How do I know if my current SEO agency understands AI search?

Many UK businesses already work with SEO agencies and want to know whether their current agency is equipped to handle AI search visibility. The answer usually becomes clear with three simple questions.

First, ask them: "What does ChatGPT say about our business right now?" A genuine AI SEO agency should be able to show you documented evidence of how major AI platforms currently describe your business. If they have never tested this, they are not monitoring your AI visibility and therefore cannot be optimising it.

Second, ask: "How are we tracking AI citation rates?" AI citation tracking requires systematic prompt testing across multiple platforms. If your agency is only tracking Google rankings and organic traffic, they are measuring traditional SEO performance — not AI visibility. The two are different metrics that require different tools and methodologies.

Third, ask: "What is our entity clarity score?" Entity clarity — how accurately AI platforms identify what your business is and does — is a foundational concept in AI SEO. If your agency is unfamiliar with the term or cannot provide a structured assessment, they likely lack the framework needed for AI-specific optimisation.

Additional indicators that your agency may not understand AI search include: no mention of structured data or schema markup in their reporting; no discussion of how your brand appears on Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude; recommendations focused entirely on keyword rankings and backlinks; and no acknowledgment that AI platforms work differently from traditional search engines.

At Rank4AI, we frequently work alongside existing SEO agencies rather than replacing them. Traditional SEO remains valuable — Google Search still processes billions of queries daily. But AI search visibility requires specialist expertise that sits alongside traditional SEO rather than within it. If your current agency is strong on traditional SEO but cannot answer the three questions above, t