We asked five AI models about the core topics of 180 UK agencies. SEO agencies were named least often, 2 of 58. For SEO questions, AI cited Google itself.
SEO agencies sell search visibility for a living. So when AI is asked about SEO, you might expect it to name them. We checked. Across 180 UK agencies, each asked about its own core topics on five AI models, SEO agencies were the least cited group of all: 2 of 58. PR agencies were the most cited: 9 of 56. The reason shows up in who AI named instead. For SEO questions, AI mostly cited Google itself.
Between 8 and 21 October 2026 we ran the same AI citation check on 180 UK agencies: SEO, PR, digital marketing, ecommerce, content and AI-search firms. Each check asked five questions about the agency’s own core topics, inferred from its website, to five AI models: Claude, ChatGPT, Grok, Meta’s Llama and Perplexity. We recorded whether the agency was named, and which other sites were named instead. It extends our first 52-agency cut, and the headline held: 162 of 180 agencies (90%) were not named by AI at all. This time we split the result by agency type. Everything is aggregate and anonymised. We name none of the agencies.
Of 58 SEO agencies, 2 were named by any model for their own topics. Of 56 PR agencies, 9 were. That is a nearly fivefold gap between the firm that sells search visibility and the firm that sells press coverage, and it passes a standard significance test (two-sided Fisher exact, p = 0.03). Digital marketing agencies, which usually sell SEO alongside other services, landed in between at 3 of 28.
The "named instead" lists explain the gap. When the questions were about SEO, AI reached for Google’s own pages in 66% of checks: Search Central help articles, developer documentation, Google Business Profile guides. The directory Clutch showed up in 52%, and tool vendors such as Ahrefs and Semrush after that. The platform writes the manual for its own subject, and AI treats the manual as the authority. An agency explaining how Google ranks pages is competing with Google explaining it.
PR is different. Nobody owns the platform. For PR questions Google appeared in just 4% of checks. AI named the trade bodies instead, CIPR and PRCA in 45% of checks, and then other PR firms. In PR, the practitioners are the authority, so practitioners get cited. That is our reading of the pattern, not a proven mechanism, but the split is sharp.
Being named once is not the same as being visible. Of the 18 agencies AI named at all, 11 were named for only one of the five questions. And because about half of AI’s cited sources change when you ask the same question again, a single mention is a weak position to defend at a client review.
You will not out-cite Google on questions about how Google works. The ground an agency can hold is the ground Google does not cover: results in a named sector, original data, case evidence a client can check, and mentions earned on other people’s sites, which is the PR agencies’ home advantage. None of that shows up in a single 0 to 100 score. It shows up when you check, question by question and model by model, whether AI actually names you, and keep the answer as evidence. That is what our free AI visibility check does for one domain.
This is one snapshot from a fast five-question check, not our full weekly live-search sweep. The questions were inferred from each agency’s website, so a thin homepage produces broader questions. Group sizes are modest. We leave the ecommerce (15), content (8) and AI-search (15) groups out of the charts: they are too small to read, and some AI-search checks drifted off topic. The "named instead" figures count the sites most often named in each check, not every citation. It is not a verdict on any single firm.
PR agencies were cited most: 9 of 56 (16%) were named by at least one AI model for their own core topics. SEO agencies were cited least: 2 of 58 (3%). Digital marketing agencies sat between, at 3 of 28 (11%). Across all 180 agencies, 18 (10%) were named at all.
It passes a standard significance test. A two-sided Fisher exact test on 2 of 58 versus 9 of 56 gives p = 0.03, so a gap this large would show up by chance about 3% of the time. The groups are still small, so treat it as a strong signal from one snapshot, not a law.
Mostly Google. In 66% of SEO agency checks, Google’s own pages (Search Central help, developer documentation, Google Business Profile) were among the sites AI named most. The directory Clutch appeared in 52%. For PR agency checks Google appeared in just 4%. There, AI named the trade bodies, CIPR and PRCA (45% of checks), and other PR firms.
You will not out-cite Google on questions about how Google works. AI treats the platform’s own documentation as the authority. The questions an agency can win are the ones Google does not answer: results in a specific sector, original data, named case evidence, and mentions earned on other sites. Then measure, question by question, whether AI actually names you.
The first 52-agency cut of this data, and what AI named instead.
Read it →Why there is no top 10 of AI-cited sites to break into.
Read it →Run your own domain through the same check and read the answers, not a score.
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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