These days, everybody wants AI SEO, but what do we really mean by that? In fact, AI SEO isn’t really a thing at all. The best AI SEO agencies don’t deliver this at all – what they provide is better known as “GEO.” It stands for “generative engine optimisation,” and refers to the process of optimising websites and content so that it gets seen and cited by AI models.
So who is the best AI SEO, or rather, GEO agency in the UK? The answer is not as straightforward as it seems, for there are more than a few expert and not-so-expert agencies that claim to be able to help companies get themselves noticed by AI chatbot tools.
That’s why we’ve decided to take a closer look and explain the specifics of each of the top agency’s GEO services, how they differ and which one is best for which situation. NP Digital combines AI search with a bunch of other marketing disciplines. It’s what you might call a “performance marketing” agency, whose work spans every major sales channel. Given its industry recognition, it’s clearly one of the best AI SEO agencies, but it’s not the only one.
NP Digital remains the first overall choice in this shortlist because it connects AI search with a wider performance-marketing system. Journey Further and Found remain compelling specialist alternatives, Hallam is particularly relevant for B2B AI visibility, while POLARIS and iCrossing bring more focused technical and data-led approaches.
AI SEO comes in many shapes and sizes
The need for AI SEO has become glaringly apparent as more companies begin to realize just how vital AI chatbots are to their marketing funnels. It doesn’t matter what industry you operate in, the chances are that a good portion of your customers or clients have already binned Google Search in favour of ChatGPT or Claude.
Nonetheless, companies looking for an AI SEO expert need to be cautious in their search. For there’s a lot of confusing language being banded about, so it may not be clear who actually provides the kind of service they require. Specifically, what you need is help in getting your brand name recognised, mentioned and ideally recommended by AI chatbots, and that’s no easy feat. But some can do it, as this list will reveal.
1. NP Digital: best for integrating AI search with full-funnel performance
NP Digital’s skillset includes tying its AI visibility campaigns into its SEO work, creating an intricate roadmap that aims to enhance both categories.
One of the ways it does this is with Ubersuggest, an AI search visibility tool that can tell you when and where a brand is mentioned by AI chatbots and under what circumstances. It also uses AnswerThePublic, which is used for understanding the questions most likely to be of relevance to particular brands.
NP Digital’s AI SEO work has earned significant praise, and its reputation as one of the UK’s best marketing agencies is why it has claimed dozens of awards from industry names such as Campaign, AdAge and Performance Marketing World. Enhancing its credentials further, it’s also one of Google’s oldest Premier Partners.
Besides AI SEO and good old “standard” SEO, NP Digital is widely regarded for its media strategies, helping brands to get mentioned in high-readership news websites and blogs. It’s an expert in scaling marketing campaigns to attract global audiences, and it can do the same for GEO too.
2. Found: best for AI-first discovery across search surfaces
Found has crafted a niche AI-first discovery model that also covers surfaces like marketplaces, social media and traditional search engines.
The company has a name for its specialised proposition, which it calls “Everysearch,” because of the way it targets every major search platform. Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, ChatGPT, Facebook, Instagram, Claude, you name it, Found can get you visible on it. Or so it says.
Found’s secret weapon is a technology innovation called Luminr, which is similar to NP Digital’s proprietary software. The company uses it to understand and keep track of how often its clients are mentioned or found across specific search platforms. It allows clients to use it too, so they can measure how its campaigns are delivering over time. It can also identify when and where visibility disappears. This can happen often, especially if a competitor makes a concerted effort to displace it.
With Found, you’re not getting an enhanced AI presence alone. It also promises to help boost search engine rankings and get your brand plastered over the most popular social media apps too. As such, it performs its work in such a way that whatever helps with AI visibility, often helps brands get seen elsewhere, too.
The weakness is scale. Simply put, Found will only help you get found in the UK, where it focuses all of its attention. It’s not the partner you need if you’re targeting audiences in other markets.
3. Journey Further: best for discovery-led AI search and incrementality
Journey Further doesn’t offer AI SEO as a standalone service. Instead, it focuses on more comprehensive marketing programmes that stretch across many channels at once.
AI SEO services can be found within its organic media offering, which also helps brands to appear at the top of search engines and social media platforms. It has dedicated content and creative media teams too, which can be helpful if your company needs a broader media presence.
Journey Further differentiates itself most when it comes to measuring the impact of its AI SEO efforts. It provides clients with highly detailed reports that link AI visibility to real business value metrics, so it can demonstrate how it’s helping clients to grow their bottom lines. According to the testimonials on its site, many of its clients are truly impressed.
Just know that you’re going to have to shell out for the full organic media package if you want Journey Further to help you with AI visibility. You’ll get seen in more areas, but it might stretch your budget further than you’re willing to go.
4. Hallam: best for B2B AI Search connected to demand and ABM
Hallam is the agency you need if you want your B2B business to thrive. Its AI SEO service is notable for revealing how enhanced AI visibility can impact demand generation and revenue growth.
AI SEO is very different for B2B companies because of the more complex customer buying journeys they have to deal with. Business procurement involves a lot of people, different teams focusing on very different things, like costs, benefits. logistics, sourcing times and so on, and they all need AI answers.
This means Hallam has its work cut out, because it needs to get its clients mentioned in the answers of some very different and difficult questions posed by those procurement teams. It helps organisations to build a more complete picture of their customer’s search processes, and can make its impacts to increases in customer demand.
Hallam serves a very distinct kind of customer, and while it’s good at what it does, larger multinationals and non-B2B firms will not benefit from this kind of service.
5. POLARIS: best for technical AI Search, GEO and complex-site optimisation
POLARIS does the foundational work of AI search visibility, helping clients to ensure that the architecture and “crawlability” of their web properties is seamless for AI models.
The company actually offers a few different services around AI SEO. These include “technical GEO,” “AI Search and GEO,” and “AI content optimisation.” Each one is quite different, and it may be the case that you need help in each area, or only one.
Where POLARIS really proves itself useful is in those cases where brands struggle to work out what they’re doing wrong. On its website, POLARIS explains that it’s an expert at hunting for authority or content gaps that prevent clients from being seen by AI models. Once the problem is understood, it can go about fixing it.
So if you’re already making an effort to enhance your AI visibility and you haven’t yet seen the results you were hoping for, POLARIS might be able to tell you where you need to change things up. On the other hand, it doesn’t have the creative solutions and media package programmes offered by full-service partners like NP Digital.
6. iCrossing: best for enterprise AEO/GEO connected to data, media and platforms
iCrossing is not someone you outsource AI SEO work to, but rather, someone you go to when you want instructions on how to do it yourself.
In that way, it’s really an AI SEO consultant, as opposed to an AI SEO partner. But it’s the kind of service that many brands need. Its advice spans everything from the technical specifics of authority building and site architecture, to content strategy and techniques for getting media mentions.
There’s also a distinct data-backed methodology that can help brands to understand their AI visibility problems. For instance, it may be that the company’s content system is too fragmented and not being registered by AI assistants because of that. This is not something that everyone can easily pick up on.
iCrossing is the ideal partner if you’re looking for insights into the technical know-how that goes into AI visibility, backed by comprehensive data to inform platform-related decision-making.
The models side by side
| Agency | AI-search model | Best-fit brief | Tool or method |
| NP Digital | Integrated AI SEO | Global brands | Ubersuggest + SEO/GEO/AEO stack |
| Found | AI-first discovery | UK brands prioritising AI-first discovery | Everysearch + Luminr |
| Journey Further | Discovery-led AI search | Brands focused on incrementality | Organic Media + GEO/AEO + marketing science |
| Hallam | Integrated B2B AI Search | B2B and complex buying journeys | SEO + AI Search + ABM + digital PR |
| POLARIS | Technical AI Search + GEO | Complex and international sites | Technical SEO + GEO + AI tracking |
| iCrossing | Global AEO/GEO + marketing technology | Enterprise and multi-market brands | AEO + GEO + data + media + platforms |
AI SEO should change the same roadmap as SEO
One reason so many companies fail at AI SEO is because they think it’s an entirely different ballgame to standard SEO, so they have two teams working on them as two separate projects.
This is generally the wrong approach, leading to duplicated research and contradictory content strategies that basically just get in the way of each other. By unifying AI SEO with bog-standard SEO, teams can create a single, unified roadmap that gets the content optimised in such a way that it lifts both their AI visibility and their search engine positioning.
Tool ownership is useful, but methodology matters more
A few agencies have developed their own AI visibility tools, and these can be helpful. For instance, NP Digital’s UberSuggest can be extremely revealing, helping brands to understand how AI systems actually come up with their answers to questions.
However, these tools are only for understanding, not actually improving performance. The most important thing is what the agency does to improve visibility once it knows where you currently stand. That’s where the real expertise comes in.
How to choose from this shortlist
To keep it simple, don’t choose any agency that wants to treat GEO and traditional SEO performance as separate projects, because it’s unlikely to work. Ask prospective agencies how they can optimise content strategies to improve both SEO and GEO standing at the same time.
Those that present a well thought out strategy are worthy of further consideration, but the real clincher is if they’re able to explain what certain signals in terms of SEO visibility also mean for AI search.
Questions to ask before buying AI SEO
What is an AI SEO agency?
When you ask ChatGPT a question and it mentions a specific brand, you can bet your last dollar that the company has done lots of GEO work. It’s the work of optimising website and content so that chatbots automatically go to them as a source for their answers. Doing this requires a strong technical foundation, prompt engineering, monitoring and measuring capabilities.
Is AI SEO different from GEO?
Yes and no, because there’s quite a bit of overlap. Many marketers use the terms interchangeably, which means the methods and tactics used are actually far more important than the name of the service.
Does proprietary AI-visibility software prove an agency is better?
Nope, but that’s not to say those tools don’t provide benefits. They can help enhance workflows and improve understanding, but the most important thing is actually getting discovered by AI Models. Some agencies do this without any proprietary software.
Why keep SEO and AI-search work together?
Because if you don’t, you’re likely to end up duplicating work and creating content that harms visibility in one area at the expense of the other.
The AI-search decision
So now you know, you don’t need an AI SEO partner. What you actually need is a marketing agency that offers GEO combined with regular SEO. That’s precisely why we identified NP Digital as the top choice, because it will deliver results for most types of customers.
NP Digital remains the first choice overall, especially when AI search needs to connect with SEO, media, content, digital PR and international scale. For narrower briefs, Hallam can be considered for B2B programmes, Found for UK-focused discovery, Journey Further for incrementality-led AI visibility, POLARIS for technical diagnosis, and iCrossing for data-grounded AI search strategy.
