ThriveFinity vs Hunterlodge for AI Visibility (GEO)

Hunterlodge is a full-service advertising agency in Rickmansworth, and its AI visibility work, by its own description, is focused on universities and higher education. ThriveFinity, which is us, sells AI search optimisation (GEO) to B2B companies as defined pieces of work, with published starting prices and a re-test of the same buyer questions at day 30. If you run a university, Hunterlodge has written its AI visibility pages for you. If you're a B2B company, ask Hunterlodge whether it takes on firms like yours for this work, because the pages we checked don't say.

Google's page on whether you need an SEO, last updated in June 2026, tells you to ask anyone selling AEO or GEO services whether their advice lines up with Google Search's official guidance. That's a fair question for both firms on this page, including us.

Facts about Hunterlodge come from its own website, a blog post one of its staff wrote for HEPI, and Companies House, as published on 31 October 2026. We have a commercial interest in this comparison and we're not affiliated with Hunterlodge. Where its pages are silent, the table says "not published". That doesn't mean it doesn't offer the thing. Ask.

How Do Hunterlodge and ThriveFinity Differ?

They're different kinds of firm. One is a long-established advertising agency that has added AI visibility to an integrated offer. The other is a small studio that sells AI visibility as a separate job.

Hunterlodge's website calls it a "full service advertising agency based in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire". Its services page lists four disciplines, Strategy, Media, Content and Creative, and says it combines them with Technology and AI in fully integrated campaigns. Its Our Story page says its commercial division, Hunterlodge Enterprise, was founded in 1987, and Companies House lists Hunterlodge Advertising Limited as active, incorporated on 8 June 1994, with advertising agencies as its line of business.

There's also an Education division whose tagline promises universities more students and stronger brands. That matters here, because Hunterlodge's AI visibility material sits closest to that side of the business.

ThriveFinity sells AI search optimisation for B2B companies as defined pieces of work: a free Signal, a fixed-scope AI Presence service, an AI Visibility service priced by estimate from a published starting price, and an optional monthly AI Growth plan. We're a one-person company, and a named verifier signs every paid report.

So the first question is a simple one. Is your organisation the kind Hunterlodge's AI visibility pages are written for?

Side by Side: What Each Firm Publishes

The table lines up what each firm publishes on the same twelve points. Hunterlodge's column quotes or summarises its own pages as they read on 31 October 2026.

"Not published" means the pages we checked didn't say. Two of Hunterlodge's pages, its contact page and its AI visibility research landing page, returned errors when we tried to read them, so anything they say isn't reflected here.

What Does Hunterlodge Publish About Its AI Visibility Work?

Hunterlodge publishes its AI visibility thinking as research articles rather than as a service page with a scope and a price. The most specific one is a list of top AI visibility agencies in the UK, dated 4 June 2026 and written by Ian Bann. It describes Hunterlodge as "a UK marketing agency with a clear focus on AI Visibility for universities and Higher Education".

The same article lists eight kinds of work: AI Visibility audits, Generative Engine Optimisation, AI Visibility benchmarking, AI search research for universities, AI citation and source analysis, content recommendations, Technical AI Visibility reviews and AI Visibility reporting. It says the work combines research, benchmarking, sector understanding and practical recommendations, across tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.

Two things are worth knowing about that list. It puts Hunterlodge first of ten firms, and it carries an editorial note saying "Hunterlodge may be included in this comparison where relevant". We publish comparison pages too, this one included, so I'd read both the same way: as a firm writing about its own market.

Its explainer on what AI visibility is, dated 1 June 2026, defines it as how easily an organisation can be discovered and understood by AI-powered search platforms. It also says something I agree with: "This does not mean traditional SEO has stopped mattering." Google says much the same in its own guidance.

The offer itself appears as a call to action. Its article on how AI is changing the Clearing journey, dated 24 August 2026, invites you to Request an AI Visibility Review and to see how your university appears across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Ian Bann also wrote a blog post for HEPI, the Higher Education Policy Institute, in June 2026, where his byline gives his role as AI Driven SEO Strategist at Hunterlodge Advertising.

On the wider agency side, its content service includes SEO and planning, and its media service covers buying paid social, search, display, programmatic, out-of-home and emerging platforms.

What I couldn't find: a price, the number of questions it tracks, how many times each is run, a minimum term, a guarantee or a headcount. None of that is unusual for an agency that scopes work in conversation. It just means you'll need to ask.

How Does Each Firm Measure Results?

Measurement is the hardest part of any AI visibility proposal to judge, because AI tools rarely give the same answer twice. Ask how a firm handles that before you ask anything else.

In January 2026, SparkToro and Gumshoe had 600 volunteers run 12 prompts through ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI a combined 2,961 times. Rand Fishkin reported a chance of less than 1 in 100 that ChatGPT or Google's AI would give the same list of brands in any two responses to the same prompt asked 100 times. Getting the same list in the same order was closer to 1 in 1,000.

So a single run of each question tells you very little. What you want is a rate, like named in 7 of 10 runs, measured the same way before and after the work. Hunterlodge's own explainer makes a related point: there's no single ranking position to check each day, and an organisation can appear for one question and not another.

Here's what each firm says publicly. Hunterlodge lists benchmarking, citation and source analysis and reporting, across five named AI tools. I didn't find the number of questions or the number of runs per question. We ask each of 100 to 150 buyer questions 3 times in each of five AI tools, against 3 to 5 named competitors, then run exactly the same set again at day 30. You can see the format in our sample AI visibility report, and the maths is in my guide to measuring AI share of voice.

One more thing to settle early. Ask whether the questions in the baseline will be the questions your buyers ask. A university's prospective students and a B2B company's buying committee ask very different things, so a question set built for one won't measure the other.

When Is Hunterlodge the Better Choice?

Hunterlodge is the better choice when you're a university or other education provider, or when you want AI visibility handled inside a wider advertising programme. These are the situations where I'd point you there rather than to us.

• You're a university or higher education institution. That's the focus its AI visibility pages state, and its research, such as the Clearing article and the HEPI post, is written about how students find universities. We don't specialise in education.
• You want media buying in the same plan. Its media service covers paid social, search, display, programmatic and out-of-home. We don't run paid media at all.
• You need creative and campaign work alongside AI visibility. It lists strategy, creative and content as core disciplines and says it builds integrated campaigns. We don't make advertising.
• You want a long-established agency. Its site dates its commercial division to 1987, and its trading company was incorporated in 1994.
• You're in the public sector. Its site says it works with private and public sector clients.

The usual trade-off with an integrated agency applies. Scope and price get agreed in conversation, so pin down the questions, the measurement method, the term and the notice period in writing.

Questions to Ask Any AI Visibility Provider

Ask both firms the same questions and get the answers in writing. Google's hiring advice is a good start. It suggests asking what results to expect and in what timeframe, how they measure success, and whether they'll share every change they make to your site. It also has a line worth keeping in mind on any sales call.

Then add the questions that are specific to AI visibility:

1. Which buyer questions will you track, and can I see the full list before we start?
2. Have you worked on AI visibility for companies in my sector, and can I see an anonymised sample report?
3. Which AI tools do you test, and how many times do you run each question?
4. When is the re-test, and will it use exactly the same questions and settings as the baseline?
5. What exactly will you change, and who does the work: you, or my team from your list?
6. What does it cost, what's the minimum term and what's the notice period?
7. What happens if a report contains a factual error?

The longer version, with red flags, is in our GEO agency buyer's guide. Before any of these calls, get a baseline of your own. My guide to running an AI visibility check shows how to do it in an afternoon, and it gives you something concrete to compare proposals against.

How We Wrote This Comparison

This page names a competitor, so UK advertising rules apply. Section 3 of the CAP Code says a comparison with an identifiable competitor must "compare products meeting the same needs or intended for the same purpose" and must "objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature". Regulation 4 of the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 sets the same conditions and bars comparisons that discredit or denigrate a competitor.

So every fact about Hunterlodge links to the page it came from and is dated. I haven't repeated its awards, accreditations, client results or testimonials, because I can't verify them and quoting them would only repeat its marketing. Where its pages say nothing, the table says so.

Why Hunterlodge, and why now? When we asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity best AI visibility agencies in the UK three times each on 31 October 2026, Hunterlodge was named in 4 of 12 answers. That's an observation about one question on one day. It doesn't rank anyone's quality, and AI answers change from day to day. In the same test, ThriveFinity was named once across 36 UK answers, and that one was on a go-to-market question.

Spotted something out of date or wrong? Email om@thrivefinity.uk. We respond within 5 working days, and corrections are logged on our errata page. The next scheduled recheck of every fact here is due by 29 January 2027.

Where ThriveFinity Fits

We fit when you're a B2B company and you want AI search work as a defined job with a known starting price and a measured before and after. Every price below comes from our published pricing, plus applicable taxes.

• AI Presence Signal (free, under an hour): 12 buyer questions across GPT (OpenAI), Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, scored 0 to 100. It's automated and unsigned, and you can run the free AI Presence Signal now.
• AI Presence (£849, 5 working days): a signed fact sheet, a scored audit of the places AI tools learn who you are, and up to 10 profiles created or claimed and aligned in your name.
• AI Visibility (from £2,250, 10 working days): 100 to 150 buyer questions across five AI tools, your 10 highest-value pages fixed, 5 content briefs and a re-test at day 30. Signed by a named verifier.
• AI Growth (from £2,250 a month) or Quarterly Re-measurement (£595): after the AI Visibility service, if you want ongoing tracking. AI Growth has a 3-month minimum, then 30 days' notice.

We're not the right choice if you're a university looking for a sector specialist, or if you need paid media, creative campaigns or a team producing content every month. We also don't buy links or placements, and we won't promise that any AI tool will name you.

Weighing other firms? We've compared ourselves the same way with Exposure Ninja, The GEO Agency and Whitehat SEO. Every page is listed on the comparisons hub.

Pranav Unni

Founder · ThriveFinity Connect on LinkedIn →

Pranav Unni is the founder and lead verifier of ThriveFinity. He reads and signs every paid deliverable personally, and writes about go-to-market decisions for established B2B companies.