The people who sell visibility are the least visible
Of every sector in our study, the one that sells visibility for a living was the least visible. We audited 20 marketing agencies. ChatGPT never mentioned 15 of them.
Share of audited brands ChatGPT never mentioned, by sector. The line marks the figure for all 217 brands: 53%.
The numbers
- 20 agencies audited: SEO shops, performance marketers, web design studios, PR firms and branding agencies.
- 15 never mentioned (75%), against 53% across all 217 brands.
- Average recommendation rate: 3.9%, against 11.9% for the whole study. The median agency scored 0%.
- Two of them sell AI visibility or GEO services. Both scored 0%.
We are not exempt. Lumenario sits close to this sector, and our own score is in the last post of this series.
Why agencies vanish
This is our read of the reports, not a controlled test.
- Generic positioning. "SEO and digital marketing agency" describes thousands of firms. When a buyer asks ChatGPT for an agency, the model reaches for names it has seen many times in lists, directories and reviews. A firm that says what everyone says gives it no reason to pick that firm.
- The cobbler's children. Agencies build strong sites for clients and neglect their own. Service pages are thin, the client they serve is vague, and results sit in PDFs and slide decks the model never reads.
- A crowded question. "Best SEO agency in my city" already has long-standing list articles that answer it. A new name has to displace those sources, not just exist.
The agencies that did get recommended had a narrower offer. The best scorer manages seller accounts on online marketplaces (28%). The next is a PR and communications firm (20%).
What I would do as an agency
- Name your niche in the first line of your homepage: who you serve, what you do, and where.
- Publish proof the model can read: named outcomes on web pages, not in PDFs or images.
- Get listed where buyers' questions get answered: directories, comparison pages and partner listings in your niche.
- Track the questions your own buyers ask, the same way you would for a client.
How we measured
Each report asks ChatGPT a set of buyer-style questions about a brand's main offerings. Mention rate is the share of answers that name the brand; recommendation rate is the share that recommend it. The 217 brands are ones whose owners ran a free report, plus brands our team audited, between Sep 1 and Nov 5, 2026. It is one ChatGPT run per brand, not a random sample of the market.
Run an AI [IN]visibility report on your agency at lumenario.com.
