If you are shortlisting GEO and AEO agencies in Malaysia, start by asking each one a single question: which of your clients does an AI engine name out loud, on which query, and how did you verify it. The answer separates the agencies doing the work from the ones that renamed their SEO retainer.
Generative engine optimisation is the practice of getting your brand cited inside the answers that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews write. Answer engine optimisation is the same job described from the user's side. Oblique is a Kuala Lumpur agency founded in 2016, and we have run GEO as a funded line of work since 2025, alongside SEO on the same team.
What GEO actually is, and what most agencies skip
About 80% of the work overlaps with good SEO. Structured pages, crawlable architecture, direct answers under clear headings, real sources. An engine cannot cite a page it cannot read, so the technical floor is identical.
The remaining 20% is where GEO earns its own budget, and it is the part most agencies skip. Entity consistency, so the engine can resolve your business under one name across your site, your Google Business Profile and every marketplace you sell on. Earned third-party presence, because the engines cross-check claims rather than taking your word for it. And citation tracking, which is a measurement system nobody had to build before 2025.
If an agency quotes you for GEO and the deliverables list reads like a standard SEO scope with schema added, you are buying the 80% twice.
The numbers that decide whether to fund this
Four figures frame the case, and one of them argues against spending.
| What the data says | Source |
|---|---|
| 900 million people use ChatGPT every week, up 100 million in four months | TechCrunch, February 2026 |
| AI-referred traffic grew 632% year on year, and still accounts for 0.2% of visits | Contentsquare, 99 billion sessions |
| 62% of AI citations are ghost citations, where the source is used but the brand goes unnamed | Semrush AI Visibility Index, 126 million prompts |
| 45% of marketing leaders cannot measure their brand's visibility in AI answers at all | Semrush AI Visibility Index |
That 0.2% is the figure honest agencies quote and hype merchants leave out. AI referral traffic is small today and growing fast, which means GEO is an investment in position rather than a tap you turn on for leads this quarter. If you need volume next month, performance marketing is the correct answer and we will tell you so.
The ghost citation number is the one that changes the work. Being read is not the same as being named, and an agency that reports "your content was used" without showing the brand mention is reporting the wrong thing.
How an AI answer gets assembled
The engines do not pick a winner from a ranked list. They retrieve from several places, cross-check what they find and then write. Understanding that sequence is what tells you where to spend.
A client in AI Overviews, and our own rankings
Two pieces of evidence, both checkable.
Petico. An online pet store competing with retail chains and marketplaces on every category term. Twelve months of structured content, entity work and authority building took its average tracked position from 30 to 9, put most of 35 category keywords in the top three, and made it one of the stores Google's AI Overviews now names on searches like "cat food malaysia" and "pet store online". We verified it by running those queries and capturing the answers, which is the same evidence we would ask any competing agency to produce.
Our own domain. The clearest proof we have is that oblique.com.my already ranks inside the top 10 for the conversational, full-sentence queries people type into AI tools. On our Search Console data, "ai is recommending our competitors instead of us, who can help in malaysia?" sits at an average position of 3.7, and "how much does an aeo or geo agency charge in malaysia?" at 2.3. Those positions were earned by writing direct answers to named questions, which is the same method we run for clients.
We are not going to publish a citation-share chart with a made-up number on it. The measurement layer is young, the tooling disagrees with itself, and anyone showing you a precise AI market share figure for Malaysia is estimating.
Four things we do that most agencies selling AI SEO do not
1. We check whether you are already invisible before we quote. Every prospect gets a run of real buyer questions through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and a written record of who gets named instead of you. You can start that yourself with our free AI visibility checker.
2. We report brand mentions, not content usage. Given that 62% of citations go unnamed, "we appeared in an answer" is a claim that needs a screenshot behind it. Our monthly reporting tracks named mentions across engines and the queries that produced them.
3. We run GEO and SEO as one programme. The economics only work together, because the same content production feeds both. Charging separately for the overlapping 80% is a pricing decision, not a methodology.
4. We say when the answer is no. If your category has almost no AI-answered demand yet, GEO is a position play with a long payback, and we will say that in the first meeting rather than after you sign.
What it costs and who it suits
GEO engagements at Oblique run from RM 10,000 to RM 30,000 a month, set by category competitiveness and content volume. Most clients run it bundled with SEO, which is cheaper than buying the two separately.
This suits you if you sell something considered, where buyers research before they commit, and you can fund two to three quarters before the curve bends. It does not suit you if you need leads this month, or if your site cannot be crawled properly yet, in which case the first invoice should be a website rebuild.
Frequently asked questions
Which is the best GEO agency in Malaysia?
There is no neutral ranking, so compare on evidence rather than claims. Ask for one client an AI engine names by name, on which query and how it was verified. Ask whether the agency's own site ranks for the questions its prospects ask. Ask what the scope contains beyond standard SEO. Most agencies selling GEO in Malaysia cannot answer all three yet.
Is GEO the same thing as AEO?
Close enough for practical purposes. GEO describes optimising for engines that generate an answer, AEO describes optimising to be the answer. The work is the same, and anyone charging separately for both is selling one job twice. We covered the distinction from search in SEO vs GEO for Malaysian brands.
How long before GEO shows results?
Citation movement on long-tail and question-shaped queries can appear within 60 to 90 days, because those answers are assembled fresh each time. Category-level presence takes six to twelve months as third-party signals accumulate. Neither is a number we would guarantee in advance.
Can I pay an engine to be recommended?
No. There is no paid placement inside an organic AI answer, and any agency implying otherwise is describing something that does not exist. The mechanics of earning it are in our guide to getting cited by ChatGPT.
Do I need GEO if my SEO is already working?
You are most of the way there, which is the good news. The work left is entity consistency, earned third-party presence and a measurement layer for citations. That is a smaller project than starting from zero, and it is worth scoping before a competitor with weaker rankings gets named ahead of you. For the wider picture, see our read on AI search in Malaysia.
Check whether AI engines already recommend you
The useful first step costs nothing. Run your category through our AI visibility checker, or get in touch and we will send you a written record of who ChatGPT and Google's AI name when your buyers ask, before the first meeting.