How much does GEO cost for a UK local business?
Much of it costs nothing. Letting AI crawlers read your site, making your details match everywhere and writing a page that answers your customers' main question are jobs you or your web person can do. If you pay someone, it's usually a one-off fix or a monthly service. Our prices are public: £495 for a one-off Quick Fix, £995 setup plus £199 a month for ongoing work, and £1,500 setup plus £399 a month for competitive trades and multiple locations. Be wary of anyone who guarantees results: nobody controls what AI tools say.
What you can do for free
Google says there are no extra requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: the same basics that help in Google Search apply. Most AI tools work the same way, so start here before paying anyone:
- Check that robots.txt and your firewall let the AI search crawlers in (our free crawler checker does this in seconds).
- Make your name, address, phone number and opening hours identical on your website, Google Business Profile and directories.
- Write one page on your site that answers the question your customers ask most, with prices or from-prices if you can.
- Ask every customer for a review, not only the happy ones.
What a one-off fix should cover
A one-off fix is worth paying for when you don't have the time or a web person. It should cover the technical basics and a first answer page, and leave you with something you can check: structured data that passes a test, a Google Business Profile that matches your site, and a page that's live. Our Quick Fix covers exactly that for £495.
What a monthly service adds
AI answers change, and competitors improve. A monthly service is worth it when you want the work done and measured without doing it yourself: a re-check of the same questions each month, a new answer page, listings kept in line and help getting reviews. Ask to see the month-by-month results, including the questions where nothing moved.
What drives the price
The same work costs more when there's more of it, or when each new customer is worth more:
- How many locations you have, since each needs its own listings and pages.
- How competitive your trade is in your area: dentists and solicitors in a city usually need more than a village plumber.
- How much content is missing: a site with one page needs more than one with a page per service.
- The state of the website: a site that only shows text after JavaScript runs may need rebuilding before anything else helps.
Red flags
Walk away from anyone who:
- Guarantees you'll be recommended by ChatGPT or any other AI tool.
- Offers reviews, or suggests asking only happy customers for them. Fake reviews have been illegal in the UK since April 2025.
- Adds hidden text or "instructions to AI" to your pages. Search engines treat it as spam.
- Won't show you how they measure results, or what happened to the questions that didn't improve.
Written by the Get Recommended team, run by Atlas Labs. We check these guides against each AI tool's own documentation and update them when it changes.
Questions
Is GEO a monthly cost forever?
No. Many businesses only need a one-off fix. A monthly service makes sense in competitive trades, or when you'd rather pay someone to keep checking and improving.
Is GEO more expensive than SEO?
It overlaps heavily with local SEO, so if you already pay for good local SEO, much of the groundwork may be done. Ask your provider whether they check AI answers as well as Google rankings.
Can I pay to be recommended?
No. There's no paid placement in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude answers. Paying for the work that makes you easier to recommend is different from paying for the recommendation.