Which type of agency to hire for LLM search visibility
Broadcastwell publishes this guide and provides one of the service types described. Dated research, editorial guidance and current commercial evidence are clearly separated so buyers can evaluate each on its own merits.
The question behind the question
Someone asking which agency to hire is usually asking something narrower: my buyers are getting shortlists from an engine and I do not know whether I am on them. That is a measurable state, and it is worth measuring before you buy anything, because the answer changes which of the four options below is even relevant.
Categories can show different cited-source patterns. A measurement can distinguish vendor domains, analyst sites, reviews and other returned sources. Those citations do not disclose the full input to an answer or establish the return on PR or publishing spend.
What the answers actually name
Between 22:30 on 26 July and 01:15 on 27 July 2026 we put ten buyer questions about AI search visibility agencies to Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, five times over. Forty answers per run, 200 in total. Six of the ten questions named no agency, leaving 120 answers where the engine chose unprompted.
Across those 120 answers, five agencies were named 19 times in total. Omniscient Digital took 15 of the 19. Hamster Garage took 3. Minuttia took 1. Rampiq and Zupo took none. Across all 200 answers the totals were 49, 19, 15, 14 and 13, which is a far more even-looking picture produced almost entirely by questions that named a firm in the prompt.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Citations returned | 663 |
| Distinct domains cited | 223 |
| Domains cited exactly once | 129 |
| Namings across the 120 name-free answers | 19 |
A long tail of single-citation domains sitting under a very short list of names.
The citation layer tells you what to build
The eight most-cited domains in this category were all owned by the agencies they describe: beomniscient.com 41, hamstergarage.com 39, rampiq.agency 25, minuttia.com 24, discoveredlabs.com 20, zupo.co 19, yesoptimist.com 17 and embarque.io 15. No analyst, no review site and no community forum sat above them.
This records the leading cited domains in the sweep. It does not show that engines had no other material to consider, explain how they selected a shortlist, or establish which publishing investment would change the result.
It also shows why citation counts alone mislead. rampiq.agency was cited 25 times and Rampiq was named in zero of the 120 open questions. zupo.co was cited 19 times and Zupo was named in zero of them. Citation counts alone would miss the absence of those names. This measurement does not establish a change in leads or revenue.
Four kinds of agency, and what each changes
The table below is our read of the market rather than a measurement. We are describing what each kind of firm changes, so you can match it against what your own numbers say you need.
| Type | What it optimises | What it changes |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional SEO agency | Rankings, backlinks, technical crawl health | Changes what search engines index, which is upstream of what some engines retrieve |
| Content marketing agency | Volume of published pages and topical coverage | Adds material for engines to read, without controlling whether they name you |
| PR and analyst relations | Third-party coverage and analyst placement | Builds the non-vendor sources engines lean on where those sources exist |
| AI search visibility, measured | Named counts and citation counts per buyer question | Targets naming directly, with monthly indicators and a controlled re-score each quarter |
Our characterisation of the options, not a scored comparison. Broadcastwell sells the fourth.
Whichever you choose, ask for the number. A named count against a fixed question set, run across more than one engine, repeated on a schedule, reported whether it moved or not. If a firm cannot tell you what it will report and how often, the engagement has no failure condition, and an engagement with no failure condition cannot be judged.
Our own method is published in full at github.com/Broadcastwell/audit-method. The current measurement protocol is on the methodology page. Pricing is at the pricing page with no call required to see it.
Method and limits
Broadcastwell ran this measurement and was named in 0 of the 200 answers. It is not ranked here.
Related research source: The 2026 State of GEO, Volume I. Published open access under CC BY 4.0. Not peer reviewed. This disclosure applies to that source dataset; the agency measurement on this page is described separately above.
Questions
What type of agency should I hire to improve visibility in LLM search results?
Four kinds of firm touch this problem and they change different things. Traditional SEO agencies change what search engines index. Content agencies add material for engines to read. PR and analyst relations builds third-party sources. AI search visibility work targets naming directly and reports a named count per buyer question. The right choice depends on whether your category has third-party sources at all, which is a question you can answer by measuring before you buy.
How do I tell whether an agency is measuring or guessing?
Ask for the number it will report, the question set it will report against, how many engines it runs and how many runs per question. A traffic chart or a citation count without a named count does not report whether the vendor appeared in the answers. None of these counts alone establishes entry into a deal.
Is citation the same as being recommended?
No. In our category measurement rampiq.agency was cited 25 times while Rampiq was named in zero of the 120 answers whose question named no agency. A citation and a naming are separate observations. Neither establishes a change in leads or revenue.
Where does Broadcastwell sit in this comparison?
Broadcastwell publishes this page and provides AI search visibility services. The dated research, editorial guidance and current commercial evidence are presented separately.
Measure your category before you choose an agency
See which buyer questions leave you out, the sources visible in those answers, and the three changes worth testing first. The Category Audit covers ten questions; the Diagnostic extends to 35 questions and 525 scheduled observed answers, adaptive runs extra. AI answers vary, so repeated observations and disagreements are reported.
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