How to spot a legit AI visibility agency (and dodge the dodgy ones)

Red flag: vague promises like ‘#1 ranking in AI’

This phrase alone should make you pause. AI answers aren’t a ranked list of ten results the way a Google search page is, there isn’t a number one spot to guarantee, and any agency promising a fixed ranking position is either misunderstanding how these platforms actually work or hoping you don’t. What a legitimate agency can promise is a process: testing how you currently appear, identifying specific gaps, and doing the work to close them. They can show you movement and improvement over time. They can’t promise you’ll be the top answer to every possible question a customer might ask, because nobody controls that, including the AI companies themselves. If a sales conversation leans heavily on guaranteed rankings or vague talk of ‘dominating AI search’, ask them to explain, specifically, what that means and how it’s measured. A straight answer will tell you a lot. A dodge tells you more.

Red flag: no real before/after testing

Ask any agency to show you actual results: real questions asked of real AI platforms, before their work started and after. If they can’t produce this, or they show you generic screenshots with no context about what business they belong to, be sceptical. This is a field where testing is genuinely straightforward, you can literally open ChatGPT and type a question, so an agency that can’t or won’t show their working is choosing not to for a reason. Case studies with specific, checkable claims, which platform, which query, what changed, are worth far more than a testimonial that says ‘amazing results, highly recommend’ with nothing underneath it. If you can’t independently verify a claim by opening the same AI tool and asking a similar question yourself, treat the claim as unproven rather than taking it on faith.

Red flag: no fixed pricing, endless discovery calls

Plain pricing is a genuine trust signal in this industry, not just a nice-to-have. If every conversation ends in ‘we’d need to have another call to scope that properly’ with no sense of what you’d actually pay, that’s worth noticing. A legitimate agency should be able to tell you, reasonably quickly, roughly what a fixed engagement costs and what’s included in it. Endless discovery calls aren’t always a scam, sometimes complex, multi-location businesses genuinely need more scoping, but they shouldn’t be the default for a straightforward local business asking a straightforward question. If you’ve had three calls and still don’t have a number, that’s not thoroughness, that’s a sales process designed to build commitment before you’ve seen the price.

Green flags worth actually trusting

Look for agencies that show you real, specific test results across more than one platform, not just Google. Look for plain, published or easily quoted pricing rather than ‘it depends’ as a permanent answer. And look, oddly enough, for agencies willing to tell you what not to spend money on. That last one sounds counterintuitive from a sales perspective, but it’s the strongest signal of all: an agency confident enough to say ‘you don’t need this yet’ is one that’s optimising for you being a customer next year too, not just this quarter. The agencies worth hiring are the ones happy to be checked. Ask to see a real example, ask for the fixed price up front, and ask what they’d tell you not to bother with. Their answer to that last question tells you more than any pitch deck will.