By Steve Merrill, Founder of WRKNG Digital | August 5, 2026
The fastest way to catch a fake AEO agency is to ask how they measure AI citations. A real one names the assistants, the prompts, and the tracking cadence. A weak one talks about traffic and keywords and hopes you don't notice the difference.
I've sat on both sides of these calls. I built a $10M ecommerce brand and hired plenty of agencies who sold me a story. So here are the five questions I'd ask before I signed anything. For the full vetting process, read our Shopify AEO agency buyer's checklist.
1. How will you measure whether AI assistants actually cite our store?
Ask this first. A good answer names the assistants they track, ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Gemini, and tells you how often they run the prompts and what a "win" looks like. A weak answer pivots to organic traffic and keyword rankings, which measure the old web, not the answer layer. If they can't tell you your citation rate today, they can't improve it. You can't fix a number nobody's counting.
2. What structured data will you add, and how do you validate it?
AEO runs on machine-readable data. A strong answer names specific schema types from Schema.org, Product, Offer, FAQPage, and how they'll test it in Google's Rich Results Test before it ships. A weak answer says "we'll add schema" and nothing more. Vague schema breaks silently, and broken schema gets your store skipped by the models that read it. I've watched a store lose every product citation because one required field was missing. No error message. Just gone.
3. Which AI assistants are you optimizing for, and how do they differ?
These systems are not the same. A good agency explains that ChatGPT leans on its training data plus live browsing, Perplexity cites sources on nearly every answer, and Google's AI Overviews pull from indexed pages. A weak answer treats "AI" as one bucket. If they think optimizing for one covers all of them, they've never actually looked at the citations. Each one reads your site differently, and the work has to match.
4. Can you show me a store where your work moved citation share?
Proof beats promises. A real answer shows a before and after, "this store went from zero mentions to cited in 6 of 10 target prompts in 90 days," with the prompts named. A weak answer shows you traffic charts and testimonials that never mention AI at all. Ask for the specific prompts they moved and the dates they moved them. If they dodge, the results aren't real. Data doesn't lie. Testimonials do.
5. What happens to our rankings when Google changes AI Overviews again?
The answer layer shifts constantly. A strong answer talks about building durable assets, clean product data, real reviews, and content that answers actual buyer questions, so a model update doesn't wipe you out. A weak answer promises a fixed ranking or guaranteed placement. Nobody can guarantee that. Google's own documentation says AI features change how results appear, and any agency promising a locked position is selling you fiction.
How We Chose These Questions
These come from actual vetting calls with Shopify operators and from watching which agencies deliver AI citations versus which ones recycle SEO decks. Each question forces a specific, checkable answer instead of a pitch.
FAQ
What is AEO for Shopify stores?
AEO, answer engine optimization, is the work of getting AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews to mention and cite your store when shoppers ask them questions. It's the successor to SEO for a web where people ask AI instead of scrolling ten blue links.
How is AEO different from SEO?
SEO gets you ranked on a search results page. AEO gets you cited inside an AI-generated answer. SEO measures clicks and rankings; AEO measures whether the model names your brand and links to you.
What structured data matters most for AEO?
Product, Offer, and FAQPage schema from Schema.org carry the most weight for ecommerce, because they give AI models clean facts about price, availability, and common questions. Validate every type in Google's Rich Results Test before it goes live.
How fast should an AEO agency show results?
Expect early citation movement inside 60 to 90 days on a focused set of prompts. Any agency promising instant placement or guaranteed rankings is telling you what you want to hear, not the truth.
Can an agency guarantee AI citations?
No. AI assistants change how they cite sources without warning. A good agency builds durable data and content that survives those shifts instead of promising a fixed spot.
Vetting an agency and want a team that answers all five of these straight? See how we build AI-commerce for Shopify stores at WRKNG Digital's agentic commerce page.
