The AEO agency for local service businesses. Price on the page.
Growth Recon AI gets painting, pest control, accounting and other local service businesses named when a customer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews who to hire. Sites built to be cited from $1,500. Monthly answer engine optimization for $999, with a 3-month minimum, then month to month. A free audit first, so you know whether you need either.
What does an AEO agency do?
An answer engine optimization agency makes your business the one the AI names. When a homeowner types "best exterior painter near me with financing" into ChatGPT, the engine reads a handful of sources and answers with two or three companies. The job is to be one of them, in your town, for the questions that lead to a booked estimate.
The work is concrete. Pages rebuilt so the answer is the first thing on them. Question headings and structured data so Gemini and Google AI can read the page without guessing. Your business listed the same way everywhere the engines look. Useful answers on the forums Perplexity cites. Reviews moving. And a weekly prompt log so you can see it happening. If you want the plain-English version of the field and its three names, read AEO vs GEO vs AI SEO.
Built for local service businesses, not for software companies.
- Painting contractorsWhere we've done the most work.
- CPA and bookkeeping firmsNow taking founding builds.
- Pest controlNow taking founding builds.
- Roofing contractorsWebsite, ads and inspection follow-up. Every price published.
- Another service business?Run the free check and we'll tell you straight if we're a fit.
How much does an AEO agency cost? Here is ours.
Three ways in. Start free. Ad spend, where it applies, is separate and stays in your account.
We run the buying questions for your trade and city through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews and send you what they say, who they name instead of you, and whether your site can be fixed or needs rebuilding. No call required.
A website built to be cited. Answer-first pages, question headings, full schema, CRM wired from day one, live in 21 days. You own the domain, the code and the content. An optional Care plan keeps it current for $399 a month, with a 3-month minimum, then month to month.
For comparison, the published 2026 benchmark for painting-contractor marketing agencies is $1,500 to $4,500 a month in fees before media for companies under $3M in revenue, and $8,000 to $20,000 for a website rebuild. Most AEO specialists do not publish a price.
What happens after you say yes?
Foundations
Bing indexing and IndexNow, schema on every page, entity cleanup across listings, the 20-prompt baseline logged across all four engines. You get the baseline report so we both know where zero is.
Answer pages
The pages your buyers' questions deserve, in their words. Service and city pages rebuilt answer-first. First long-form authority piece published. Presence work starts in the forums and roundups the engines cite.
Citations and proof
First citation movement usually shows here. Weekly prompt log compared to baseline. Second and third authority pieces. Review velocity up. At day 90 you get the before-and-after with screenshots.
How is Growth Recon AI different from other AEO agencies?
Price is on the page
Every competitor we studied routes you to a sales call before naming a number. Our prices are public. The industry grid for a painting company under $3M revenue is $1,500 to $4,500 a month in agency fees before media. You can compare.
You own everything
Your domain, your site, your ad accounts, your phone number, your CRM. At least one painter-marketing agency states in its own terms that it keeps ownership of the websites it builds. Read the contract before you sign anyone's.
Built for your trade, not for SaaS
The AEO agencies that rank nationally serve software and e-commerce brands. A homeowner asking for a painter is a different query with different sources, and the work is different. We have done it for painting companies since before it had a name.
Measured, or it did not happen
A fixed prompt set, run weekly, logged with screenshots. AI referral sessions in your analytics. Leads tagged by source in your CRM. The report shows the prompts, not a vendor score.
The numbers across active clients.
Results from our clients' accounts. Your numbers depend on your market, your offer and how fast your team follows up.
How do you choose an AEO agency?
Six questions. Ask us the same ones.
- Ask which engines they work on and how each one picks its sources. If the answer is the same for ChatGPT and Perplexity, they have not looked.
- Ask to see a prompt log from a current client. Real prompts, real dates, real screenshots.
- Ask who owns the website, the ad accounts and the phone number if you leave.
- Ask what happens in the first 30 days. Foundations and a baseline, or a content calendar and an invoice?
- Ask for the price. If it takes a call to hear a number, you already know something.
- Ask whether they have done it for your trade. A painter, a roofer and a med spa get cited from different sources.
What does an AEO agency do?
An AEO agency gets your business named when a customer asks an AI engine a question you can answer. In practice that means rebuilding pages answer-first with question headings and schema, cleaning up your business entity across the listings the engines read, earning presence on the forums and roundups they cite, keeping reviews flowing, and measuring citations weekly across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews.
How much does an AEO agency cost?
Growth Recon AI charges $999 a month for Search + Care, with a 3-month minimum, then month to month. A site built to be cited is a one-time $2,500 to $5,000, by the size of the site. Published benchmarks for painting-contractor marketing agencies run $1,500 to $4,500 a month in fees before ad spend, and most AEO specialists do not publish price at all.
Is AEO worth it for a small painting company?
If homeowners in your town ask AI for a painter and the engine names someone else, you are losing jobs you never saw. Forty-five percent of consumers used AI tools to find a local business in the past year, up from six percent the year before. The free audit shows you whether that is happening to you before you spend anything.
Do I need a new website to do AEO?
Not always. If your current site loads fast, has clean service pages and can take schema and question headings, we work on it. If it is a page builder template from 2019 with no structure, the Website build at $1,500 is usually cheaper than fighting it. The audit tells you which.
How long before I see results from AEO?
First citation movement usually shows in 30 to 60 days once foundations are in. A durable presence for your category in your town takes three to six months. We report weekly against the baseline so you see the trend, not just the finish line.
Do you work with businesses outside painting?
Yes. Painting companies are where we started and most of our clients. We also work with roofers, med spas and other home-service trades. The method is the same. The sources the engines cite differ by trade, and we map them before we start.
We asked three AI engines about painters in 25 US cities.
225 answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode, across 25 cities in 16 states. Who gets named, which sites the engines cite, and how often two engines agree. The raw data is free to download.
74 of 75
answers to “who is the best exterior painter” named a local business
31 of 75
answers to “what does it cost to paint” named any local business
14.6%
average overlap when two engines name the best exterior painter in the same city
113 of 137
answers whose source list we could read cited a directory like Angi or Yelp
Citation outcomes depend on your market, competition and existing online footprint. Growth Recon AI does not guarantee specific citations, rankings or lead volume. Performance figures are aggregate tracked results across clients. Industry benchmarks are from published 2026 agency-pricing and consumer surveys. Not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenAI, Google, Perplexity, or Anthropic.