Guide · Local service businesses · US · 2026
By asking how they measure, before asking what they charge. AI visibility is new enough that most vendors selling it have no track record, and the engines vary enough between runs that a single screenshot can be made to show anything. A firm that has been burned by a marketing agency before should treat this category with more caution than usual, because the usual proof, a ranking report, does not exist here. The questions below are the ones we would ask of any vendor, including ourselves. We answer them at the bottom of the page, with our conflict of interest disclosed.
By Austin Brewer, founder of AI Visibility Partners · Updated 19 September 2026
Eight questions, in the order they matter. A vendor who can answer the first four specifically has a measurement; one who cannot has a sales process. Write the answers down and compare them across proposals. The questions are deliberately ones a firm owner can judge without technical knowledge: each has a good answer that sounds like a procedure and a bad answer that sounds like reassurance.
The good answer names a number of prompts, says they are written down and dated before the first run, and offers to show you the list. A list that can change after the results are in can show anything.
Once is a coin toss. Three or more passes in a signed-out, fresh session is a measurement. A signed-in session shaped by the vendor's own history is not reproducible next month.
A single blended score hides which of the three moved. Separate measures let you see whether the work on your site did anything, or whether a directory profile did.
The engines vary between runs with no work done at all. A vendor who cannot tell you how much movement is noise cannot tell you what movement is real.
Every score should trace to an answer you can read. If the appendix is not offered, ask why.
The right refusals are a timeline, a number of leads, and a ranking. A vendor who promises any of these is promising control over the engines that nobody has.
The prompt panel, the scoring sheets, the pages, and the structured data should be yours, in a form your next contractor can use, without a fee. An exit package is part of the scope, not a favor.
Vendors in this category are often practitioners in the client's own industry. That can be an advantage and it is always a conflict. It should be disclosed before you ask.
Most of them are claims that sound like confidence and are actually a description of what the vendor does not measure. None of these alone is disqualifying; two or three together usually are. The list is short on purpose, so it can be checked against a proposal in a few minutes.
The measurement registration in full: the prompt count, the engines, the session protocol, the number of passes, the scoring rule, the measures, the noise floor method, the re-measurement cadence, and the publication rule. A flat price or a stated range with what moves it. A description of what you receive at exit. And a conflict statement. A proposal that contains these can be compared against another that does; a proposal that contains a deck and a price cannot be compared with anything.
Our registration is published in full on the Method page and our prices on the Pricing page, so the first seven answers can be checked without asking us. On the eighth: founder Austin Brewer also runs Astratto Design, an interior design studio. That is a conflict whenever we work with an interior design firm. Our conflict-of-interest disclosure: AIVP is operated by the owners of Astratto Design, a virtual interior design studio. Astratto does not solicit design work from AIVP clients during an engagement, and AIVP does not use client evidence to benefit Astratto.
Ask them the eight questions on this page. An agency that already knows your site and your market has a real head start, and if it can describe a registered prompt panel, clean sessions, repeated passes, and separate measures, it may be the right choice. If the answer is a dashboard score and a screenshot, the measurement is missing, whoever is selling it.
Price says little either way in a category this new. A published price is a good sign, because it means the vendor is willing to be compared. A quoted price that changes after the first call, or a price that only makes sense with a twelve-month minimum, tells you more than the number does.
Ask how. A guarantee in this category is a claim about the vendor's control over engines that nobody has, including the engines' own makers, whose answers vary between runs of the same prompt. The honest version of a guarantee is a stated method, a noise floor, and a rule that the report is published whatever it shows.
Send your firm name, website, and city. We reply with one real AI answer about your market and will answer any of the eight questions in the same email.
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