Hiring an SEO Expert for Google AI Search: Questions to Ask First

If you have been searching for “expert SEO consultants Google AI search”, you have met the new labels: “AI SEO”, “GEO”, “LLM optimisation”, “SGE packages”. Some of it is useful work under a new label. Some of it is a fee for things Google says you don’t need.

I have worked in SEO and digital marketing for more than 16 years, through every new results page Google has introduced. The way I separate real work from sales talk hasn’t changed: read what Google documents, then ask the seller to explain how their plan fits it. Below are the eight questions I would ask before hiring anyone for AI search, with the answers Google’s own documentation supports.

What Google says about AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google’s page on AI features and your website is short, and it answers most of the questions buyers bring to me. In summary:

• What they are. AI Overviews help people “get to the gist of a complicated topic or question more quickly”. AI Mode is meant for queries “where further exploration, reasoning, or complex comparisons are needed.”
• How they pick pages. Both “may use a ‘query fan-out’ technique”, issuing “multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources”, and can show “a wider and more diverse set of helpful links” than classic results.
• When they appear. AI Overviews “are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search.”
• What it takes. “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” A page must be “indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet”, and “Indexing and serving isn’t guaranteed.”
• What you don’t need. “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features”, and “There’s also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add.”

I covered the hiring side of this briefly in 21 questions to ask SEO consultants, and what AI Overviews do to click-through in why organic traffic falls despite good SEO. This article goes one step further: what to ask someone who says AI search is their speciality.

What “expert SEO consultants Google AI search” should mean in practice

If there are no special requirements, what is left to pay for? Quite a lot, as it happens. Google’s page lists the SEO practices that still apply. These are the ones where I find real problems on real sites:

None of that is new, and that is my point. The consultant who is good at AI search is usually the one who was already careful about crawling and plain content. Query fan-out makes this matter more, not less: when Google runs several related searches across subtopics, a site whose supporting pages are thin or unreachable has fewer chances to be one of the links shown.

If an AI search plan can’t be mapped to a line on Google’s own list, I want to know what I’m paying for.

Eight questions to ask before you hire

Here are the questions, with the answer I would want to hear and the one that ends the conversation.

Questions 2 and 3: files and markup

These two save the most money. Google’s documentation says no new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org markup are needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A consultant can still have reasons to add a file for other systems, but if they present it as the way into Google’s AI features, that is wrong by Google’s own account. Structured data still matters for the features it already supports, and Google asks that it match the visible text.

Question 4: measurement

Google says sites that appear in AI features are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console and reported in the Performance report. So the honest measurement is the same one you use already: queries, pages, clicks, impressions and conversions, compared over time. If you want to know whether your page is cited in an AI Overview for a given query, that is something you check on the results page, as I explain in what “cited #2 of 7” means in AI Overview tracking. It is a snapshot, not a Google metric.

Question 6: AI-written content

Google’s guidance on using generative AI content says AI “can be particularly useful when researching a topic, and to add structure to original content.” It also warns that using AI tools “to generate many pages without adding value for users may violate” its spam policy on scaled content abuse, and that “It is critical to manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing.” That review “also applies to metadata”, such as titles, descriptions, structured data and image alt text.

So don’t ask “do you use AI?”. Ask who checks every claim before it goes live, and how many pages are planned.

The controls question: nosnippet, max-snippet and Google-Extended

Question 7 needs its own section, because this is where a confident consultant can do real harm in five minutes.

The mistake I see: a business wants to “stop AI using our content”, someone adds a blanket rule, and the site loses something it wanted to keep. Blocking Google-Extended won’t keep you out of AI Overviews, because AI Overviews are part of Search. Adding nosnippet will keep your text out of them, and out of your normal snippets too. A good consultant explains both, writes down what you chose and why, and leaves the decision with you.

A note on “SGE” and other dated labels

Many proposals still sell “SGE optimisation”. SGE (Search Generative Experience) was the opt-in Search Labs experiment that Google opened in May 2023, and Search Engine Land reported when Google started testing AI overviews from SGE with some users who had not opted in. The features Google documents for site owners today are AI Overviews and AI Mode.

A dated label isn’t proof of bad work, but it prompts one more question: “Which Google page did you base this plan on?”

Which experts specialise in AI SEO, and whether you need one

The honest answer: the specialism that matters is technical SEO plus clear, well-sourced content. Someone strong in both will handle AI features well, because Google says AI features use the same foundations. Someone who only knows prompts and dashboards won’t fix a CDN rule that blocks Googlebot.

You probably need outside help when:

• Your informational pages lose clicks while impressions hold, and you need to know which pages still earn their keep.
• You run a large catalogue, a JavaScript-heavy site or several countries, where crawl and rendering problems hide.
• You are deciding on content controls (nosnippet, Google-Extended) and want the trade-offs written down.

You probably don’t need a separate “AI SEO package” if you are a small business with a sound site. A one-off SEO website audit will tell you whether anything blocks crawling, rendering or snippets, and the rest is good content you can often write yourself.

How I approach AI search work

I charge by the hour, with no fixed packages, so there is no “AI tier” to upsell. My AI SEO work starts where Google’s list starts: can Googlebot reach the page through your CDN, is the important content in text, does the markup match the page, are your feeds and profiles current. Most of that sits inside technical SEO, and I’ll tell you when it does.

Every recommendation comes with the Google page it rests on, or I say it’s my own judgement.

FAQ

Should I hire an SEO expert for Google SGE?

SGE was the name of Google’s earlier Search Labs experiment. Today Google documents AI Overviews and AI Mode, and says no special optimisation is needed to appear in them beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. Hire for sound technical SEO and content, not for an “SGE package”.

Which experts specialise in AI SEO?

Look for people with a technical SEO background who also write or edit content well, and who quote Google’s documentation when they explain AI features. Be wary of anyone whose main offer is special AI files or AI schema, which Google says you don’t need for these features.

Who are the top SEO experts for Google AI search?

There is no official list, and Google doesn’t certify anyone for AI search. The best test is the eight questions above: a strong expert gives specific, checkable answers and refuses to guarantee AI Overview placement.

Can an SEO get my site cited in AI Overviews?

Nobody can guarantee it. Google says AI Overviews only appear when its systems decide they add to classic results, and that indexing and serving aren’t guaranteed. An SEO can remove obstacles and improve your content’s chances, which is the same work that helps classic results.