You've signed the retainer. The work starts Monday. And somewhere around week six, someone in your leadership meeting is going to ask what the business is getting for the money, and "these things take time" is not an answer you want to give.
Most agencies won't put a timeline in writing. We will. AEO results arrive on three different clocks, and knowing which clock applies to which result is the difference between a realistic plan and a frustrating one.
The three clocks
What engines say about your brand by name: two to six weeks. When someone asks an AI engine about your business directly, the answer is built from a small set of sources: your own site, your key profiles, a handful of third-party pages. Those are mostly under your control or within reach. Fix them and the answer changes as soon as the engines re-crawl, which for most retrieval-based engines is a matter of weeks, not quarters. This is the fastest win in the programme and it's where we start, because the people asking about you by name are your hottest prospects.
Long-tail commercial questions: six to twelve weeks. Questions like "how much does a rebrand cost in Australia" or "Webflow or Shopify for a wholesale business." Few businesses publish direct answers to these, which means the citation lane is close to empty. Publish a page that answers the question plainly, with real numbers, and you can become the source an engine lifts. The lag is the time it takes to be crawled, indexed and trusted enough to quote.
Category questions: three to six months, sometimes longer. "Best commercial law firm in Melbourne." "Top ecommerce agencies in Australia." Engines don't build these answers from your site. They build them from third-party lists, directories, reviews and roundups, because a business calling itself the best is not evidence. Getting into those sources takes outreach, and outreach runs on other people's publishing schedules. This clock is the slowest and it's also where the highest-value queries live.
Faster than SEO in places, slower in others
The old SEO sales pitch was "give it twelve months." AEO doesn't map onto that neatly. Brand-name answers and long-tail questions move faster than old-school rankings ever did, because answer engines re-synthesise from fresh crawls rather than waiting on slow authority signals. Category answers move slower than you'd like, because they depend on sources you have to earn your way into. Any agency quoting you one flat timeline for all three is averaging its way past the truth.
What you'll see each month
We measure with a question panel: the set of real questions that precede a purchase in your category, run against the engines every month, with the answers captured verbatim. Your report shows which questions name you, which name competitors, what changed since last month, and what we're doing next. No visibility scores you can't interrogate. The engine said what it said, and you'll read it.
And a commitment: if the panel hasn't moved by month three, we'll tell you exactly why, and what we're changing. If we don't think we can move it, we'll say that too.
What it costs
Search and AI Visibility retainers run $2,000 to $10,000+ a month depending on how competitive your category is. Both surfaces, Google and the answer engines, one report. The full breakdown, including what the rest of the market charges, is in our cost guide.
If the fit is right, let's talk.
FAQ
How long until ChatGPT mentions my business?
For questions about your business by name, changes typically show within two to six weeks of fixing the source pages engines draw on. For category questions like "best X in Melbourne," expect three to six months, because those answers are built from third-party sources you have to earn placements in.
Is AEO faster than SEO?
In parts. Brand-name answers and low-competition commercial questions can change within weeks, faster than traditional rankings. Competitive category answers are slower, because they depend on third-party corroboration rather than your own site.
How do you measure AEO results?
With a question panel: a fixed set of purchase-preceding questions run against ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews monthly, with answers captured verbatim and scored for whether your business is named.
Can AEO results be guaranteed?
No, and be wary of anyone who says otherwise. Engines control their own answers. What can be guaranteed is the work, the measurement, and a straight monthly account of both.
