Home / Research: AI search visibility for agencies, Oct 2026
Research · published Oct 22, 2026 · data collected Oct 22, 2026
State of AI search visibility for agencies, Oct 2026
We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode the questions a prospect asks before hiring an agency (“best SEO agency in Miami”, “best dental marketing agency”, “who can get my business into ChatGPT”). We attempted 40 checks per agency (10 questions × 4 engines) and received 7,910 answers across 198 agencies; 10 of the 7,920 requests returned no answer. Here is who gets named, how the engines differ, and which sites they cite.
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1. Most agencies are invisible in AI answers about their own market
104 of 198 agencies (53%) were not named once across their answers. Agencies tied to a city were named more often than national niche specialists: 31% of city-based agencies were never named, against 60% of the dental, home-services and law-firm marketing agencies, whose questions were national (“best dental marketing agency in the US”). One possible factor, not tested here: a national question puts an agency up against every agency in the country.
2. The engines behave very differently
ChatGPT and Perplexity name about six businesses per answer; Gemini and Google AI Mode name about three. Gemini named no business at all in 30% of its answers. Perplexity cites the most sources, 8.9 domains per answer, and 62% of its titled citation records are list-style pages, against 29% for ChatGPT.
The checked agency was named most often by ChatGPT (7.2% of answers) and least often by Google AI Mode (3.6%). Visibility rarely carries across engines: of the 94 agencies named at least once, 39 (41%) were named by only one engine and 16 (17%) by all four. A report that checks only ChatGPT would have missed most of these mentions.
| Engine | Answers | Businesses named per answer | Answers naming no business | Cited domains per answer | Answers with a citation | List-style cited pages | Names the checked agency | Names it first | Median words |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 1,980 | 5.9 (median 5) | 0.1% | 8.0 | 100% | 29% | 7.2% | 4.7% | 656 |
| Perplexity | 1,980 | 5.9 (median 6) | 2.1% | 8.9 | 100% | 62% | 6.0% | 3.0% | 296 |
| Gemini | 1,979 | 2.8 (median 3) | 29.9% | 3.5 | 91% | 45% | 5.3% | 3.3% | 447 |
| Google AI Mode | 1,971 | 3.3 (median 3) | 8.7% | 3.7 | 98% | 39% | 3.6% | 2.3% | 297 |
3. List-style pages appear often among the citations
Across every niche, “best X agencies” pages show up often in the citations: 44% of the 55,179 titled citation records are list or ranking pages. A citation record is one link an engine attached to one answer; a page cited in two answers counts twice, and links without a page title are left out (it is not a count of unique pages or domains). Directories (Clutch, the Semrush agency directory, DesignRush, The Manifest, Sortlist) lead for city-based agencies; in the niches, list posts on other sites and trade publications dominate. List-style sources frequently appear among citations in this sample. We have not tested whether obtaining a listing changes recommendations.
City-based SEO / digital agencies
48 agencies, 1,915 answers. 40% of the titled citation records in this niche have a list-style title.
| # | Cited domain | Type | Share of answers citing it | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | agencies.semrush.com | agency directory | 23.2% | 445 |
| 2 | clutch.co | agency directory | 14.1% | 270 |
| 3 | themanifest.com | agency directory | 8.4% | 160 |
| 4 | thriveagency.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 7.5% | 143 |
| 5 | webfx.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 6.4% | 123 |
| 6 | linkedin.com | social network | 5.2% | 100 |
| 7 | webtonic.io | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 4.6% | 88 |
| 8 | designrush.com | agency directory | 4.4% | 85 |
Dental marketing agencies
59 agencies, 2,355 answers. 40% of the titled citation records in this niche have a list-style title.
| # | Cited domain | Type | Share of answers citing it | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | patientfy.ai | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 14.8% | 348 |
| 2 | webtonic.io | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 14.0% | 330 |
| 3 | designrush.com | agency directory | 13.9% | 328 |
| 4 | thriveagency.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 10.4% | 244 |
| 5 | searchbloom.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 10.1% | 237 |
| 6 | onfolio.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 10.0% | 236 |
| 7 | dentaleconomics.com | trade publication | 9.7% | 228 |
| 8 | harrisandward.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 7.6% | 178 |
Home-services marketing agencies
55 agencies, 2,200 answers. 48% of the titled citation records in this niche have a list-style title.
| # | Cited domain | Type | Share of answers citing it | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | hookagency.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 28.2% | 620 |
| 2 | baadigi.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 19.2% | 423 |
| 3 | thriveagency.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 18.4% | 405 |
| 4 | webfx.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 17.2% | 379 |
| 5 | skillmammoth.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 17.1% | 376 |
| 6 | silverbackstrategies.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 14.3% | 315 |
| 7 | builtrightdigital.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 13.2% | 290 |
| 8 | outsourceaccelerator.com | outsourcing directory / media | 12.0% | 263 |
Law-firm marketing agencies
31 agencies, 1,240 answers. 49% of the titled citation records in this niche have a list-style title.
| # | Cited domain | Type | Share of answers citing it | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | natlawreview.com | trade publication | 17.7% | 220 |
| 2 | clio.com | legal software vendor | 16.4% | 203 |
| 3 | rankings.io | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 16.2% | 201 |
| 4 | thestacc.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 16.0% | 199 |
| 5 | thriveagency.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 13.9% | 172 |
| 6 | reverbico.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 13.9% | 172 |
| 7 | onthemap.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 11.2% | 139 |
| 8 | firstpagesage.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 9.7% | 120 |
B2B / SaaS SEO agencies (5 agencies: small sample)
5 agencies, 200 answers. 62% of the titled citation records in this niche have a list-style title.
| # | Cited domain | Type | Share of answers citing it | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | beomniscient.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 24.5% | 49 |
| 2 | growandconvert.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 23.0% | 46 |
| 3 | scalerrs.co | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 19.0% | 38 |
| 4 | siegemedia.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 18.5% | 37 |
| 5 | skale.so | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 18.0% | 36 |
| 6 | simpletiger.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 16.5% | 33 |
| 7 | rocktherankings.com | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 15.5% | 31 |
| 8 | loudface.co | other site (blog, list post or vendor) | 15.5% | 31 |
Share of answers citing it = answers in that niche whose citations include the domain, divided by all answers in that niche. Each agency’s own domain is excluded from its own answers.
4. Google shows AI Overviews for most agency searches
We also checked 730 Google searches for the same agencies (for example “seo agency miami”, “dental seo company”, “law firm marketing agency”). 515 of them (71%) showed an AI Overview above the results, so the same sourcing question applies on Google itself.
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The same check, for one business, is free: 10 buyer questions on all 4 engines, who is named instead, and the pages to get listed on. For agencies, every client gets a white-label packet with your name on it.
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Method
- Sample: 198 agencies that sell SEO, GEO or local marketing: 48 city-based SEO and digital agencies in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, and 150 niche specialists (59 dental, 55 home services, 31 law-firm, 5 B2B/SaaS). They were picked as prospects for our own agency outreach, not at random, so they lean towards agencies that already market AI-search services.
- Questions: 10 buyer questions per agency. City-based agencies got local questions for their city (“Which SEO agencies in Miami have the best reviews?”) plus a few national AI-search questions; niche agencies got the same 10 national questions for their niche.
- Engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, queried by API, one fresh answer per question and engine. 7,910 of 7,920 requests returned an answer.
- Dates: all answers were collected on Oct 22, 2026, between 18:21 and 20:47 Pacific time (Oct 23, 01:21 to 03:47 UTC). Published Oct 22, 2026.
- Named: an answer names an agency when its brand name (or a known variant) appears in the answer text. Businesses per answer counts the distinct business names our parser found; a few generic phrases can slip in, equally across engines.
- Citations: the links each engine attached to its answer. Domain tables count each domain once per answer; the list-style share counts citation records (every titled link, once per answer, not deduplicated by page or domain). Google, Google Maps and image-CDN links are excluded from domain counts.
- Google: 730 Google keyword searches (1 to 4 per agency, in the agency’s country) checked for an AI Overview in the same runs.
- Privacy: results are reported in aggregate only. We do not publish any individual agency’s results; the only names on this page are the domains the engines cited.
- Limits: one day, one answer per question and engine; AI answers vary run to run, so treat single-engine differences of a point or two as noise. Aggregate tables: data.csv (CC BY 4.0).
Related: AI Search Index · How we collect AI answers · Sample client packets