10 questions to ask an AI search agency in India
Ask these in the first meeting. They take twenty minutes and they separate an agency that has adapted from one that renamed its deck. We published them knowing you will ask us the same ones.
Ask each one and listen for the shape of the answer
An agency doing this work has the process ready and will do it in the meeting. One that renamed its SEO deck will offer to send it later.
Vague answers here produce vague reporting later. Twenty is the minimum for a signal, forty is comfortable, weekly is the cadence.
Appearance alone is a scoreboard. The cited source is the instruction, because it tells you where the next month of work goes.
A defined answer means they have priced the risk. No answer means you are carrying it alone.
Case studies are selected. A scorecard is routine, and it tells you what they actually watch every week.
One person per number. Shared ownership is how numbers quietly stop being watched.
An agency that claims every service does none of them deeply. The refusal tells you where the real capability sits.
If four engines describe the company differently, placement produces mentions that do not stick. Entity work comes first or the money is wasted.
Published pricing is a signal about how they run. If the number only appears after two meetings, they are optimising for your sunk cost.
Prompt set, documentation, accounts, schema, workflows. Anything that only runs inside their account is a dependency, not a capability.
Why this matters more in India right now
Generative engine optimization draws about 2,400 searches a month in India and answer engine optimization about 1,300, while classic SEO agency terms draw over 40,000 at low competition. The vocabulary moved faster than the capability did, which means a lot of decks changed and a lot of processes did not.
The full demand dataset is published at what India actually searches for, free to check.
Our answers to all ten
We will run five prompts live in the meeting. The prompt set is written with you, forty prompts, frozen, scanned weekly across four engines with the cited source logged. If agreed money prompts do not move in ninety days the next month is free. The scorecard template is on how we work, with one named owner per number. Pricing is published on the pricing page from Rs 1,50,000 a month with a Rs 25,000 audit waived on engagement. Everything we build is yours and runs in your accounts.
What we refuse: paid link schemes, guaranteed rankings, and writing content nobody would read if it were not for search.
Free to cite and quote
Use any of this with attribution. No permission needed, no email required.
Suggested citation
10 questions to ask an AI search agency in India. Bridging Associates, 2026. https://growwithba.in/blog/questions-to-ask-ai-search-agency-india
Twenty buying prompts, four engines, you against three named competitors. Report in one working day. No call needed.
Choosing an agency: common questions
What if an agency refuses to run prompts live?
It is not automatically disqualifying, but ask why. The usual reason is that the process does not exist yet.
Is a ninety day guarantee normal?
Not yet. It is winnable in India because most categories still have unclaimed citation slots, which is exactly why we offer it now.
Should I use these questions on a traditional SEO agency?
Yes. Questions five to ten apply to any agency. The first four are specific to AI search.
Can I reuse this list?
Yes, free to cite with attribution. If you are a brand, print it and take it into the meeting.
See what the engines say about you
Twenty buying prompts, four engines, your brand against three named competitors. Report in one working day.
- 20 buying prompts, your category
- ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews
- You against three named competitors
- Report in one working day, yours to keep