AEO Pricing UK: What AI Search Optimisation Should Actually Include
A practical UK AEO pricing guide covering audits, integrated monthly work, deliverables, measurement, exclusions and common agency red flags.
Co-founder of Ampliflow. Builds AI automation, websites, SEO/AEO, and growth systems for UK SMEs.
- 01AEO costs at a glance
- 02What AEO means in practical work
- 03What Google and OpenAI currently say
- 04AEO deliverables worth paying for
- 05How to measure AEO without inventing certainty
Answer engine optimisation pricing should follow the work: technical repairs, buyer-focused content, evidence and measurement. Here, AEO means answer engine optimisation for AI search—not Authorised Economic Operator customs certification.
Ampliflow's published SEO and AI-search starting point is £497/month. That is not a universal market price or an unlimited programme. Compare the current service scope and pricing, then confirm the pages, implementation, reporting and separate costs in the proposal.
If you are comparing answer-focused work specifically, see the AEO service overview alongside the wider SEO and AI-search scope. The labels overlap; compare the questions, pages and implementation included rather than paying twice for the same task.
An audit, monitoring subscription and managed implementation service are different purchases. A low price for one is not necessarily a cheaper version of another.
AEO should not be a mysterious second retainer bolted onto ordinary SEO. Google says its established SEO foundations remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode and that no special AI schema or machine-readable file is required. Additional spend is justified when it funds additional research, content, technical work, authority building and measurement.
Checked: 24 September 2026 · Confirm VAT treatment and exclusions in the quote · AI citations and rankings cannot be guaranteed
AEO costs at a glance
| Scope | What to price explicitly | Useful output |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline check | Named engines, questions, locations and sample size | Dated observations and obvious eligibility gaps |
| Audit | Pages, entities, technical depth and review time | Prioritised findings with evidence and owners |
| Managed implementation | Actual technical/content work and approval capacity | Shipped improvements and measured follow-up |
| Multi-market work | Languages, local evidence, catalogues and stakeholders | Distinct market work rather than translated duplicates |
These are scope distinctions, not a survey of agency prices. Ask competing providers to quote the same responsibilities before drawing a cost comparison.
The baseline check tells you what is visible. The audit explains why and what to do. The monthly programme implements and learns. Do not pay programme money for repeated screenshots of prompts.
AEO audit pricing for a small website: what changes the quote?
A small page count does not necessarily mean a small job. Five service pages with conflicting business facts, inaccessible content or no supporting evidence can need more work than a larger, well-maintained site.
For a useful comparison, give each provider the same website and buyer questions, then ask them to separate these responsibilities:
| Question for the quote | Why it changes the work |
|---|---|
| Which pages and services are included? | A homepage review is different from checking every commercial journey |
| Which engines, locations and questions will be sampled? | A fixed, named sample makes repeat checks interpretable |
| Who implements technical fixes? | Advice alone leaves development work with your team |
| Who supplies and approves evidence? | Case studies, expert answers and business facts need an accountable source |
| Which existing SEO tasks are already covered? | The same canonical, content or schema repair should not be counted twice |
| What is separate from the fee? | Tools, development, content production and third-party work need explicit treatment |
| What happens after the findings? | Agree the handover, acceptance checks and whether a recheck is included |
There is no standalone Ampliflow audit price quoted here. The £497/month starting point above is for the published SEO and AI-search offer, subject to agreed scope. It should not be read as the price of a one-off audit or a promise that every item in this guide is included.
Already have an SEO provider? Ask which gaps they can close within the existing scope before buying overlapping work. If you need help deciding what belongs in the brief, Get unstuck. Bring the website and the questions your prospective customers ask before choosing a supplier.
What AEO means in practical work
Answer engine optimisation improves the chance that a business and its evidence are correctly discovered, understood and cited in AI-assisted search and answer experiences.
The work overlaps strongly with sound SEO:
- accessible crawling and indexable pages;
- clear service, product and entity information;
- content that answers real questions with evidence;
- useful internal links and information architecture;
- structured data that matches visible content;
- consistent business facts across owned and trusted external sources;
- original proof, expertise and references worth citing;
- measurement of search discovery and commercial action.
The additional layer is systematic testing across AI surfaces, prompt patterns and citation sources. That needs care because answers vary by wording, location, model, account context and time.
Our SEO-to-AEO guide explains the discipline. The pricing rule is simple: overlap should reduce duplication, not create two invoices for the same technical fix.
What Google and OpenAI currently say
Google's AI features guidance states:
- ordinary SEO best practices remain relevant;
- a page must be indexed and eligible for a search snippet to appear as a supporting link;
- there are no extra technical requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode;
- no special schema or AI text file is required;
- crawling, internal links, page experience, text content and matching structured data still matter;
- AI-feature traffic remains included in Search Console's overall performance reporting.
Google's Generative AI performance report announcement says the dedicated view shows impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates. Google announced a limited test on 3 June, then confirmed a worldwide rollout on 31 August 2026. It does not turn an impression into a stable “AI rank”.
OpenAI's publisher guidance says public sites can appear in ChatGPT search and advises publishers not to block OAI-SearchBot if they want content included in summaries and snippets. Referral traffic can be measured in analytics, subject to consent and attribution limits.
Neither source promises inclusion. Eligibility is not selection.
What an AEO audit should include
1. Business and entity baseline
The audit should confirm the exact company, brands, services, products, people, locations and differentiators that answer systems need to distinguish. It should find conflicting names, descriptions, addresses or relationships.
2. Technical access
Check indexability, canonicals, rendering, robots controls, OAI-SearchBot policy, internal links, structured data and whether important evidence exists in accessible text.
3. Prompt and answer sample
Use a documented set of prompts across named engines and modes:
- category discovery;
- problem-led questions;
- comparisons;
- local or regional selection;
- brand facts;
- price and suitability questions;
- follow-up questions that narrow the choice.
Record date, engine, wording, answer, brands mentioned and cited sources. The sample must be reproducible enough to revisit, while acknowledging output variability.
4. Source and citation analysis
Identify which pages and third-party sources answer engines use for the category. Separate sources the business controls, can influence and cannot reasonably change.
5. Content and proof gaps
Map missing commercial answers, comparisons, definitions, evidence, expert authorship, policies, case studies, product facts and original data. Do not recommend 50 articles when five service pages lack basic clarity.
6. Prioritised action plan
Every recommendation needs expected value, effort, owner and dependency. The audit should end with a 30-, 60- and 90-day sequence, not an “AI readiness score” with no operating plan.
What an integrated monthly programme should buy
A credible integrated programme usually combines four streams.
Technical and entity repair
Resolve access, duplicate or conflicting information, structured data, author and organisation relationships, internal linking and measurement foundations.
Commercial content
Improve the pages closest to buyer intent: costs, comparisons, suitability, process, evidence and objections. Create new pages only where the site lacks a clear owner for the question.
Authority and corroboration
Earn credible references through useful research, expert contribution, partnerships, industry profiles, digital PR and accurate third-party listings. A business cannot declare itself authoritative through schema.
Measurement and iteration
Repeat a controlled prompt sample, review Search Console and referral data, inspect citations and track qualified actions. Update the plan when the evidence changes.
Every budget requires choices. A small team cannot research every prompt, rebuild the website, produce original studies and run national PR simultaneously.
What a larger programme should add
Higher spend should buy complexity or pace:
- several products, brands, countries or languages;
- larger prompt and competitor sets;
- dedicated technical and content implementation;
- original datasets, tools, benchmarks or expert research;
- digital PR and source development;
- regular stakeholder workshops and governance;
- deeper brand, product-feed or merchant integration;
- monitoring that distinguishes material change from answer volatility.
If the additional money only adds more tracked prompts and a larger dashboard, the programme has confused observation with optimisation.
AEO deliverables worth paying for
- 01Technical eligibility
- 02Evidence-led content
- 03Entity consistency
- 04Source authority
- 05Citation sampling
- 06Measured iteration
| Deliverable | What makes it useful |
|---|---|
| Prompt map | Tied to buyer stages, products and locations; dated and versioned |
| Citation inventory | Names actual cited URLs and source types, not only brand mentions |
| Entity map | Shows company, people, services, products and corroborating sources |
| Technical review | Produces implementable fixes with owners and acceptance checks |
| Content briefs | Resolve one search intent with evidence and internal-link role |
| Source plan | Explains what deserves external reference and how it will be promoted |
| Monthly report | Separates visibility samples, search data, referrals, actions and work shipped |
| Refresh log | Records time-sensitive claims, sources and the trigger for rechecking them |
Ask to see one observation become a shipped improvement
For example, a report might record that a page was discovered but not indexed. That observation should link to the dated inspection evidence, the affected URL and a specific investigation—not become a claim that the site needs an expensive new AI layer.
| Stage | Evidence the buyer should receive |
|---|---|
| Observation | The URL, query or prompt, date, source and relevant context |
| Interpretation | What the evidence suggests and what it cannot establish |
| Action | The proposed change, owner, scope and acceptance check |
| Verification | What actually changed, with a repeatable technical check |
| Outcome | Later search/referral/enquiry observations, separate from work completed |
This is an illustrative reporting method, not a client result. It lets you distinguish a useful recommendation from repeated monitoring. An indexable page, a citation and a qualified enquiry are three different outcomes.
What should not be sold as a special AEO service
- adding generic FAQ sections to every page;
- installing
llms.txtand declaring the site AI-ready; - adding schema that does not match visible content;
- generating hundreds of near-duplicate articles;
- repeating brand prompts manually with no controlled method;
- buying low-quality links or mentions;
- promising inclusion in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google AI features;
- reporting a proprietary score without raw observations;
- renaming ordinary title and heading edits as a new technical discipline.
Some of these tasks may be useful in context. None is a complete strategy.
How to measure AEO without inventing certainty
Use four layers.
Eligibility
Can relevant systems crawl, index and understand the important pages? Are facts consistent and the visible content usable?
Sampled visibility
Across a fixed, dated prompt set, how often is the brand accurately mentioned, in which position or role, and which sources are cited? Treat this as a sample, not a census of every possible answer.
Search and referral evidence
Use the dedicated Search Console Generative AI view where the property has access; otherwise use overall Web search trends and state the limitation. Track identifiable referrals from ChatGPT, Perplexity and other sources in analytics, understanding that consent and unattributed journeys create gaps.
Commercial action
Track qualified enquiries, sales, assisted conversions, branded demand and the questions sales teams hear. Visibility without a suitable offer and next step is not a return.
Do not combine the four layers into one magic number. The uncertainty is part of the measurement.
A simple buying decision
Choose a one-off audit when:
- the business wants a defensible baseline;
- the existing SEO team can implement the work;
- leaders are testing whether the channel deserves budget;
- a vendor is proposing a large retainer without evidence.
Choose an integrated monthly programme when:
- technical, content and authority work all need ownership;
- the site already has meaningful search demand or commercial proof;
- subject experts can participate;
- someone will act on the findings each month;
- SEO and AEO can share research and implementation.
Do nothing yet when the website does not clearly state what the business sells, who it serves or why it is credible. Fix the source before monitoring the answer.
Questions to ask an AEO agency
- Which engines, modes and locations will you test?
- How do you control prompt wording and answer variability?
- Which work overlaps with our existing SEO scope?
- Show the raw observations behind your visibility score.
- What will you implement in the first 30, 60 and 90 days?
- Which claims about AI inclusion can you not guarantee?
- How will you measure Google AI visibility when Search Console groups it into Web search?
- Which external sources appear in our category, and why?
- What expertise and evidence do you need from us?
- What do we own when the engagement ends?
The best answer may be “we cannot know that from available data”. Precision about limits is a quality signal.
Frequently asked questions
How much does AEO cost in the UK?
There is no single comparable market price across audits, monitoring and implementation. Ampliflow's SEO and AI-search starting point is £497/month; the agreed scope and any separate work determine the quote. Ask for deliverables, exclusions and measurement definitions rather than a score alone.
Is AEO different from SEO?
It adds systematic attention to AI answers, entities and citations, but shares crawling, content, internal linking, structured data and authority foundations with SEO. Buy the incremental work, not a duplicated retainer.
Can an agency guarantee ChatGPT citations?
No. Answer systems choose sources dynamically and outputs vary. An agency can improve eligibility, clarity, evidence and authority and can measure a controlled sample. It cannot promise inclusion.
Do I need llms.txt for AEO?
Google explicitly says no special AI text file is required for its AI features. An llms.txt file may serve other experimental or documentation purposes, but it is not a substitute for crawlable, useful pages.
How long does AEO take?
Technical fixes may be visible after recrawling. Content and authority work can take months. Set 30-, 60- and 90-day implementation milestones, then judge trends over a longer window appropriate to the market.
Pay for evidence and implementation
AEO deserves budget when it makes the business easier to discover, understand and corroborate across the places buyers now ask questions. It does not deserve a surcharge merely because the report contains screenshots from an AI tool.
Read Ampliflow's AI search optimisation scope. For a clarity chat, bring the site, your current SEO responsibilities and the buyer questions that matter.
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