The short answer: there is no standard price for GEO. Doing it yourself mainly costs time; outsourcing is usually billed monthly, and price depends on how many questions and languages you cover. Results typically show in three to six months, driven early by content being crawled and cited by AI, then sustained by steady output. The cheapest test is simple: open an AI assistant, ask the three questions you want customers to find you through, and see whether your company appears in the answers.
What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?
GEO is generative engine optimization: the goal is to get your content cited by AI and to appear in the answers AI gives customers. SEO competes for ranking position in search results; GEO competes to be cited. The difference comes from a change in customer behavior. Customers used to search keywords, and the engine returned a list of links, where a higher position meant more chance. Now some customers ask AI directly, for example "I'm shipping a batch to Poland, what should I watch out for," and AI returns a complete answer that usually names only two or three companies.
So a customer's first round of supplier screening already happens inside AI, and a company absent from the answer never enters the price comparison.
What decides the cost of GEO?
Three blocks of work drive the cost. The first is question mining: assembling 50 to 100 real customer questions from inquiry records, industry-platform questions, and questions reverse-engineered by asking AI. The second is content production: each priority question needs several citable, structured pieces, so covering each main question costs more than a single article. The third is language versions: cross-border companies usually need both Chinese and English content, with independent titles, descriptions, keywords, and URLs.
Run in-house, the cost is mainly staff time, with no extra software to buy. Outsourced, pricing usually follows the number of covered questions and language versions, and varies widely. One warning: the foundation of GEO, the question list and content standards, cannot be outsourced to guesswork, because it depends on your own customer-conversation records.
How long until GEO works?
Content needs time from publication to being crawled and cited, and initial results generally appear in three to six months. Early change shows up in the answer composition for specific questions, for example your company name or page starting to appear in the answer to a long-tail question. Sustaining results then depends on steady content accumulation; when you stop updating, citations gradually shift to fresher content.
A workable way to judge results is to self-check: search the same set of questions across different AI products, record whether your company or page appears, and compare month by month. This costs no paid tool.
What content gets cited by AI more easily?
AI's preferences are fairly clear. Content whose title gives the conclusion directly is more likely to be used. Paragraphs with specific numbers, time ranges, and checkable sources rank higher, for example "China to Germany by sea, a standard container usually takes 32 to 38 days, plus 5 to 7 days in peak season." By contrast, idea-type statements without concrete information are hard to cite.
On structure, each subhead should form a self-contained, complete answer of about 100 to 200 words. Give the answer in the first two sentences without background. Add a FAQ at the end covering what the customer will ask next.
After publishing, one easily missed step: search your full company name in AI and confirm the result is your own company. If it returns a competitor, AI has a fuzzy picture of you, and you need a brand-introduction page stating the full legal name, founding date, location, and main business.
Is it too late to start GEO now?
Few companies are investing seriously in GEO right now, mainly because results take time and most budgets still go to traffic buying and ads. Under niche questions in vertical industries, citable content is relatively scarce. Entry cost is low while content is scarce; as more companies join, competition shifts to content volume, and latecomers need higher investment for the same position.
Public cases show AI recommendations do not fully follow traditional brand-recognition order. According to an Ebrun report on 19 September 2026, one lingerie brand was mentioned 29 times in AI recommendations while several larger brands were not mentioned at all.
FAQ
Q: Do GEO and SEO need doing at the same time?
A: Yes, ideally both. SEO covers customers still using search engines, GEO covers customers asking AI directly. Both groups exist now and share the same content assets.
Q: Can a company with no tech team do GEO?
A: Yes. GEO's core work is question mining and structuring content, which depends on how well you know customer questions, not technical skill.
Q: Should English and Chinese content be written separately?
A: Yes. The two languages ask and phrase things differently, and directly translated content is usually cited less by AI than natively written content.
Q: How is GEO measured?
A: Measure the change in AI answers under specific questions, recording monthly whether you are mentioned, where, and in what context, and comparing with competitors' mentions.
Q: Does the effect disappear if you stop updating?
A: Citations gradually shift. AI tends to cite fresher and more complete content, so after you stop updating, the citation probability of older content falls over time.