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Answer engine optimisation services in India: agency, software, or both

AEO services are sold in India by SEO agencies, by new specialists and by software. The work is the same in every case: measure what the engines say, fix what stops them reading you, get written about where they read, and measure again. Here is what to ask before you pay for it.

Oftheardfrom the stored sessions ·26 September 2026 ·6 min read

What answer engine optimisation services consist of

Strip the name off and the service has four parts, in this order:

  1. Measurement. Your buyers’ questions put to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, as a buyer in India, with the answers stored: who was recommended, why, and which pages the engine read first.
  2. The site. The crawler permissions, the markup, the text in the HTML, the speed, the address: everything that decides whether an engine can read and quote you. Finite, and finished when it is finished.
  3. Being written about. Listings, directories, reviews, comparisons and forum threads: the pages the engines actually read before they name a brand. This is where most of the effort goes and where an agency earns a fee.
  4. Measuring again. The same questions, the same engines, a month later, to see what moved. Without this step nobody knows whether the retainer bought anything.

An honest agency does all four and shows you the first and the fourth. Software does the first, the second and the fourth, and tells you exactly what the third should be.

What to ask an agency in Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai

  • Which engines, and from where? An answer from a laptop in another country is not what your buyer in Pune sees. Ask for the answers asked from India, and for local categories, from the district.
  • Can I read the stored answers? Not a summary. The answers, with the engine, the date, and the pages it read. If they cannot show them, they did not measure.
  • What will you change on my site, and what on other sites? The second list is the one that moves the answer, and the one that should be longest.
  • How is a month compared with the one before? The same questions on the same engines, or the comparison is noise.
  • What do you not do? Nobody can submit a business to ChatGPT, buy a place in an AI Overview, or promise a position. An agency that promises one is describing SEO with a new name.

What software does, and what it costs

Oftheard is software, built in Chennai, and it does the measurement, the site work and the comparison for a brand or for an agency’s clients. It asks all six engines from India, scores your own site on a hundred checks and gives the code to fix what fails, lists the sites that helped a competitor and never helped you, and ends every session in an action plan. The free plan checks your site and asks Gemini ten questions; the paid plans start at ₹3,999 a month, and the pricing page has the table.

What it does not do is the third part for you. It tells you which directories, comparison pages and threads to be on, in the engines’ own words, and an agency or your own team does the listing and the writing. Agencies run it under their own name for several clients on the Agency plan, with their name on the reports and a link for each client.

Software, agency or both?

You areWhat fits
A brand with someone who can fill in listings and write a pageSoftware. The plan names the work; you do it.
A brand with nobody to do the third partAn agency, measured by software you can read yourself.
An agency selling AEO to clientsSoftware under your own name, so the client sees the before and after.
A business with one location and a small budgetThe free plan, then Starter. Local questions are asked from your district.

Whichever you choose, insist on the first and the fourth part. Answer engine optimisation without a stored measurement is a story, and the engines re-answer every time they are asked.

Questions

What does an AEO agency in India charge?

It varies too much to state a figure, and the price is not the point. Ask what the retainer buys: stored answers from the engines, asked from India, compared month on month. Software that does that starts at ₹3,999 a month on Oftheard, and an agency should be measured by the same numbers.

Is answer engine optimisation different from SEO?

They share the plumbing and not the goal. Search ranks pages and gives the buyer ten. An answer engine names a few brands and gives the buyer none. Everything that stops a crawler reading you hurts both; being written about on the pages the engines read is where AEO begins. AEO vs GEO explains the terms.

Can an agency get my business listed on ChatGPT or in AI Overviews?

No. There is nothing to submit to and no placement to buy. An agency can make your site readable, get you written about on the pages the engines read, and measure whether it worked. That is the whole service.

Does Oftheard offer AEO services?

It is software, not an agency. It measures, audits the site with the fix code, and names the work; a brand or its agency does the listing and writing. Agencies use it for their clients under their own name on the Agency plan.

Stop guessing what the engines say. Measure it.

Oftheard puts your buyers’ questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews and Google’s AI Mode from India, then tells you who was recommended, why, and what to change. The site check is free.

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