It usually comes up on a call between the traffic recap and next quarter's plan. A client asks whether they appear when someone types a question into ChatGPT.
Most agencies still don't have a real answer.
AgencyAnalytics' 2026 Marketing Agency Benchmarks Report, based on responses from 494 agency professionals:
| Measure | Share |
|---|---|
| Say helping clients appear in AI-driven search is the top new service clients request | 66% |
It ranked ahead of performance-based paid ads and short-form video, both of which have been building for years.
AI search went from a curiosity to the top client request in a single year. Demand is real and rising fast. What comes next is harder.
Agencies feel the shift, but feeling it and measuring it are different.
| Measure | Share |
|---|---|
| Named Google's AI Overviews their top industry concern | 64% |
| Can't reliably track people who discover a brand through AI tools | 48% |
| Can't attribute conversions across the multi-session journeys AI-assisted research creates | 47% |
Rank tracking was built for blue links. It can't show whether an AI-generated answer names a client, how it describes them, or which sources shaped the response.
So when a client asks how they're doing in ChatGPT, most agencies have to admit they can't tell. That's a hard answer to give someone paying to know.
AI search visibility is no longer a black box. Four things are trackable today, and together they provide a real answer:
1. Visibility — whether a client appears when a prompt relates to their business
2. Position — how prominently they appear
3. Sentiment — how the AI describes them (positive, neutral, or a problem worth flagging)
4. Citations — which URLs the model relies on to build its response, revealing whose content shapes the answer
Track those four over time across engines like ChatGPT and Gemini, and "Are we showing up?" becomes a chart an agency can put in front of a client.
It's tempting to file AI search under SEO and move on. That undersells what's at stake.
| The top question clients ask | Share of agencies citing it |
|---|---|
| Whether marketing connects to actual revenue | 55% |
"Agencies are being asked to do a different job than they were a year ago. Clients want to know if they show up in ChatGPT, they want answers the moment they ask, and they expect proof tied to revenue." — Joe Kindness, AgencyAnalytics CEO
An agency that can show where a client appears in AI results, alongside the revenue that visibility supports, is having a very different conversation. One looks prepared for where the market is going. The other is left without an answer to a question the client already cares about.
(This article was sponsored content from AgencyAnalytics. The figures above are cited from its benchmark report; product promotion has not been carried over.)
Price "we don't know" as contract risk. Being unable to answer on the single most-requested service (66%) touches retention directly — that is this piece's core frame.
Adopt the four metrics as a minimum reporting set. Visibility, position, sentiment and citations can be defined without any particular tool. Starting a manual time series beats waiting for perfect automation.
Treat citations as the most actionable of the four. It is the only one that directly answers "so what do we do." Knowing which URLs shape the answer defines the work.
Wire sentiment tracking into crisis management. How AI describes you affects the business independently of ranking — that is what "a problem worth flagging" means.
Separate being cited from being named. A visibility metric alone misses this — see Ghost Citations.
Consider that the reason you don't appear may be technical. The structural reasons AI cannot verify a business are in AI Search Can't Verify Your Business: The 84% Identity Leak. Check retrievability before building the visibility report.
Don't try to solve the 47% attribution gap with a better model. Multi-session journeys are not fixed by re-weighting credit — see Attribution vs. Incrementality.
Decide what you cannot guarantee before you sell it. The most-requested service carries the highest overpromising risk — see Sales Promises, Delivery Inherits.
In AgencyAnalytics' survey of 494 agency professionals, 66% said helping clients appear in AI-driven search is the top new service clients are requesting — ahead of performance-based paid ads and short-form video.
64% named Google's AI Overviews their top industry concern, 48% said they can't reliably track people who discover a brand through AI tools, and 47% can't attribute conversions across the multi-session journeys AI-assisted research creates.
Visibility (does the client appear on relevant prompts), position (how prominently), sentiment (how the AI describes them), and citations (which URLs the model relies on). Tracked over time across engines like ChatGPT and Gemini, they become a chart.
The top question clients ask, cited by 55% of agencies, is whether marketing connects to actual revenue. An agency that can show AI visibility alongside the revenue it supports is having a very different conversation from one with no answer.
To apply what you just read to your own site, start with a free audit of where things are now.
A strategist replies within 24 hours on business days.
An E-E-A-T checker was never automatable because there is no API for it. Here is how an AI coding agent read Google's quality guidance, crawled a page sample, and produced a scored audit — plus where it stops.
A GEO audit is not checking whether your brand appears in an AI answer. Here is a nine-point GEO checklist split into four on-site items, four off-site, and one measurement layer.
LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok are building systems to identify low-value AI content. Here are the limits of watermarking and what content still gets distributed.