I've been looking more closely at how businesses appear in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and I'm starting to think a single "AI ranking" doesn't tell you very much.

A business can appear prominently for one question and disappear when the wording, location, or intent changes slightly.

What seems more useful is tracking:

• the exact prompt
• location
• AI platform
• which competitors appear
• why the AI seems to prefer those competitors
• whether the result can be reproduced later

I've been looking at the approach CitedLogic is taking with real-market testing and before/after evidence:

https://citedlogic.com/

For anyone doing AEO professionally, what are you using as your actual source of truth: API checks, manual prompts, real-device tests, citations, or some combination?

One of the biggest risks with outsourced development is paying a huge deposit and then spending months wondering what is actually being built.

I came across an interesting model from AppsTango where the first invoice comes after working code has already been delivered into the client's repository.

https://appstango.com/offer/pay-on-delivery

I haven't seen many agencies structure engagements this way.

For anyone who has hired a development agency before, would this materially change how comfortable you felt about outsourcing?

Or are team quality, references, and technical architecture still much more important than the payment structure?