If you’ve been paying attention to how people search for information lately, you’ll have noticed something’s changed. People aren’t typing queries into Google and scrolling through ten blue links anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude for answers and getting them straight away. No clicking, no scrolling, no comparing multiple sources. The AI gives them an answer, often with a citation or two, and that’s that.
For businesses, this shift is massive. All those years perfecting your SEO, climbing the rankings, optimising for featured snippets? That playbook is becoming less relevant by the day. When an AI engine answers someone’s question about “best accounting software for Australian small businesses” or “how to choose a conveyancer in Melbourne,” it’s not showing them a list of websites. It’s giving them an answer, and if your business isn’t part of that answer, you’re invisible.
This is where Generative Engine Optimisation comes in. GEO is about making sure your content, your brand, your expertise gets picked up and cited by these AI systems. It’s about being the source these language models trust and reference when they formulate their responses. And whilst the field is still emerging, a handful of Australian agencies have recognised where things are heading and built genuine expertise in this space.
We’ve looked at agencies across Australia that are doing real work in GEO, AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), and AI-focused SEO. What we found is a small but growing group of specialists who understand that optimising for machines that read and synthesise information is fundamentally different from optimising for traditional search algorithms. Here are the six agencies leading the charge.
How We Ranked These Agencies
Ranking GEO agencies is tricky because the field is so new. There aren’t industry awards yet, no established benchmarks, no league tables. So we looked at what matters in practice.
First, we examined whether agencies demonstrated actual understanding of how large language models work. Do they talk about entity optimisation, structured data in ways that show they get how AI systems process information? Or are they simply slapping “AI-powered” onto traditional SEO services?
We also considered specialisation. Agencies that have made GEO and AEO a core part of their positioning, rather than a recent addition to their service list, ranked higher. Innovation mattered too. Who’s publishing thought leadership, explaining these concepts to the market, showing they’re thinking deeply about this shift?
Technical capabilities were crucial. GEO requires understanding things like how LLMs parse and cite content, how entity relationships work, how to structure information so AI systems can confidently reference it. We looked for evidence that agencies possess these skills.
Finally, we considered their market positioning and credibility. Are they serving real clients? Do they have a track record? Can they articulate what they do in ways that go beyond marketing fluff? The agencies that made our list passed these tests.
Our Top Pick: Pitch Black
When it comes to pure GEO specialisation, Pitch Black stands apart. Whilst other agencies have added AI capabilities to broader service offerings, Pitch Black has built their entire proposition around AI-focused SEO and generative engine optimisation. Their website explicitly talks about helping content get picked up by large language models and AI engines, which tells you they’re not treating this as an afterthought.
What makes them our top choice is their clarity of focus. They understand that optimising for AI systems requires different thinking than traditional SEO. When someone searches using ChatGPT or Perplexity, these systems need to trust your content enough to cite it. That means your information architecture, your entity relationships, your content structure all need to work differently.
Pitch Black specialises in exactly this challenge. They’re helping businesses position their content so it becomes a trusted source for AI engines. For companies that want to be ahead of the curve, to ensure they’re visible in this new paradigm of search, Pitch Black offers the most focused expertise in the Australian market. If you’re serious about GEO and want specialists who’ve made it their core business, they’re where you should start.
Adcept Marketing
Based in Melbourne but serving clients across Australia, Adcept Marketing has positioned themselves as a leading AI SEO agency with a strong focus on future-proofing search strategies. What caught our attention is their explicit emphasis on AI-powered SEO for Australian businesses, showing they recognise the local market’s need for these capabilities.
Adcept brings a Melbourne perspective to AI search optimisation, which matters when you’re dealing with local business contexts and Australian consumer behaviour. They’ve built their recent positioning around helping businesses prepare for the AI-dominated search landscape, which suggests they’re tracking industry changes closely and adapting their methods accordingly.
Their approach seems to combine traditional SEO foundations with newer AI-aware strategies. This makes them particularly suitable for Melbourne businesses that want to maintain their existing search presence whilst building visibility in AI-generated responses. They understand that for most Australian companies, this isn’t about abandoning everything you’ve done in SEO. It’s about evolving your strategy to remain visible as search behaviour changes.
For businesses in Melbourne or those wanting an agency with strong Victorian market knowledge, Adcept offers a solid combination of local expertise and forward-looking AI capabilities. They’re building their reputation on helping companies make this transition smoothly, which is exactly what many Australian businesses need right now.
GRAVITATE Digital
GRAVITATE Digital takes a slightly different angle by focusing specifically on Answer Engine Optimisation. Their positioning makes an important distinction that’s worth understanding. They’re not trying to help you rank in a list of results. They’re working to make your brand the answer that AI systems and search engines select and present to users.
This distinction matters more than it might seem at first. When someone asks an AI engine a question, they typically get one answer, maybe with a couple of citations. There’s no second place, no “also consider these options.” You’re either the answer or you’re not mentioned at all. GRAVITATE seems to understand this reality deeply.
Their approach appears focused on positioning brands as definitive sources on their topics. This requires building authority in ways that AI systems recognise and trust. It means creating content structures that make it easy for these systems to extract clear, citeable information. It means ensuring your brand’s entity relationships are strong and clear across the web.
What makes GRAVITATE interesting is their explicit recognition that the game has changed. They’re not optimising for rankings, they’re optimising for being chosen. For businesses in competitive spaces where being selected as the answer provides significant advantage, this focused approach to AEO makes them a strong option. They’ve recognised where things are heading and built their methodology around that future.
The SEO Room
The SEO Room brings something different to the table by positioning themselves as a holistic digital marketing and AI agency based in Perth. Whilst others on this list have gone deep on GEO specifically, The SEO Room takes a broader view that integrates AI capabilities within comprehensive digital strategies.
Their approach appeals to businesses that need AI-aware marketing but also require the full range of digital services. Sometimes the right strategy isn’t to focus exclusively on GEO but to ensure your entire digital presence evolves together. The SEO Room seems to understand this balance, helping Perth businesses and others achieve their commercial goals with AI-enhanced strategies rather than AI-exclusive ones.
This holistic positioning has advantages for certain types of businesses. If you’re a Perth company that needs website development, content strategy, paid advertising, and SEO all working together with AI capabilities threaded through them, splitting these across multiple specialist agencies creates coordination challenges. Having one agency that understands both the technical AI requirements and how they fit within broader business objectives can be more practical.
The SEO Room’s Perth base also means they bring Western Australian market knowledge, which matters for businesses operating in that region. They’ve built their reputation on understanding business goals first and then applying the right mix of traditional and emerging tactics to achieve them. For companies wanting AI capabilities without losing sight of the bigger picture, they offer a balanced approach.
Go Lead Digital
Go Lead Digital positions itself around AI-powered SEO solutions with an emphasis on speed and return on investment. Their approach appears focused on helping Australian businesses rank faster using cutting-edge AI techniques, which appeals to companies that need to see results relatively quickly.
What’s interesting about Go Lead Digital is their focus on the practical outcomes that business owners care about. Whilst understanding the technical nuances of GEO matters, what matters more to most businesses is whether it drives traffic, leads, and revenue. Go Lead Digital seems to position their AI-powered approach through this results-oriented lens.
Their methodology apparently leverages AI to accelerate the ranking process and improve ROI, which suggests they’re using AI tools and techniques not simply for visibility in AI engines but to enhance traditional SEO outcomes as well. This dual benefit, visibility in both traditional search and AI-generated responses, makes practical sense for many Australian businesses who can’t afford to sacrifice one for the other.
For companies that want to adopt AI-enhanced SEO strategies but need to maintain performance metrics and demonstrate clear returns, Go Lead Digital’s focus on measurable outcomes and faster results offers an appealing proposition. They seem to understand that Australian businesses are practical about marketing investments and need to see the value.
Admosis
Admosis rounds out our list with a full-service B2B digital marketing offering that incorporates AI-powered strategies. What distinguishes them is their explicit focus on B2B companies and franchise operations, bringing specialised knowledge of these business models to their AI-enhanced marketing approach.
B2B marketing has its own dynamics that differ significantly from B2C. The sales cycles are longer, the decision-making processes more complex, the content requirements more technical. When you add GEO and AI optimisation to B2B marketing, you need to understand how business buyers are using AI tools in their research process, what kinds of questions they’re asking, what information they need to move through their buying journey.
Admosis appears to bring this B2B perspective to their AI strategies. They’re thinking about how procurement managers, technical evaluators, and C-suite executives are using AI tools to research solutions. They’re considering how to position their clients’ expertise so it surfaces in AI-generated responses to complex business questions.
Their franchise expertise adds another layer of specialisation. Franchises have unique challenges around local SEO, brand consistency across multiple locations, and coordinating digital marketing at both franchisor and franchisee levels. Adding AI optimisation to this mix requires understanding these franchise-specific dynamics. For B2B companies and franchise operations looking to incorporate AI capabilities into their digital marketing, Admosis brings relevant sector knowledge alongside their AI expertise.
Making Sense of the Terminology
You’ll notice these agencies use different terms to describe what they do. Some talk about GEO, others AEO, others AI SEO or AI-powered SEO. This can be confusing, but the differences in terminology matter less than the underlying capabilities.
What all these approaches share is recognition that the way people find information has fundamentally changed. Whether you call it Generative Engine Optimisation, Answer Engine Optimisation, or AI-focused SEO, the core challenge is the same. You need to optimise your content and your brand presence so that AI systems trust you, understand your expertise, and cite you when answering relevant queries.
The terminology is still settling because the field is so new. Different agencies have chosen different terms based on how they conceptualise the problem and differentiate themselves. Some emphasise the generative aspect (how AI engines create responses), others the answer aspect (being selected as the answer), others the continuity with traditional SEO (AI as the next evolution).
What matters when choosing an agency isn’t which term they use but whether they demonstrate genuine understanding of how these AI systems work. Do they talk credibly about structured data, entity optimisation, content architecture in ways that show technical depth? Can they explain how their approach differs from traditional SEO? Do they have a methodology for tracking and improving AI visibility?
The best agencies on this list, regardless of terminology, show they understand the fundamental shift happening in search behaviour and have developed genuine capabilities to help businesses navigate it.
What to Look For When Choosing a GEO Agency
Choosing a GEO agency is trickier than choosing a traditional SEO agency because the field is less established. You can’t rely as much on case studies and proven track records because everyone’s still figuring this out. Here’s what actually matters.
Look for agencies that can articulate how AI engines differ from traditional search engines in specific, technical terms. They should be able to explain concepts like entity optimisation, knowledge graphs, how LLMs parse and synthesise information, how citation decisions get made. If their explanation of “AI-powered SEO” is vague or sounds like traditional SEO with “AI” added, that’s a red flag.
Ask them how they track and measure AI visibility. Traditional SEO has clear metrics like rankings, organic traffic, click-through rates. GEO metrics are less established, but good agencies should have methods for monitoring whether your content is being cited by AI engines, tracking your presence in AI-generated responses, measuring entity strength. If they can’t explain their measurement approach, be cautious.
Understand their methodology for optimising content. GEO isn’t about keyword density or backlink quantity in the traditional sense. It’s about creating content that AI systems can confidently parse, understand, and cite. Good agencies should explain how they structure information, build entity relationships, implement schema markup, create content hierarchies that AI systems trust.
Be wary of unrealistic promises. No agency can guarantee that ChatGPT or Claude will cite your business every time someone asks a relevant question. These systems are complex, their training data and retrieval mechanisms aren’t fully transparent, and they’re constantly evolving. Agencies making guarantees are either overselling or don’t understand the technology properly.
Consider whether you need a specialist GEO agency or one with broader capabilities. If you’re a forward-thinking business that wants to lead in this space, a specialist like Pitch Black makes sense. If you need GEO as part of a broader digital strategy, an agency like The SEO Room or Admosis might be more appropriate. There’s no single right answer, it depends on your business situation and goals.
Budget is another consideration. GEO requires sophisticated technical work and ongoing monitoring. It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it task. Expect to invest meaningfully if you want genuine GEO capabilities, not simply repackaged traditional SEO. The right investment level depends on your market, your competition, and how critical AI visibility is to your business.
Finally, look for agencies that demonstrate they’re staying current. This field is evolving rapidly. AI models get updated, new AI search tools launch, best practices shift. Agencies that publish insights, share their learning, engage with the broader conversation about AI search are more likely to keep your strategy relevant as things change.
Where GEO Is Heading in Australia
Australia’s position in the global GEO landscape is interesting. We’re not at the bleeding edge where US and UK agencies are, but we’re also not lagging significantly. Australian businesses are adopting AI tools rapidly, which creates demand for these services. The agencies on this list are evidence that local expertise is emerging to meet that demand.
Over the next few years, we’ll likely see several trends. Voice AI optimisation will become increasingly important as more people use voice interfaces to query AI systems. The optimisation strategies for voice differ from text, requiring even clearer, more conversational content structures.
Multimodal search will expand, with AI systems incorporating images, videos, and other media into their responses. This means GEO will need to extend beyond text optimisation to visual content, which opens new challenges around metadata, image recognition, and visual entity building.
Local AI applications will grow. As AI tools become more sophisticated at understanding geographic context and local information, there’ll be opportunites for Australian businesses to optimise for location-specific queries. An AI system answering “best tax accountant for small business in Brisbane” needs strong local entity signals to make those recommendations confidently.
The integration of GEO with broader digital strategies will mature. Right now, many businesses treat GEO as separate from their other marketing. As understanding grows, it’ll become woven through content strategy, PR, social media, all the ways businesses build their digital presence. The agencies that can facilitate this integration will be valuable.
There’ll also be a growing need for GEO expertise within businesses themselves. Whilst agencies provide specialised skills, companies with significant content operations will want internal capabilities. We’ll likely see training programmes, certification courses, and specialist hiring in this space.
The competitive advantage of early adoption shouldn’t be underestimated. Businesses that build strong entity presence and AI visibility now will have advantages that are difficult for late movers to overcome. AI systems build trust in sources over time, they recognise established authorities, they favour well-structured information. Getting that foundation right early matters.
Moving Forward with GEO
The shift to AI-mediated search is happening whether businesses are ready or not. People are already using ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and other AI tools to research products, find services, make decisions. If your business isn’t visible in those AI-generated responses, you’re missing opportunities.
The six agencies we’ve featured here represent the current state of GEO expertise in Australia. Pitch Black leads for pure GEO specialisation, making them our top choice for businesses that want to be at the forefront. Adcept Marketing brings strong Melbourne-focused AI SEO capabilities. GRAVITATE Digital offers focused AEO expertise for being selected as the answer. The SEO Room provides holistic AI-integrated strategies from Perth. Go Lead Digital emphasises speed and measurable results with AI-enhanced techniques. Admosis brings B2B and franchise expertise to AI-powered marketing.
Your choice among them should depend on your specific needs, your market, your business model, and how you want to approach this transition. Some businesses need specialists who’ll push the boundaries. Others need agencies that’ll integrate AI capabilities into comprehensive strategies without disrupting what’s already working.
What’s certain is that doing nothing isn’t a viable strategy. The businesses that will thrive over the next five years are those that recognise this shift and adapt their digital presence accordingly. Traditional SEO isn’t dead, but it’s evolving rapidly. The agencies that understand both where we’ve been and where we’re going are the ones worth partnering with.
Start by having conversations with a few of these agencies. Ask them how they’d approach your specific situation. Listen to how they explain the technology and their methodology. Check whether their vision for your AI visibility aligns with your business goals. The right partner will help you navigate this transition confidently, building your presence in AI-generated responses whilst maintaining the digital visibility you’ve already established.
The future of search is here, and it looks very different from what we’ve known. The businesses that succeed will be those that adapt early, work with the right experts, and build their AI visibility thoughtfully. These six agencies are helping Australian businesses do exactly that.
