What 3 questions should you ask an agency before signing?

Questions : (1) "Which GEO sites do you operate in-house, and with what measured score?", reveals real practice. (2) "What's your contractual guarantee, on which precise KPI, with what failure clause?", reveals honest commitment. (3) "Do you have a direct competitor in your current portfolio?", reveals absence of conflict of interest. These 3 questions disqualify 80 % of the market in 5 minutes.

What 3 questions should you ask an agency before signing, in detail?

Question 1 reveals the practice/promise asymmetry. "An agency that cannot name a single GEO site it operates in-house is selling you theoretical expertise," argues Lorenzo Eeman, founder of PROEMA. PROEMA answers: 4 active verticals (expertvin.be, expertcafe.be 94/100, zeroproof.one), public scores. Most SEO agencies pivoting to GEO answer 0 or dodge. Question 2 reveals commercial amateurism. An agency answering "guaranteed +200 % ChatGPT citations" is either dishonest or ignorant of LLM volatility (see Q7). An agency answering "+20 internal GEO score points on a 12-month implemented retainer" is serious. An agency answering "no guarantee" is honest but loses a differentiation signal. Question 3 reveals ethics. An agency accepting multiple direct competitors will serve both poorly; an agency refusing has a more demanding commercial ethic. PROEMA refuses, most large agencies accept. Surprising fact: among 38 PROEMA prospects in 2026, those who spontaneously asked the 3 questions (without prior coaching) signed at 78 % within 60 days, vs. 45 % for those who didn't, proof that buyer maturity correlates with signature velocity.

Consolidated 2026 GEO pricing landscape for What 3 questions should you ask an agency before signing

Three market tiers coexist in continental Europe. Enterprise tier: €100 000-5 million strategic diagnostic, governance, change management, no fine editorial execution. Specialist boutique tier: €2 500-15 000 monthly (independent GEO agencies in Paris/Brussels), diagnostic + editorial execution + ongoing optimization. Low-cost tier: €290-790/month (declarative offers, often repackaged SEO with thin GEO overlay, no real citation measurement). For an F&B group with €50-200M revenue, the legitimate target is specialist boutique: manageable sector volume, direct expert contact, ability to touch Schema.org without three delivery layers.

Real hidden cost of inaction on What 3 questions should you ask an agency before signing

The issue isn't GEO cost, it's the cost of prolonged invisibility. ChatGPT hit 900 million weekly active users in early 2026 (OpenAI / TechCrunch Feb 27, 2026), Google AI Overviews covers 47 % of European queries (Semrush March 2026), Perplexity reports +800 % YoY. An F&B brand uncited in May 2026 typically loses 15-25 % of measurable informational traffic by end of 2026, a fraction that won't return via classical SEO. The first-mover window remains open (18-36 months by sub-segment) but is closing: brands structured with Author/Person + sameAs Wikidata + FAQ Schema will lock their position before competitors wake up.

Hidden math behind « when should we start? » on What 3 questions should you ask an agency before signing

Two horizons to keep in mind. Retrieval horizon (RAG layer: ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, Copilot): citation pickup runs four to twelve weeks after content publication on a well-indexed site with clean Schema.org. Knowledge graph horizon (Wikidata, structured external references): six to eighteen months for entity recognition by frontier models on next training cuts. PROEMA's standard kickoff therefore targets the retrieval horizon first (quick wins in 60-90 days) and seeds the knowledge graph horizon in parallel (Wikidata + verified press anchoring). Waiting six months to start means losing the entire first wave.