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Generative Engine Optimization Consultant Prep: Build The Evidence Pack In Your Agent OS Before You Hire

By Julian Goldie · 11 November 2026 · agentos.guide

Hiring a generative engine optimization consultant goes faster and costs you fewer meetings when your Agent OS has already gathered the evidence they will ask for.

This guide gives you a quick start, five copy-paste prompts and a clear point at which to hand the work to a professional.

If you would rather have an expert look straight away, book a free strategy session with Julian's team.

Why do the groundwork before the consultant arrives

A consultant's first weeks usually go on fact-finding: who blocks which bot, where your business name is spelt differently, what AI tools say about you today.

Your agent can collect most of that in an afternoon.

You then spend the consultant's time on judgement, which is the part worth paying for.

It also lets you test their advice. Google's page on hiring an SEO now asks whether AEO and GEO advice is aligned with its official guidance on generative AI features, and you can only check that if you know the facts.

For the hands-on version of this work, see the GEO specialist groundwork guide; this one is built around briefing and vetting a consultant.

Quick start: four settings before you run anything

1. Create a folder called geo-consultant-pack with your sitemap URL, your top ten money pages and a list of your official profiles.
2. Give the agent web fetch only. No CMS login, no publishing rights, no email sending.
3. Add this line to its instructions: "Draft only. Never change the live site. Ask before any action outside this folder."
4. Have it save each result as a dated markdown file, so the consultant gets a clean paper trail.

Prompt 1: AI crawler and firewall check

Each AI platform documents its own search bot: OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic.

The prompt checks both robots.txt and whether a firewall is quietly turning bots away.

Fetch https://[yourdomain]/robots.txt and list every rule
that applies to: Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot,
PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, ClaudeBot.
For each, say allowed / blocked / not named, and quote the line.
Then request my homepage and two money pages with a normal
browser user agent and report the HTTP status of each.
Flag any 403, 429 or challenge page as a possible firewall
or CDN block for the consultant to review.
Save as 01-crawler-check.md. Do not change anything.

Read the results with the docs open.

OpenAI says search and training bots are set independently, so a blocked GPTBot alone doesn't keep you out of ChatGPT search.

A blocked OAI-SearchBot does, according to the same page.

Prompt 2: entity consistency audit plus an Organisation schema draft

Bing's Webmaster Guidelines ask for consistent naming for organisations, people, products and locations.

This prompt finds the mismatches and drafts markup for your developer to review.

Read profiles.txt and my About and Contact pages.
Build a table: source, business name, address, phone,
main services, as written on each source.
Highlight every mismatch in name, address or phone.
Then draft JSON-LD using schema.org Organization
(or LocalBusiness if customers visit us or we serve an area)
with name, url, logo, address, telephone and sameAs links
to the official profiles only.
Mark any value you had to guess as TODO.
Save as 02-entity-audit.md. Draft only.

Google's Organization markup docs explain sameAs.

Keep expectations realistic: Google's AI features page says no special schema is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

📞 Want a pro to read your pack?

Julian's team will go through your agent's crawler and entity findings with you and tell you what a consultant should fix first. Book a free SEO strategy session.

→ Get a free strategy session

Prompt 3: buyer-question bank and a first-hand content brief

Google's AI optimisation guide puts unique, non-commodity content ahead of every other suggestion it makes.

So this prompt starts with your customers' questions and ends with a brief that demands your own material.

Read customer-emails.txt and call-notes.txt.
Extract every question a prospect asked before buying.
Group them into 5-8 themes and rank the themes by how often
they appear.
For the top theme, draft a content brief with:
- the exact questions to answer
- first-hand material we must supply (cases, photos, data)
- what generic advice to leave out
- one internal page it should link to
No invented facts. Mark gaps as QUESTION FOR OWNER.
Save as 03-question-bank.md.

The question bank doubles as the consultant's baseline list. Run the top questions by hand in ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Copilot and note who gets cited.

Write down the date and the exact wording you used, because AI answers shift and the consultant will want to re-run the same set later.

Keep the brief too: it shows the consultant what first-hand material you can actually supply.

Prompt 4: mention and outreach research, draft only

Google's spam policies treat links made mainly to manipulate rankings as link spam, and its outbound link guide prefers rel="sponsored" for paid placements.

The agent researches; a person decides and sends.

Find 20 websites relevant to [industry] in [region] that
publish guides, interviews, event listings or supplier
roundups. For each, record: site, page URL, topic fit,
why our business is a genuine fit, and a contact page URL.
Exclude link directories, sites selling links without
marking them sponsored, and anything that looks automated.
Draft a two-line pitch idea for the best five.
Draft only. Do not contact anyone.
Save as 04-outreach-research.md.

Prompt 5: score a consultant's proposal against the official docs

This is the prompt most owners skip, and it is the one that saves the most money.

Read proposal.pdf from a GEO consultant.
For every recommendation, find the official source that
supports or contradicts it, using only Google Search Central,
OpenAI, Bing Webmaster, Perplexity and Anthropic docs.
Flag: guaranteed rankings or mentions, claims of special
access, llms.txt sold as a Google fix, unmarked paid links,
and reports built on private "AI rank" scores.
List what the proposal hands over in writing and who owns it.
Save as 05-proposal-check.md. Give a plain summary at the top.

Google says no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and OpenAI's ChatGPT search help page says placement is not guaranteed, so any guarantee is an instant flag.

What to hand the consultant on day one

Add read-only access to Search Console, where Google's Generative AI performance report now shows impressions inside AI features, and to Bing Webmaster Tools, whose AI Performance report shows Copilot citations.

In our own experience, ChatGPT referrals usually arrive tagged utm_source=chatgpt.com, so ask your agent to pull that segment from analytics too.

Mistakes to avoid when running the pack

• Letting the agent 'fix' robots.txt itself. Changes to crawler rules are a business decision, so leave them to you and the consultant.
• Treating a blocked training bot as a visibility problem. The search bots are the lines that decide AI search inclusion.
• Feeding the agent marketing copy instead of real customer emails. The question bank is only as good as its source.
• Accepting schema values the agent guessed. Every TODO needs a real answer before markup goes live.
• Sending outreach from the research file. The prompt says draft only for a reason; a person should read every site first.
• Skipping Prompt 5 because the consultant seemed friendly. Check the proposal anyway.

When to hand it to a pro

Your agent finds facts. It doesn't weigh them.

Bring in a consultant, or a team, when any of these is true:

• The crawler check shows firewall or CDN blocks you don't know how to change safely.
• Competitors are cited for your core questions and you can't see why.
• The entity audit turns up dozens of mismatched listings.
• You need outreach done by people, not just researched.
• You have no time to turn the briefs into pages.

That is where a free SEO strategy session with Julian's team fits. Julian's own published numbers include 425K+ YouTube subscribers and 1,000+ SEO and link building campaigns, and Goldie Agency describes its link building as "Manual outreach, no PBNs".

🔥 Learn to run this pack yourself

Inside the AI Profit Boardroom you get step-by-step AI SEO trainings, the installable Agent OS and four live coaching calls a week, so you can learn AI SEO yourself and brief any consultant with confidence.

→ Join the AI Profit Boardroom

Worked example: a family-run kitchen fitter

1. The owner drops 40 customer emails into the folder and runs Prompt 3. The top theme is "how long does a kitchen refit take".
2. Prompt 1 shows OAI-SearchBot allowed but the quote page returning a 403 to plain requests, a likely firewall rule.
3. Prompt 2 finds the business listed under two names after a rebrand.
4. Prompt 5 checks a consultant's proposal and flags one line promising "guaranteed ChatGPT placement".
5. The owner books a different consultant, hands over the five files and gets a roadmap that starts with the firewall and the rebrand clean-up.

📞 Bring your five files to a call

Show Julian's team your agent's findings and leave with a clear first-month plan. Book a free SEO strategy session.

→ Book your strategy session

🎁 Two free extras

Grab the 200+ AI SEO Prompts to extend this pack, and the free link building book for the outreach side.

→ Get the 200+ AI SEO Prompts

FAQ

What should I prepare before hiring a generative engine optimization consultant?

A crawler check, an entity audit with a schema draft, a bank of real buyer questions, a first outreach list and your own review of their proposal. An Agent OS can draft all five.

Can my Agent OS replace a GEO consultant?

No. It gathers facts and drafts files, but deciding what matters, fixing firewall rules safely and running outreach still need a person.

How do I check a GEO consultant's proposal?

Have your agent match each recommendation to official Google, OpenAI, Bing, Perplexity or Anthropic docs, and flag guarantees, special-access claims and unmarked paid links.

Is it safe to give an agent access to my website for this?

Keep it to web fetch, draft-only, with no CMS login or publishing rights, and a rule to ask before acting outside its folder.

Does blocking GPTBot hide me from ChatGPT search?

OpenAI says its bots are set independently. OAI-SearchBot controls ChatGPT search inclusion; GPTBot relates to model training.

Final word on Generative Engine Optimization Consultant Prep

Run the five prompts, keep every file as a draft, then book a free strategy session or learn the workflow in the AI Profit Boardroom before you brief a generative engine optimization consultant.

Related guides on agentos.guide

→ GEO Specialist Groundwork: 5 Prompts For Your Agent OS

→ Generative AI Search Engine Optimization Agency: Agent OS Prep

→ Top AI SEO Experts: Vet Them With Your Agent OS

→ GEO Agency UK Groundwork: 5 Agent OS Prompts To Run First

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