Disclosure up front. We are Proofmend, we sell GEO work, and our own prices are in this post, so read the structure rather than the sales note.
Quotes in this market run from a few hundred dollars to six figures a year, which looks like a market with no consensus. The spread is easier to read once you notice that four different things are being sold under one acronym. Comparing the numbers without sorting the things first is how buyers end up paying for a diagnosis and expecting an implementation.
Four shapes, four different purchases
| Shape | What arrives | When it fits | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-off audit | A recorded baseline, a diagnosis, a prioritised work-order list, no implementation | You are still deciding whether to fund the work | Whether the raw observations come with it or only the conclusions |
| Fixed-scope implementation | An agreed count of work orders, executed | The gaps are known and you want the controllable ones closed | Whether the count and the scope are written down |
| Monthly retainer | Continuing content and technical output | You already have steady demand and someone to direct it | Whether deliverables are countable or billed as person-days |
| Payment tied to outcomes | A promise | It looks risk-free, which is the appeal | The settlement condition sits on the platform side |
The first three sell delivery. The fourth sells a settlement condition, and that is the one worth slowing down on. To pay on outcomes you first have to define an outcome that can be settled, and mention or citation counts are unstable by nature. Put the same question to the same engine a day apart and the names in the answer can turn over. Any contract built on that metric ends in an argument about definitions rather than about money.
Our own numbers, since somebody has to publish theirs
Three engagements, in USD, with the scope and the acceptance points on the page.
Evidence Audit is US$699 over seven working days, fully prepaid. It delivers a reproducible baseline, a six-dimension diagnosis, a gap analysis, a prioritised work-order list and a 90-day roadmap. No implementation is included.
30-Day Foundation is US$1,380 over 30 days, fully prepaid, and implements at most six agreed priority work orders fixed in writing after qualification.
90-Day Growth is US$6,980 for the full programme. US$3,490 is due now, 30% follows technical and fact acceptance, and the final 20% follows content and legal distribution acceptance. Later payments are not automated.
Two conditions travel with those figures. Delivery periods begin when the required materials, access and review are available, and customer blockage pauses the relevant period, which is the honest version of a timeline. And these are limited owner-authorised test prices for the first three paid design partners, with remaining capacity recorded as unknown. For the first ten customers we exclude medical or drug, financial or investment, admissions or training, and franchise recruitment engagements, since any of those needs specialist legal and advertising review before anyone signs.
Splitting 30% and 20% behind acceptance is itself a pricing decision. If those two stages are not finished, we do not collect those two payments. It does not replace contract language, but it turns acceptance from a conversation into a payment condition.
The case for putting the number on the page
This part comes out of our own sampling, and it answers the objection that public prices weaken a negotiation.
Every week we put buyer-shaped questions to nine engines and log the conditions beside the answers. When an engine handles a category question, vendors it has thin information about tend to get a line suggesting the reader contact them for a quote. That line is not neutral. Next to a competitor whose figures are printed, the vendor without a number reads as the less complete entry. Price behind a sales call costs you comparability inside the answer, on top of whatever it costs in conversion.
Worth knowing where that lands. In our Chinese-market dataset of 187,818 deduplicated citations, brand-owned domains account for 1.37% of citations. A pricing page will not carry a category recommendation on its own. It decides whether the description of your commercial terms is correct when an engine does reach for you.
Five questions for any quote you receive
Ask when the delivery clock starts, and what happens to it while the vendor waits on your materials or approvals.
Ask what defines scope, the verbal version or the written one, and get the written one.
Ask what the acceptance points are, with controllable deliverables and platform-side results written in separate columns. The first can be accepted. The second can only be recorded.
Ask whether you receive the original records. Question, platform, mode, date, source set and repeat count belong next to every observation. A report of conclusions alone cannot be re-checked by anyone, including you.
Ask how untested items are marked. Our rule is that anything untested or unavailable is logged as unknown with no estimate. A report containing no unknowns has usually written estimates in as facts.
Boundary
Proofmend does not guarantee rankings, AI mentions or citations, traffic, leads, or revenue. What money buys here is controllable work, recorded conditions, written scope and checkable acceptance points. Anyone pricing the platform-side result is pricing something they do not control.
Current engagement prices and terms are at https://proofmend.com/pricing/ , method and evidence rules at https://proofmend.com/method/ , and commercial terms at https://proofmend.com/terms/ . Figures on this page were re-read on the site on August 24, 2026, and the site is the authority if they differ. Materials checked August 24, 2026.
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