A procurement engineer in Spain asks ChatGPT for three manufacturers that can solve a specific problem. The answer names three companies. Yours is not one of them. That same week, someone on your team searches Google for the category you sell in and finds you on page two, with no AI summary on top, competing the way you did five years ago. Those are two different problems, and almost nobody works on them together.
That is the trap when you hire a GEO agency for the Spanish market. If it only optimizes for answer engines, it leaves untouched the place where many Spanish commercial searches are still decided today: the classic Google results list. If it only does SEO, it does not put you inside the answer your buyer reads before calling you. Here is what a GEO agency should deliver in Spain, how to check it yourself without relying on its report, and when hiring one is not worth it.
What is a GEO agency?
A GEO agency is a team that works so your company gets found, understood and cited by generative engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and Google's AI summaries) when a buyer asks whom to hire. The work combines technical SEO, extractable content, entity signals and presence on third-party sources.
GEO stands for *generative engine optimization*, and it sits alongside AEO and SEO. The differences are laid out in AEO vs SEO vs GEO.
One key nuance: Google's official guide "Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search" says that optimizing for AI Overviews and AI Mode is SEO, because those features run on the same ranking and quality systems as Search. A serious GEO agency does not sell you something separate from SEO.
Why is the challenge for a GEO agency double in Spain?
The challenge is double in Spain because commercial agency searches are still decided by classic Google rankings, while the buyer already asks ChatGPT. You have to win both places at once, and each one demands different work.
What does Google show today for Spanish searches?
On September 9, 2026, Sell with Marketing measured Google results by market. Of 6 commercial agency searches in Spain ("agencia de marketing industrial", meaning industrial marketing agency, "agencia marketing b2b" and similar), none showed an AI Overview. In the United States, 15 of 20 commercial agency searches showed a resolved AI Overview.
For those Spanish searches, whoever sits at the top of the link list still gets the attention, just as before. An agency that tells you "classic SEO no longer matters" is describing a different market. The sample is small and it is a snapshot of one day: repeat the check with your own searches.
What do search volumes say in Spain?
Google Ads Keyword Planner gives these monthly volumes for Spain, from September 2025 to August 2026 (the latest month published):
- "agencia geo" (GEO agency): from 210 to 480.
- "posicionamiento seo" (SEO ranking services): from 9,900 to 590.
Those are fixed buckets, not exact averages: read them as direction, not precision. The new label is growing and the generic term is falling. That does not make Google irrelevant: it makes any agency that works only one front incomplete. How we approach each region is summarized on our markets page.
What should a GEO agency deliver?
A GEO agency should deliver five verifiable things: real access for AI crawlers, content that makes sense paragraph by paragraph, a consistent entity, proprietary data worth citing, and presence on third-party sources. If any of the five is missing, the work is incomplete.
Can AI crawlers read your website?
There are two families of crawlers. Live-answer crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User) read your site to answer a user right now. Training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, CCBot) collect content to train models. Blocking the first group means disappearing from answers. Blocking the second is your business decision.
The usual failure is not in robots.txt: a firewall can block these crawlers even when the file allows them, and Cloudflare has blocked AI crawlers by default on new domains since 2025. The agency should request your site with each real user agent and show you the response.
On top of that, many AI crawlers read the HTML the server delivers and do not execute JavaScript. If your specifications or case studies only appear after JavaScript runs, they may not exist for those crawlers. That is rendering parity.
Does your content make sense paragraph by paragraph?
Engines extract paragraphs, not pages. Each section opens with a direct answer, uses question-style headings, real tables and definitions of the "X is..." kind. Chopping articles into pieces "for AI" is unnecessary: Google's guide says so. How this turns into citations in practice is covered in how to get cited by AI.
Do the engines know who you are?
An engine doubts who you are when your website, LinkedIn, directories and press describe you differently. The agency should fix those contradictions: name, activity, sectors and markets stated the same way everywhere, authors with verifiable bios, and structured data that reflects what the page already says.
Do you have proprietary data someone would want to cite?
An engine cites what it cannot find anywhere else: a figure from your operations, an original table, a named method. The agency should help you pull it out of your business and publish it with source and date. Never invent it.
Are you mentioned outside your own website?
Engines corroborate with third parties: trade media, Spanish associations and chambers in your industry, trade fairs, reputable directories. The agency should tell you where to appear and in what order, starting with the sources that already get cited for your searches.
Table: deliverable, what you receive and how you check it
- Crawler access — What you receive: A test of your site requested with each AI user agent; How you check it yourself: Ask to see the server response for each one, not just robots.txt
- Rendering parity — What you receive: A comparison of the served HTML with the visible page; How you check it yourself: Open the page source: your services and cases must be in the text
- Extractable structure — What you receive: Pages with a direct answer, questions and tables; How you check it yourself: Read one paragraph on its own: it must make sense without the previous one
- Entity signals — What you receive: A list of corrected contradictions; How you check it yourself: Compare your website, LinkedIn and directories: same description
- Proprietary data — What you receive: One figure published with source and date; How you check it yourself: Ask where each number comes from
- Third-party presence — What you receive: A prioritized list of media and associations; How you check it yourself: Confirm they were published, with a link
- Measurement — What you receive: A dated baseline and periodic readings; How you check it yourself: Ask for the four measures together, not a single number
How do you know whether a GEO agency is working?
You know by reading four measures together: citations by engine and time window, answer share on purchase searches, the branded search curve in Search Console, and forms, WhatsApp and CRM records matched by date and time. Sessions referred by AI cannot be used to judge the channel.
A citation in ChatGPT or Copilot rarely produces a visit. It produces a name in the buyer's head, and the buyer comes back days later searching for your brand. Analytics files that visit under "direct".
A worked example with SWM data
Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report with Copilot citations. It is the only quantitative source of citations available for free. In Sell with Marketing's report, from February 22 to August 19, 2026:
- Copilot cited SWM 2,007 times.
- On 33 of 46 purchase questions, SWM held 30% or more of the citation share.
- Four pages carry 90% of the citations.
- The tool's three reports do not match each other (2,007, 1,894 and 704) because they aggregate over different windows.
- Those citations sent almost no visits. The effect showed up later, as branded searches and "direct" traffic.
Judged by visits, the channel would look useless. And this is a correlation at a single company, not a proven cause: a serious agency will tell you exactly that. More on how to read it in Does AI recommend your company?.
Why is there no automated dashboard for Google's AI?
The Google Search Console API does not separate AI Overviews or AI Mode as a search type: SWM tested it against its own property and every variant returns an error. That part is measured with dated manual checks.
What red flags should you watch for when hiring a GEO agency?
- It promises rankings or citations. Generative engines never answer the same way twice. Every result is a snapshot with a date and time.
- It sells an automated dashboard of "visibility in Google's AI". With the current Search Console API, that data does not come from there.
- It proposes chopping your articles up for AI. Google says it is unnecessary. It is billed work that moves nothing.
- It sells a robots.txt change as urgent. Declaring new crawlers almost never changes anything if your file already allows them. What is urgent is checking the firewall.
- It does not touch classic SEO. In Spain, where the link list still decides commercial searches, that leaves half the job undone.
When is a GEO agency not worth hiring?
It is not worth it if your website is not yet properly indexed in Google: basic SEO comes first. Nor if you sell to a closed list of twenty accounts that already know you, if you need opportunities next month, or if you have no CRM in which to match results.
Nor is it worth it if nobody inside the company can contribute real cases and technical judgment: the agency will end up writing generalities, and generalities do not get cited. If you want to test before committing to an ongoing service, a scoped AI visibility sprint gives you a starting snapshot. And if what you are missing is the foundation, start with B2B SEO.
Frequently asked questions about GEO agencies
Does a GEO agency replace my SEO agency? Not necessarily. In Spain, commercial agency searches are still decided in the classic Google results list, so SEO remains the foundation. A competent GEO agency does technical SEO and also works on your presence in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot. If your current agency only covers one part, the other part is missing.
How long does it take for a GEO agency's work to show? It depends on your starting point and on how much original content you can contribute. What you can demand from the first month is a dated baseline: citations, answer share, branded searches and CRM contacts. Without that baseline, nobody will be able to show you later what actually changed.
Can I check for myself whether I appear in ChatGPT? Yes, with one limit. Ask several engines what your buyer would ask, record date, time, engine and answer, and repeat every month. A single query does not represent your visibility, because generative engines never answer the same way twice. Conclusions come from the trend across runs.
Should I block GPTBot and the training crawlers? That is your business decision, not the agency's. Blocking training crawlers does not remove you from live answers. Blocking live-answer crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, does. Check your firewall as well: it can block them even when robots.txt allows them.
In Spain, the GEO agency that serves you is the one that works Google and ChatGPT at the same time and lets you verify every deliverable without taking its word for it. To find out where you start from, request the AI visibility diagnostic for your website.
