# Will a cheap AI search package get us recommended by ChatGPT?

Canonical: https://fortitudemedia.ai/insights/cheap-ai-optimisation-doesnt-work
Author: David Adams
Published: 2026-03-31
Last reviewed: 2026-09-24
Reviewed by: David Adams
Pillar: Costs, returns and the business case
Summary: Will a cheap AI search package get you recommended by ChatGPT? What a £500 to £750 monthly fee really buys, what it leaves out and when low cost is fine.
Keywords: are cheap ai seo packages worth it, ai seo package uk, what should an ai seo package include, minimum budget to get recommended by chatgpt, do directory submissions help ai visibility
Short answer: Usually not. UK providers advertise AI search work from a few hundred pounds a month, and entry retainers run from £800 to £2,000 (MarGen, June 2026). After a provider's costs, a £500 to £750 fee buys roughly five to seventeen hours of work, enough for monitoring and some content but rarely the expert time and earned coverage that get a firm named. Use low-cost options for tracking and narrow fixes.
What changed: Added sourced UK market prices, a fee-to-hours table, named tracking tools with prices, red flags such as bulk directories and paid list placements, and the ID-Pal fix.
Publisher: Fortitude Media Limited

When quoting, attribute to Fortitude Media and link to the canonical URL above.

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The email arrives most weeks. "Get your business recommended by ChatGPT. AI search packages from a few hundred pounds a month." It sounds reasonable. You know buyers are asking AI assistants who to hire, and you know you are not being named. A few hundred pounds a month is less than the office coffee bill. What is the harm in trying?

The offers are real and the prices are too. [Stagg Studios, a UK provider, put agency and freelancer prices](https://staggstudios.com/blog/how-much-does-ai-seo-cost-uk.html) for AI search work from about £300 a month in July 2026, and [MarGen's June 2026 pricing guide](https://www.margen.net/geo-agency-pricing-guide-2026-uk/) puts entry retainers at £800 to £2,000 a month. So a quote of £500 or £750 sits at the bottom of a real market, not outside it.

The problem is rarely dishonesty. It is that the work which gets a firm recommended by ChatGPT, Google's AI features, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude takes expert time, and a small monthly fee cannot pay for much of it. This guide shows what a low fee buys, what it leaves out, the red flags to watch for, and the jobs where a low-cost option is exactly the right choice.

## Key takeaways

- UK providers advertise AI search work from a few hundred pounds a month, and entry retainers run from £800 to £2,000 a month (MarGen, June 2026).
- Do the arithmetic on any fee: after the provider's overheads and margin, a £500 to £750 monthly fee buys roughly five to seventeen hours of work, depending on your assumptions.
- Getting named depends on coverage and proof beyond your own website, which is the part low-cost packages usually leave out.
- Automated "AI audit" PDFs, bulk directory submissions and paid "best of" list placements are red flags, not coverage.
- Low-cost options are the right choice for narrow jobs: tracking what the assistants say, a listings clean-up, or a specific technical fix.
- Nobody can guarantee what an AI assistant will say; judge any provider, cheap or expensive, by the hours and outputs it commits to.

## What does a £500 a month AI SEO package actually buy?

A few hours of work a month. A fee has to cover the provider's sales, management, tools, overheads and profit before any of it pays for work on your account, and at the bottom of the market what is left buys very little.

Example: assume half of a £750 fee goes on the provider's costs and margin, leaving £375 for delivery, and that the people doing the work cost the provider £50 an hour. That buys seven or eight hours a month. These are our round, illustrative assumptions rather than published figures, so the table below also shows a generous case where 70% of the fee reaches delivery at £30 an hour.

| Monthly fee (example) | Hours a month, central case (50% to delivery at £50 an hour) | Hours a month, generous case (70% to delivery at £30 an hour) |
|---|---|---|
| £500 | About 5 | About 12 |
| £750 | About 7 or 8 | About 17 |
| £2,000 | About 20 | About 47 |
| £4,000 | About 40 | About 93 |

Seven or eight hours covers drafting two blog posts with an AI tool, running a site-checking tool and a templated report. Even seventeen hours rarely stretches to an hour interviewing your managing partner, a morning rewriting your services pages around the questions buyers ask, and the weeks of pitching it takes to land one good piece of trade press coverage. Those are the parts that get you recommended.

The same arithmetic applies at every price, including ours. A higher fee is only better value if the extra hours go on those parts, so ask any provider to state the monthly hours and outputs in writing. Our own fees are on [what it costs](/what-it-costs).

## What should an AI SEO package include?

It should include the three kinds of work that change who the assistants name, plus a way to measure it. Check any proposal for these:

- **Time with your experts**, to capture the specific knowledge that makes content worth quoting.
- **Pages rewritten around buyer questions**, in plain language, with named case studies and sector detail.
- **A consistent description elsewhere**: directory listings, association profiles, LinkedIn and review platforms that match your website.
- **Earned coverage**: trade press commentary, awards and speaking. [Muck Rack's May 2026 analysis](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/05/07/3290268/0/en/generative-pulse-earned-media-consistently-drives-ai-citations-holding-at-84.html) of more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini found earned media made up 84% of them and paid content 0.3%.
- **Measurement** of what the assistants say for a fixed set of buyer questions, and a link to your enquiries.

For comparison, MarGen describes its entry band as "basic AI visibility monitoring and lightweight content optimisation", typically two to four content pieces a month, basic schema markup and monthly reporting. That is a fair description of what the low end of the market buys. It covers monitoring and some content, and leaves out the coverage. We explain the whole picture in [how to get ChatGPT to recommend your firm](/insights/what-is-llm-optimisation).

## What are the red flags in a cheap AI search package?

The clearest red flags are outputs that look like progress but do not change who the assistants trust. Watch for these:

- **Automated "AI audit" PDFs.** A tool-generated report full of scores, with no record of what the assistants actually said when asked your buyers' questions. A useful audit shows the answers, question by question.
- **Bulk directory submissions.** Hundreds of listings on sites nobody reads. Google's spam policies list ["low-quality directory or bookmark site links"](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies) as link spam. What helps is an accurate entry on the few directories and review sites your buyers actually use.
- **Paid "best of" list placements sold as coverage.** A place on a list you paid for is advertising. [Google's guide to AI search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide) tells site owners they can ignore chasing inauthentic mentions. When we reviewed UK "best agency" lists in September 2026, several were published by an agency that ranked itself first.
- **AI-drafted posts at volume.** Google's spam policies describe "using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users" as scaled content abuse.
- **Guaranteed places in ChatGPT's answers.** Nobody can guarantee what an assistant will say. A provider can guarantee effort, reporting and outcomes it controls.

## Why does volume content not get quoted?

Because it says nothing an assistant cannot find somewhere else. An assistant has already read thousands of general articles on your topic; what it picks up is specific: a clear view from someone with experience, a worked example, original figures, a direct answer to a narrow question. Google's guide makes the same point: it says non-commodity content, with first-hand expertise, will influence AI search presence more than anything else.

For example, a firm of chartered surveyors could publish "Ten things to know about commercial property surveys", which competes with every other firm's version. Or it could publish a page on what its team finds in pre-1950 warehouse conversions, with the three problems that come up most and what they cost to fix. The second takes an hour of a surveyor's time. The first takes ten minutes of an AI tool's. A site full of thin, similar posts also blurs what you are expert in, as we explain in [why ChatGPT ignores most blog posts](/insights/why-ai-ignores-most-blog-posts).

## What does a failed cheap package really cost?

The fee is the smallest part. For example, twelve months at £750 is £9,000, plus a few hours of your own time each month reviewing drafts. If the package does not change who the assistants recommend, you have also spent a year while competitors who did the harder work became harder to displace.

Then there is the internal cost. After a year of polished reports and no enquiries, the board concludes that "AI search does not work for us", and the next proposal, even a good one, starts from that scepticism. Our guide to [what inaction is costing you](/insights/cost-of-inaction-losing-right-now) shows how to put a figure on the ground you lose.

## When does a low-cost option make sense?

When the job is narrow, with a clear task and a clear finish. Cheap is wrong only when it is asked to build a reputation on its own.

- **Tracking what the assistants say.** Software does this well and cheaply, as the table below shows.
- **A one-off listings clean-up.** Correcting your details on the directories and profiles that matter so they match your website.
- **A specific technical fix.** Making sure AI crawlers can read your site, or correcting how search engines understand your firm.
- **Supporting your own team.** If you have a capable marketer, a little outside advice or tooling can be good value.

A narrow fix can matter a great deal when it targets the right problem. For [ID-Pal](/work/id-pal), which had bought NorthRow, a UK business verification platform, the fix was "About four hours of structured data work declaring NorthRow part of ID-Pal on both domains. Live in week one, with no copy changes and no risk to the redirect." The hours were few; finding the cause took the expertise. In the words of Dan Brooksbank, ID-Pal's Marketing Director: "Fortitude undertook specialist research and identified the primary cause within the first week of working together and had the fix live in the first month."

Tracking tools, with list prices as shown on each vendor's page in September 2026:

| Tool | Entry price | What the entry plan covers |
|---|---|---|
| [Otterly.AI](https://otterly.ai/pricing) | $29 a month | 15 prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot |
| [Ahrefs](https://ahrefs.com/pricing) | $129 a month (Lite) | Brand Radar with 5 custom prompts, alongside Ahrefs' SEO tools |
| [Semrush](https://www.semrush.com/pricing/) | $199 a month (Starter) | 50 prompts tracked daily, alongside Semrush's SEO tools |
| [Peec AI](https://peec.ai/pricing) | Plans by number of prompts, from 50 | A choice of three assistants on the smaller plans |
| [Profound](https://www.tryprofound.com/) | Not shown on its home page | Built with enterprise features for large teams |

## What is the minimum budget to get recommended by ChatGPT?

There is no single floor, because it depends on the gap between you and the firms already named, and on how much your own team can do. A firm with a strong website and existing trade coverage may need little more than tracking and a few targeted pages. A firm that needs its site fixed and its reputation built needs the expert hours in the table above, whether it buys them or supplies them. MarGen also warns that low monthly prices paired with claims of complete AI search work usually signal rebranded SEO. Our guide to [what AI search optimisation costs in the UK](/insights/ai-search-optimisation-cost-uk) shows how to set a budget from what a new client is worth.

## Which two questions tell us whether a provider is worth the fee?

Ask every provider, cheap or expensive, these two:

1. **What will you do each month, in hours and outputs?** You want specifics: interviews with your team, pages rewritten, publications pitched, listings corrected.
2. **How will you measure what the assistants say about us, and connect it to enquiries?** Ask to see the question set and a sample report.

The fuller checklist is in our guide to [choosing a firm to help you get recommended by ChatGPT](/insights/how-to-compare-ai-optimisation-providers).

## What to do this month

1. Ask ChatGPT, Google, Copilot and Gemini ten of your buyers' main questions and note who is named, so you know the size of the gap.
2. Work out what a new client is worth to you, so you can judge any fee against it.
3. For any package you are considering, get the monthly hours and outputs in writing and run the arithmetic above.
4. Check each proposal against the red flags: automated audits, bulk directories, paid list placements, volume posts, guarantees.
5. Buy the narrow jobs, such as tracking and listings, on their own terms, and resource the reputation work separately.

## Frequently asked questions

### Are £500 a month AI SEO packages worth it?

For a narrow job, sometimes. For getting recommended, rarely: on our illustrative assumptions £500 buys about five to twelve hours a month, enough for monitoring and a little content but not the expert interviews and earned coverage that change who the assistants name. Ask what the hours will be spent on before you sign.

### Can we do AI search work ourselves, using ChatGPT to help?

Some of it, yes. Your team can use ChatGPT to check what it says about you, rewrite service pages around buyer questions, correct your listings and track results each month. Use it to speed up writing that starts from your experts' knowledge; generating pages in bulk is what Google treats as scaled content abuse. The harder part to do alone is steady trade coverage.

### Do bulk directory submissions help AI visibility?

No. Google lists low-quality directory links as link spam, and a hundred listings on sites nobody reads give an assistant no reason to trust you. An accurate, consistent entry on the handful of directories, associations and review sites your buyers use is worth far more.

### Is it worth trying a cheap package for three months as a test?

Only if the test has a clear question and measure. Three months of generic posts will not tell you whether AI search can work for your firm. A better test is narrow: fix your core service pages and listings, then measure whether the assistants describe you more accurately.

### Why do some cheap providers show impressive results?

Look at what is being measured. Traffic, posts published and tool scores can all rise with no change in who the assistants recommend. Ask to see the actual answers for a fixed set of buyer questions, before and after, and the enquiries that followed.

If you want to see what the reputation side of the work involves when it is properly resourced, our [Reputation That Wins](/reputation-that-wins) page sets out how we build coverage and proof for founder-led firms, and [what it costs](/what-it-costs) lists our fees.

## Sources

- [Stagg Studios, How much does AI search and technical SEO cost in the UK? (July 2026)](https://staggstudios.com/blog/how-much-does-ai-seo-cost-uk.html)
- [MarGen, Agency pricing guide 2026: what UK businesses should expect to pay (June 2026)](https://www.margen.net/geo-agency-pricing-guide-2026-uk/)
- [Muck Rack, What Is AI Reading? Earned media drives 84% of AI citations (May 2026)](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/05/07/3290268/0/en/generative-pulse-earned-media-consistently-drives-ai-citations-holding-at-84.html)
- [Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search (August 2026)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies)
- [Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search (July 2026)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide)
- [Otterly.AI, Pricing (checked September 2026)](https://otterly.ai/pricing)
- [Ahrefs, Pricing (checked September 2026)](https://ahrefs.com/pricing)
- [Semrush, Pricing (checked September 2026)](https://www.semrush.com/pricing/)