The honest answer to "is paying for GEO worth it" isn't yes. It isn't no either. It depends on three things you can check yourself, at no cost, before calling anyone.
I sell GEO retainers. I'll still give you the cases where I'd tell you to keep your money.
1. What "paying for GEO" buys
GEO means making sure the engines that answer (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google's AI Overviews) can read your site, understand it and cite it when someone asks a question you know how to handle.
In practice a serious engagement contains: an audit of what AI crawlers can read on your site, pages that answer your clients' questions with a quotable sentence and its source, structured data describing your business, work so that your business exists as one consistent entity where models read (directories, profiles, Wikidata for larger ones), and a monthly measurement: the same questions asked to the same engines, with the answer recorded.
One thing it never contains: a guarantee. Google tells businesses to avoid anyone who guarantees a ranking, and what holds for Google holds for ChatGPT.
2. The five-minute test before you pay
Open a private browser window. Go to ChatGPT or Perplexity without logging in. Ask the five questions a client asks you on the phone, with your city or sector in them: "which employment lawyer in Lille", "how much does a restaurant website cost", "who does bookkeeping for physiotherapists".
Three possible results.
Your competitors are cited and you aren't: GEO makes sense, because the demand exists and someone else is catching it.
Nobody is cited, the engine answers in general terms without naming a business: GEO comes after the rest. Those questions first have to produce answers with names in them, and that depends on the sector.
You're already cited: pay to measure and consolidate, not to "launch" something that already runs.
Run the same test the same day on Google's AI Overviews, live in France since 22 July 2026. Write the answers down with the date. That's your baseline, and any serious provider will ask you to redo it in three months.
3. When it pays
Three conditions, and you need all three.
Your clients ask an AI. Business services, regulated professions, purchases people prepare (a website, a training course, a firm), anything searched as a full sentence. If your clients find you by walking past the shop, GEO won't change much.
Your site exists and already ranks for something. Ahrefs measured, in July 2025, that 76% of the pages cited in Google's AI Overviews ranked in the organic top 10. A site Google ranks nowhere isn't cited by Google's AI. GEO adds to SEO, it doesn't replace it.
One client is worth enough. A retainer costs around €1,000 a month on the market (Studio à Table found a median of 980 € excl. VAT a month for very small and small local businesses), and I ask for three months minimum. If a new client brings you €300, you need ten of them to pay back the first quarter. If a client is worth €5,000, one is enough.
A point that reassures small firms: in a December 2025 study of the "best of" lists cited by ChatGPT, Ahrefs found that 35% of them sat on low-authority domains. Being small doesn't rule out being cited. Being absent does.
4. When it's money wasted
The site doesn't exist or was just born. Nothing to cite, nothing to measure. Build a site Google indexes first, with pages that answer real questions. GEO comes after, or at the same time if the site is designed for it from the start.
The site ranks for nothing. Same reason: Google's AI cites what Google ranks. An SEO audit that fixes indexing and structure returns more, at that stage, than a GEO engagement.
The provider promises. "Guaranteed AI visibility", "cited by ChatGPT in 30 days", "top 3 assured": leave. Nobody controls what ChatGPT answers, and whoever claims to will pick the question after the fact to show you a result.
The report doesn't show the questions. A GEO report has to list the questions asked, the engines, the date and the answer, so you can rerun the test yourself. Without that, you're paying for a claim.
Volume replaces reading. Twenty articles a month at that price are generated and published unread. Two reviewed articles that answer one precise question each are worth more.
5. What it costs
The French market gives two public reference points. La Fabrique du Net's barometer (January 2026 version) puts the average monthly SEO budget of a national SME or a mid-sized e-commerce site at 2,500 to 5,000 € excl. VAT with an agency. Studio à Table published a median of 980 € excl. VAT a month over twelve local SEO engagements with very small and small businesses.
With me, the SEO and GEO retainer starts at €1,200 a month. Essentials includes:
- Monthly technical audit
- Priority-fixed corrections
- 2 optimized articles per month
- Basic structured data (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage)
- robots.txt + llms.txt configuration
- Google position tracking (top 10 keywords)
- Basic AI monitoring (top 5 queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini)
- Monthly synthetic report
Growth, at €2,400 a month, includes:
- Everything in Essentials
- 4 SEO + GEO optimized articles per month
- Citation engineering in your content
- Entity optimization (Wikidata, directories, profiles)
- Advanced AI monitoring (30+ monthly queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini)
- Advanced schemas (Person, Article, BreadcrumbList)
- Sector-specific GEO strategy
Three months minimum, prices excluding VAT. If you want a diagnosis first, the SEO and GEO audit costs €1,500 excl. VAT.
The month-by-month detail is in my article on what a GEO retainer includes each month. The plans are on my SEO and GEO services page. If you're comparing providers, read how to choose a GEO consultant and what a monthly SEO and GEO retainer costs.
Sources
- Ahrefs, "76% of AI Overview Citations Pull From the Top 10", July 2025.
- Ahrefs, study of the "best of" lists cited by ChatGPT, December 2025.
- Google, launch of AI Overviews in France, 22 July 2026.
- Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?" (avoid ranking guarantees).
- La Fabrique du Net, "Tarif agence SEO 2026 : combien ça coûte", January 2026 version.
- Studio à Table, "Combien coûte une prestation SEO en agence ?", 15 March 2026, updated 1 July 2026.
Ran the test and your competitors are cited, not you? Describe your situation and I reply within 24 hours with a first opinion. Tell me about your project or see the SEO and GEO plans.
