How to choose an ASEO providerCPS® 100/100
Choosing the wrong ASEO provider doesn't just waste money. It actively misleads you. You're measuring the wrong things and optimising for a surface that doesn't match where buyers actually are. This guide sets out the six criteria that separate a genuine ASEO provider from a citation tracking tool.
Why this matters more than choosing a traditional SEO agency
Traditional SEO has a recoverable failure mode. You pick the wrong agency, you waste six months and some budget, and you switch. The work they did (or didn't do) is visible in your rankings.
ASEO failure is less visible. A provider that only tracks branded Decision-stage queries can show you a citation rate that looks fine while you're invisible at Awareness, the stage where buyers form preferences and build shortlists. You won't know until you measure it properly. That's the real selection risk.
Key principle: A provider reporting your Google ranking position is not measuring AI visibility. Different surface, different signals, different techniques entirely. Insist on platform-level citation data.
The evaluation framework: 6 criteria
Three platforms as a minimum: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Ideally all five. Single-platform tracking tells you almost nothing about your actual AI visibility.
Visibility at the Decision stage (branded queries) is not the same as visibility at the Awareness stage (category queries). A credible provider shows where in the buyer journey your brand appears and where it doesn't. Both matter.
The provider should be able to score individual pages on your website for AI citability, not just your overall brand presence. Brand-level scores tell you nothing actionable. Content-level diagnosis is what actually drives improvement.
As of 2026, successful AI optimisation demands understanding semantic markup, entity relationship mapping, and query intent analysis specific to conversational AI systems. Schema markup, llms.txt deployment, AI crawler access, E-E-A-T signals. If a provider skips the technical layer, they're guessing.
AI platforms can recommend your brand with incorrect information. Without hallucination detection, a provider can't tell you whether the citations you're getting are accurate. You may be amplifying wrong information about your business without knowing it.
A dashboard that requires login credentials is not a client deliverable. If you have internal stakeholders, you need a report you can share. A dashboard login is not a deliverable. Ask what the output looks like before you sign anything.
Red flags to watch for
Ranking in Google search results and being cited in Google AI Overviews are different outcomes requiring different strategies. Any provider conflating the two isn't operating as an ASEO specialist yet.
Some providers focus exclusively on planting brand mentions across third-party platforms. If your own website's content is structurally uncitable, external mentions won't produce consistent AI citation. The website is the foundation. External mentions are a layer on top.
You should be able to understand how a provider measures citation frequency and what changes they recommend. If they can't explain their measurement approach in plain language, accountability becomes impossible.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot each have different citation behaviours. A provider tracking only one platform is giving you a partial picture. Optimising for one platform doesn't automatically improve your position on the others.
Questions to ask any ASEO provider before signing
For a full breakdown of what each tier costs and what you should expect at each price point, see our AI SEO pricing guide for the UK.
- Which AI platforms do you track, and how do you measure citation frequency?
- Can you show me my Share of Voice broken down by funnel stage?
- Do you score individual pages on my site for citability, or just overall brand presence?
- Does your audit include schema markup, llms.txt, and AI crawler access?
- Can you detect when AI platforms produce inaccurate information about my brand?
- What does the deliverable look like: a report or a dashboard?
- How do you track progress over time, and what does the reporting cadence look like?
On methodology transparency: If a provider won't explain how they measure citation frequency in plain language, that's the answer. You don't need to understand every technical detail, but you do need to understand what's being measured and how improvement is attributed to their work.
What the Cited By AI® audit covers
The Cited By AI® 28-module audit addresses every criterion in this framework: 5-platform SOV tracking, funnel-stage and persona SOV breakdown, Citation Probability Score® per page, hallucination detection, full technical readiness layer, and a report your team can act on. It's the only ASEO audit on the market that covers all six criteria in a single engagement.
See the evaluation criteria in action
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