How to Vet an AEO Agency: A B2B SaaS Buyer's Checklist

You are evaluating agencies that claim they can get your B2B SaaS brand recommended by ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. The category is new enough that anyone can call themselves an AEO agency, and most retainers start at real money before you see any result. The difference between a partner who moves your citation share and one who sells you repackaged SEO comes down to a handful of proof points. Here is what to demand before you sign.

Proof point 1: a measurement method, not a vibe

The first question to ask any AEO agency is "how do you measure whether it worked?" A credible answer involves tracking how often your brand is cited in AI answers to real category questions, across more than one model, over time. If the agency cannot show you a dashboard or a method for citation share, they have no way to prove impact and neither will you.

Be specific in the ask. You want to see how they test the same buyer questions against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, because visibility differs sharply between models. A brand can be quoted by Perplexity and invisible in ChatGPT. An agency that only checks one engine is measuring a fraction of the picture. Our breakdown on measuring AI citation share across LLMs is a useful yardstick: if their method is vaguer than that, push back.

Proof point 2: named case studies with real numbers

Ask for two or three case studies in B2B SaaS, with the brand named and a before-and-after on visibility. "We improved a client's AI presence" is not a case study. A case study tells you the starting citation share, what they changed, how long it took, and where the number landed.

A worked example beats a testimonial. The FastTrackr AI case study is the format to expect: a named client, the specific work done, and the visibility movement that followed. If an agency cannot produce anything comparable, you are paying to be their first case study. Sometimes that is an acceptable trade for a lower rate, but you should know that is the deal you are making.

Proof point 3: a content and entity process you can audit

AEO is won on the page and in the way AI engines understand your brand as an entity. Ask the agency to walk you through their actual production process. Strong answers cover:

If you want to sanity-check their crawler answer, a clean llms.txt file you can generate free is exactly the kind of artifact a competent agency produces in week one. And the underlying playbook in how to get cited by AI engines is the standard their content should meet or beat.

Red flags that should end the conversation

Some answers tell you to keep looking:

• Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed citations. No one controls model outputs, and a guarantee means they do not understand the channel or they are willing to mislead you.
• Refusing to share methodology. If "it's proprietary" is the answer to how they measure results, you cannot verify anything.
• AEO described as identical to SEO. The overlap is real but the tactics differ. An agency that just rebranded its SEO deck will optimize for clicks, not citations.
• Reporting only traffic. AI discovery often produces no trackable click, so a traffic-only report misses the entire value of the channel.

Build or buy: a fair comparison

Before signing any retainer, get an honest sense of what the work involves so you can compare an agency against doing it with a platform plus your existing team. The how OnlyAEO works page lays out the full loop of measurement, gap-finding, and a content engine, and the AI Feed Engine handles the part most teams find hardest: feeding AI crawlers content structured to be quoted. Pricing a platform against an agency retainer is straightforward once you know the scope; the OnlyAEO pricing page gives you the number to put next to the agency proposal.

The right partner, agency or platform, will welcome every question on this list. The wrong one will get defensive when you ask how they measure success. That reaction alone tells you most of what you need to know.