We ran a quick AI citation check on 52 UK marketing and SEO agencies. For their own core topics, 85% were not named by AI at all.
Marketing and SEO agencies are the people selling AI visibility to everyone else. So we pointed the question back at them. We took 52 UK agencies and ran a quick AI citation check on each one, asking the engines about the agency’s own core topics, the work they do every day. For 85% of them, AI did not name the agency at all. When it did answer, it reached for a median of 35 other sites instead. This is aggregate and anonymised: we name none of the agencies, only the sites AI cited in their place.
We took 52 UK marketing and SEO agencies and ran the same quick AI citation check on each one: a short set of questions about the agency’s own core topics, put to the AI engines, with every cited link traced back to its real domain. The question we were really asking is simple. When AI answers a question in your field, does it name you? Everything below is aggregate and anonymised. We name none of the 52 agencies. We only name the sites AI cited in their place.
When AI did answer, it did not go quiet. It named other sites, a median of about 35 distinct domains per check. The ones that came up again and again were not rival agencies. They were directories like Clutch, Google’s own support, developer and business pages, trade bodies such as the CIPR, and the big tool vendors like Ahrefs and Semrush. In other words, for a question an agency should own, AI reached for the aggregators and the platforms, not the practitioners. This is the same pattern we found when the engines cite different sources from each other: the sources are concentrated in a few large, well-linked places.
Agencies are the sharpest case of a problem every brand now has. They sell AI visibility, so they are expected to have it. When a client asks "are we showing up in AI yet?", a confident 0-to-100 score is a weak answer, because the honest version of that number is often "no, and here is who shows up instead". The stronger answer is evidence: which engine named you, for which question, with the actual answer kept. That is the difference between a score and a receipt, and it is what a client is really buying at renewal.
This is a fast check, not the full weekly live-search sweep, and agency sites are small next to the directories and platforms AI depends on, so a low citation rate is partly expected. It is a snapshot of October 2026 and it is not a verdict on any single firm. Read it as one honest baseline: for their own topics, most of the agencies we checked were not named by AI, and the few that were still have to survive the next identical ask, because about half of AI’s cited sources change when you ask again. If you want to see where your own domain stands, run the same free check and read the answer, not a score.
Of 52 UK marketing and SEO agencies we checked, 8 were named by at least one engine for their own core topics and 44 were not. That is about 15% cited at least once, and 85% not named at all.
Other sites, a median of about 35 distinct ones per check. The names that recurred most were directories such as Clutch, Google’s own support, developer and business pages, trade bodies such as the CIPR, and tool vendors such as Ahrefs and Semrush. Rarely the agencies themselves.
No, and the post names none of them. It is a snapshot of one quick check, and most agency sites are small relative to the directories and platforms AI leans on. The point is narrower: if the firms selling AI visibility are mostly uncited for their own topics, a client has every right to ask for evidence rather than a score.
Each agency’s domain went through a five-prompt, multi-engine citation check on its own core topics. We resolved every cited link to its real domain and recorded whether the agency was named and which other domains came up. Snapshot, October 2026. It is a fast check, not the full live-search sweep, so treat it as indicative, not a verdict on any one firm.
If 85% are not named at all, a single 0-to-100 score is hiding more than it shows.
Read it →The 15% that were named once still have to survive the next identical ask.
Read it →Run your own domain through the same check and see which engines name you, with the answer attached.
Read it →Unsourced captures which AI assistants cite you, proves which crawlers really fetched your pages, and re-checks after you act — evidence, not a score.
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