Key Takeaways
- You do not have to fire your SEO agency to hire an AI search vendor. The two jobs pull on different signals and can run in parallel.
- Split ownership by asset, not by task. One vendor owns the website and rankings. The other owns the profile ecosystem, third party citations, and answer engine visibility.
- Overlap is real but small. It shows up in three places: the Google Business Profile, on page content, and reviews. Name an owner for each in writing.
- One shared lead log settles credit disputes. Every call and form gets a source field both vendors can see, filled in by asking the customer.
- If your current agency refuses to share access or blocks a scoped second vendor, that is a signal about the agency, not about AI search.
Can You Actually Run Both?
Short answer: yes, and most of the businesses we work with do exactly that.
The question comes up on nearly every call. Someone is paying an SEO agency $1,500 a month, they have been for two years, and they want to know whether hiring us means firing them. It does not.
Here is why. Traditional SEO is trying to rank a page. AI search is trying to get your business named inside an answer. Those goals share some plumbing, but the signals are different. A model deciding which three plumbers to name in a metro area is reading your Google Business Profile, third party directories, review text, and a handful of pages that talk about your service area in plain language. Your position for a head term matters less than whether the model can find consistent, specific information about you in more than one place.
So the two vendors are not fighting over the same lever. One is pushing on rankings. The other is pushing on how often you appear in answers. Run them in parallel and you get both.
Split Ownership by Asset, Not by Task
The mistake is dividing the work by task. You do content, they do technical. That falls apart in week three because both vendors touch content.
Divide by asset instead. Every asset gets one owner and one editor. The other vendor can read it, flag it, and request changes, but only the owner ships.
| Asset | SEO agency | AI search vendor |
|---|---|---|
| Website pages, speed, technical fixes | Owns | Reads, requests |
| Rankings and backlinks | Owns | Not involved |
| Google Business Profile | Posts and photos | Categories, services, description |
| Bing, Apple Maps, industry directories | Not involved | Owns |
| Review requests and replies | Pick one | Pick one |
| Assistant testing, citation tracking | Not involved | Owns |
| Monthly lead log | Reads | Reads |
Put this table in both contracts. It takes fifteen minutes and it prevents the two most common failures: nobody touching an asset because both assumed the other had it, and both touching it in the same week and reverting each other. If you want the rest of that document, we broke it down in the one page scope every vendor should sign.
One Shared Lead Log Settles Credit
This is the part that keeps the peace, and it is the part most businesses skip.
Both vendors will claim your leads. Not because they are dishonest, because their dashboards are built to. Your SEO agency's tool counts an organic session that ended in a form fill. Ours counts the same person if they typed your name into ChatGPT the day before. Same lead, two vendors, two invoices that both look justified.
Fix it with one spreadsheet you own. Every inbound call and form gets four fields: date, name, how they found you, and whether it turned into a job. That third field comes from asking, not inferring. Your front desk asking how someone heard about you beats any attribution model either vendor can sell you.
Then both vendors read the same log. When we say assistants sent eleven calls last month, you can see the eleven rows. When your SEO agency says organic sent thirty, same deal. The log is the referee, and neither vendor gets to grade their own homework. That is the same standard we apply to what should be visible by day 30.
Where the Overlap Actually Is
Three places. That is the whole list.
The Google Business Profile
Both vendors want in. Split it. Your SEO agency runs posts and photos on a schedule. Your AI vendor owns categories, the service list, and the business description, because those fields get read straight into answers. Write down who holds manager access.
On page content
Your SEO agency writes for a keyword. Your AI vendor wants pages that answer a question directly, with the service and the city in the same paragraph. These are often the same page. Decide who publishes and let the other one comment.
Reviews
One vendor runs the request flow. Two overlapping review campaigns means your customers get asked twice and you look sloppy. Everything else stays clean: backlinks and technical work sit with the SEO agency, directory consistency and assistant testing sit with the AI vendor. No collision.
Which Setup Is Right for You
Add a second vendor if
Your SEO agency is producing results you can point at, rankings are holding, the site is healthy, and your only gap is that you do not show up when someone asks an assistant. You are buying a channel you do not currently have. Keep what works.
Consolidate into one vendor if
Your current agency is already underperforming and you were considering leaving anyway. Do not stack a second retainer on top of a first one you resent. Fix that problem first, then decide. We covered when switching is worth it and when you are restarting the clock.
Do neither yet if
You cannot answer how many leads you got last month and where they came from. Adding a vendor to an unmeasured business gives you two invoices and the same fog. Spend thirty days building the lead log first. It costs nothing and it makes every vendor decision after it obvious.
There is a fourth case worth naming. If your current agency says they already do AI search, ask which queries they test, what your citation rate is today, and which assistants they check. If the answer is that AI is part of modern SEO, that is a positioning line, not a service.
What to Tell Your Current Agency
Say it plainly and early. Something like: I am adding a vendor for AI search visibility. They are not touching rankings or backlinks. I want the three of us on one call to split ownership in writing, and I want both of you reading the same lead log.
Most agencies are fine with this. Some are relieved, because AI visibility is a question they have been dodging.
A few will resist, and what they resist tells you something. Pushback like that will confuse Google is not a technical objection, it is a retention move. Refusing to share profile access or logins with a named, scoped second vendor tells you how they think about your assets. Worth knowing either way.
If you have been burned before, the setup matters more than the vendor. We wrote about structuring the next one so you can fire it with evidence.
Keep your vendor. Add the channel.
Book a call and we will map who owns what against your current agency's actual scope. No pitch to replace them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I hire an AI search vendor without firing my SEO agency?
Yes, and it is the normal setup rather than the exception. Traditional SEO and AI search visibility pull on different signals, so the two do not cancel each other out. Your SEO agency is working on rankings, backlinks, and site health. An AI search vendor is working on whether assistants name your business when someone asks for a recommendation. The only requirement is written ownership: one vendor owns each asset, and both read the same lead log. Businesses that skip that step end up with two vendors editing the same Google Business Profile in the same week and reverting each other. Fifteen minutes of paperwork prevents it.
Will two vendors working on the same site cause conflicts?
Only in three places, and all three are fixable in a single call. The Google Business Profile, on page content, and review requests are where the two scopes touch. Everything else stays clean: backlinks, technical SEO, and keyword rankings belong to the SEO agency, while third party directories, citation consistency, and answer engine testing belong to the AI vendor. Split the three shared assets explicitly. A workable default gives posts and photos to the SEO agency, categories and the business description to the AI vendor, and the review request flow to whichever one already runs it. Name the owner in writing and conflicts stop being theoretical.
Who should own the Google Business Profile if I have two vendors?
You should. Keep the primary owner role on your own Google account and hand out manager access, never ownership. Below that, split the editing rights. The AI search vendor should own primary category, secondary categories, the service list, and the business description, because those fields get parsed into the answers assistants generate. The SEO agency can own posts, photos, and the questions section. Both should be able to see change history so a surprise edit has a name on it. If either vendor asks for full ownership transfer, decline. Losing control of that profile is the single most expensive thing that can happen in a vendor breakup.
How much does it cost to add an AI search vendor on top of my SEO retainer?
Monitoring only engagements, where a vendor tracks your citation rate across assistants and reports monthly without doing the work, run roughly $150 to $600 per month. A full AI search retainer that also fixes profiles, builds directory consistency, and produces answer targeted pages typically runs $800 to $3,000 per month depending on how many locations and services you have. One time citation audits sit around $500 to $1,500. Most single location businesses adding a second vendor land between $800 and $1,500. If a proposal comes in materially above that, ask which line items scale with locations and which do not.
How do I stop both vendors claiming credit for the same lead?
Build one lead log that you own, not one that either vendor hosts. Four columns are enough: date, name, how they heard about you, and whether it turned into paid work. The third column has to come from asking the customer, not from an attribution model. Both vendors get read access to the same sheet. When the SEO agency reports thirty organic leads and the AI vendor reports eleven from assistants, you can open the log and see which rows they are pointing at. Overlap becomes visible instead of arguable. This one habit does more for vendor accountability than any dashboard either of them will show you.
What if my SEO agency says they already do AI search?
Ask three questions. Which assistants do you test, what queries do you run, and what is my current citation rate on each. An agency actually doing the work will answer in under a minute with specifics: the query list, the platforms, and a number. An agency using it as a positioning line will say that AI is part of modern SEO and move on. Neither answer is a reason to fire anyone. If they are doing it, you just saved a retainer. If they are not, you now have a specific gap to fill and a clear scope for a second vendor that will not overlap.
What access does an AI search vendor need to my site?
Less than people expect. For most engagements it is manager access to the Google Business Profile, read access to Search Console and analytics, and the ability to request or publish a small number of pages. Full server or hosting credentials are rarely necessary. If your SEO agency owns the site and does not want a second party publishing, the workable arrangement is that the AI vendor drafts and the SEO agency ships. It adds a few days to each page and removes the entire category of two vendors editing the same file. Put the turnaround expectation in writing so drafts do not sit for a month.
How long before I can tell whether the second vendor is worth the money?
Thirty days for signals, ninety for revenue. By day thirty you should see profile and directory fixes shipped, a baseline citation rate across the assistants they test, and at least a few queries where you now appear and did not before. That is enough to know work is happening. Lead volume attributable to AI answers usually starts moving in month two or three, because the profiles and pages need to be crawled and re-crawled first. If nothing has shipped by day thirty and the reporting is a summary rather than a list of changes, that is the moment to ask hard questions, not month six.
About the author
Matthew Johnson is the founder of Pleiades Consultancy. He previously scaled his own marketing agency to multiple six figures before serving as CMO of an Amazon agency, where the client base tripled from 15 to 45 active clients during his tenure. He worked with some of the largest names in e-commerce, including Ridge Wallet, HexClad, BK Beauty, The Woobles, Walkize, Lonely Planet, and Obvi. He now works with local businesses to maximize their client acquisition and visibility through AI search with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Bing Copilot.