AI search optimization is the work that gets your business named when someone asks ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or Google who to call. Here is what I charge for each piece and what makes a job bigger or smaller.
What does each piece cost?
Four prices cover almost every job.
- Check-up, $150. One hour. I ask the assistants your buyers' questions, look at what they say about you, and tell you what to fix first.
- Google Business Profile, $600. Categories, services with prices, photos, hours, and the listing details filled in and checked.
- Answer pages with a website, from $1,500. A one-page site starts at $1,500. A full site starts at $6,000. Both are built with answer pages, structured data, a sitemap, and an llms.txt file.
- Ongoing work. Inside a fractional CMO seat from $3,500 a month, or hourly at $150.
Anything over $3,000 can be paid by the month across the months the work takes, no interest.
What makes it cost more or less?
Three things move the price.
- How many questions you need answered. A plumber might need eight pages: prices, service area, emergency calls, the common jobs. A firm with five service lines in three industries might need forty. Each page is written, checked, and linked.
- How many listings are wrong. If your name, address, and phone are the same on Google, Bing Places, LinkedIn, and your industry directories, this part is quick. If you moved twice and changed your name once, it is a cleanup job.
- Whether your site can be edited. Some sites are locked in a builder that will not take structured data, or the person who built it left with the password. Then the answer pages go on a new site, and that is a website price.
Do I need a new website for this?
Not always. Many sites need answer pages and structured data added, and the rest can stay. The check-up tells you which. If your site is slow on a phone or hides the phone number, what a small business website costs lays out the options.
What should I expect for the money?
A weekly number you can read. I track Bing AI citations, Google AI impressions, and search clicks, saved every week so you can see the trend. I did it on my own appraisal firm first: Lukes & Lukes went from a new LLC to its first call in 90 days, and Bing Copilot citations went from 835 to about 2,100 in 90 days.
What are the red flags when buying AI search work?
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed AI mentions. Nobody controls what an assistant says. Walk away.
- A monthly fee with no measurement. If they cannot show you citations, impressions, or clicks every month, you are paying for a feeling.
- A long contract before any work. Twelve months up front for something nobody can show you yet.
- Reports full of words you cannot check. "Visibility score" from their own tool, with no link to Google or Bing data.
- Content mills. Fifty thin blog posts a month written by a tool and never read by a person. Assistants skip them.
Other vendors price this many ways. Ask each one for a written price, what is included, and how they measure it, and compare those three things.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.