Here is the honest answer: GEO costs somewhere between a modest line item and a real monthly commitment, and anyone who quotes a number before asking about your business is guessing.
If someone in your family raised this at dinner and got a skeptical look instead of a real conversation, that reaction was reasonable. Marketing has sold Greek business owners the next big thing for two decades. GEO deserves scrutiny, not blind trust, from either side of the table.
Why the Skepticism Is Fair
Generative engine optimization is the practice of shaping content so tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews cite it directly inside an answer instead of just linking to it. The term comes from a 2023 research paper out of Princeton, Georgia Tech, and the Allen Institute for AI, not a marketing agency, which is part of why it holds up to scrutiny.
That same research measured what actually moves the needle. Citing authoritative sources and including real statistics lifted visibility in AI answers by up to 40 percent. Vague claims and marketing copy did not. That is a useful filter: anyone selling GEO who cannot point to a specific tactic, only a promise of AI visibility, is selling the same content marketing that existed before the acronym.
None of this means GEO is a scam. It means the honest version of this conversation starts with cost and evidence, not excitement.
What GEO Actually Costs
Price moves on three things more than on which agency you pick: how much usable content already exists versus needs to be built from nothing, how contested the topic already is inside AI answers, and whether the technical groundwork, clean site structure, crawlable pages, structured data, is already in place or still needs building.
An audit alone, no ongoing work, just a report on where a business currently gets cited and where it is invisible, costs the least and is the right first move for anyone who has not decided whether to go further. Ongoing GEO work, treated as a real channel with monthly content and measurement rather than a one-time project, runs closer to 500€ per month, in the same territory as a modest paid search budget.
Either number should be compared against something concrete: what the business already spends on the channels it trusts, and what a single new customer is actually worth. A price in isolation is meaningless. A price next to CAC is a decision.
What It Actually Returns (And Why That Is Harder to Answer)
A citation inside an AI answer is not automatically a sale. Someone can read a summary that names a business and never click through, never call. That complication is the part nobody selling GEO leads with.
The measurement that matters is not whether a citation happened. It is closer to how MKS talks about every other channel: how many people who saw an AI answer citing the business went on to convert, and whether that number justifies the spend. Most Greek businesses cannot answer that question right now, because most are not tracking it yet. That gap is itself information. If nobody is measuring the outcome, nobody actually knows whether it works, including the people selling it.
The Family Business Reality
Eight in ten Greek businesses are family owned, according to ΕΒΕΑ research conducted with NED Club, well above the roughly seven in ten international average. That number matters here specifically, because the GEO conversation rarely starts the same way twice inside a family business.
One generation found this article, or one like it, and got excited. The other generation is the one who signs the invoice and has genuinely earned the right to ask what something costs before agreeing to pay for it every month. Neither position is wrong. The actual gap is not enthusiasm against skepticism. Nobody translated the enthusiasm into numbers the skeptic could evaluate.
A Framework Worth Bringing to the Table
Four signals separate a business that is ready to start now from one that should wait.
| Signal | Probably worth starting now | Probably worth waiting |
|---|---|---|
| Existing content | Product pages, guides, or FAQs already exist and mostly need restructuring | Little to no usable content, most of it would be built from scratch |
| Competitor visibility | Competitors already show up in AI answers for relevant queries | Nobody in the category shows up yet, so there is no urgency gap |
| Measurement | Analytics can track what happens after someone arrives from an AI citation | No way yet to connect a citation to a sale |
| Budget framing | Treated as a real channel, sized against paid search or SEO spend | Framed as a cheap add-on with no real budget behind it |
How to Actually Bring This Up at Home
Do not open with the acronym. Open with the audit. A specific report showing where the business is already invisible in AI answers is concrete in a way that “we need to do GEO” is not.
Bring the cost range and the honest gaps in the same breath as the upside. A pitch that only lists benefits reads like a sales pitch, even from a son or a daughter. A pitch that says here is what we know, here is what we genuinely do not know yet, and here is what it costs to find out, reads like judgment.
Suggest starting with the audit specifically, not a twelve-month retainer. It is a smaller ask, it produces a real answer either way, and it gives a skeptical owner a decision point instead of a leap of faith.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
No. SEO optimizes a page to rank and get clicked. GEO optimizes content to be cited or summarized directly inside an AI answer, sometimes without a click at all. The overlap is real, clear writing and credible sources help both, but the goal and the measurement are different.
How long before we would see results?
Faster than traditional SEO in some cases, since AI systems can pick up well-structured, well-sourced content within weeks rather than months. Slower in others, since the underlying content still has to earn the citation. Anyone promising a fixed timeline before seeing the site is guessing the same way as anyone quoting a price.
Is this only worth it for big brands, or can a small local business benefit too?
Small and local businesses often have an easier path, since there is usually less competition for their specific queries inside AI answers than in classic Google search. The ceiling is lower, but so is the cost of reaching it.
What happens if we just do nothing for now?
Nothing dramatic happens overnight. But Google itself has confirmed it keeps expanding AI Overviews further into ordinary search results, and a business that never shows up inside them is invisible for exactly those queries. Waiting is a legitimate choice. Waiting forever is a different decision made by accident.
Can we test this on a small scale before committing to a retainer?
That is what the audit is for. It answers whether the opportunity is real for this specific business before anyone commits to a monthly spend.
Where MKS Fits Into This
We are glad to build the honest version of this document for your business: what GEO would likely cost given your actual content and market, what a realistic return looks like, and what we genuinely do not know yet until we look. Bring it to whoever signs the invoice. It should hold up to their questions, not just your enthusiasm.
