https://www.lairedigital.com/blog/ai-visibility-best-practices
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