What happens if AI visibility hasn't grown after 90 days of GEO?

“Didn’t work” means two numbers did not move against the baseline we took before any work started. The first is citation rate: the share of prompts in a fixed set where an assistant cites one of your pages. The second is share of voice: your share of all brand mentions across the answers to that same set. Both are measured per assistant, on ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini at minimum, with each prompt run several times in clean sessions, meaning logged out or in a temporary chat with memory off.

Repeating the same 30–50 questions at baseline produces some variation, because generated answers differ. We use that observed range for comparison at day 90, when we repeat the identical questions under the same conditions. If both citation rate and share of voice remain within the baseline range, the policy below applies. If at least one improves beyond that range in at least one assistant, we discuss what the change means and what to do next.

A single screenshot or session does not establish progress or failure. Neither does a new question or a third-party score calculated from a different question set. Referral traffic in your analytics helps assess the commercial result, but follows citations, so the day-90 decision uses the two measured rates. Our measurement guide explains the full method.

During the pilot, we re-measure every two to four weeks. We also check page access, redirects, text in the HTML response and verified crawler visits. OpenAI’s approximate 24-hour timing concerns updates to robots.txt rules, not a promised visit. If crawlers do not return after a fix, we investigate before the pilot ends.

A new fetch shows that a crawler received the page, not that it will cite it. We track visits from assistants and independent brand mentions separately. These events do not have a mandatory order: they help test hypotheses rather than predict a result date. Our results timeline guide explains how to read them.

When a checkpoint shows no change, we re-check access first, then content and sources. A working technical setup does not guarantee progress. Several possible explanations may remain at day 90; we do not automatically attribute the result to a lack of independent brand coverage.

We send the day-90 results alongside the baseline and explain where progress stalled and why. You then choose one of three options. You do not have to renew, and your ownership of the data does not change. This is the procedure we commit to in writing.

Whichever option you take, you leave with the same set of deliverables: the prompt set, the day-one baseline with its raw answers and screenshots, every interim measurement, the server-log extracts we used, the pages we wrote and the change log of what was edited where. You can re-run any prompt yourself in a logged-out session and compare it with our numbers; the protocol was designed so that a client can audit us. The policy is part of the 90-day pilot; the pricing guide lists what each tier includes.

We review crawler access, page content, consistent company information and independent coverage separately because each leaves different evidence. The table below is our day-90 checklist. You can carry out every check in the third column yourself.

A visit without a citation does not prove that the model rejected a page because of a specific defect. OpenAI’s help page explains that ChatGPT search typically reformulates a question into targeted searches and may send further queries after the first results. It does not guarantee placement or reveal every reason for selecting sources. We compare page content and independent information while keeping observations separate from hypotheses.

An audit can reveal obstacles beyond the pilot’s budget or scope. Ten questions cannot describe an entire market, but they can identify risks worth discussing before you pay.

Our guide on whether GEO works reviews the evidence and its limits. It provides no universal timetable: a narrowly defined question or an accessible website does not guarantee a citation within a quarter.

A GEO agency guarantee takes three forms in the proposals buyers forward to us, and the useful question about each is the same: what exactly will be checked on day 90, and what do you receive if the check fails. We do not name agencies here; the patterns are the point, and our red-flags guide covers how each one reads in a proposal.

Our policy commits us to a defined review process: measurements agreed in advance, an explanation when progress falls short, three options for what happens next and data that remains yours. It does not guarantee the contents of an AI answer. Our guide to questions to ask a GEO agency helps you compare these commitments across providers.