Small providers' own sites take 53% of citations across 4 niches and 2 markets, and established vendors take 37%. That is 26 questions in total.
Niches and markets
6
Questions asked
26
First-party share
53%
Third-party share
4%
Entry bar range
32 to 95
Markets mostly third-party
2 of 2
| Niche | Depth | Citations | First-party | Third-party | Bar | Median site | Cited examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile app development agencies | 4 questions, directional | 61 | 34% | 16% | 95 | 64 | i4software.com, upcode.com, businessofapps.com, clutch.co |
| WordPress maintenance services | 4 questions, directional | 61 | 30% | 0% | 68 | 61 | eseospace.com, wpbuffs.com, prontomarketing.com |
| Penetration testing firms | 4 questions, directional | 59 | 71% | 0% | 37 | 43 | underdefense.com, defendify.com, synack.com |
| Fractional CTO services | 4 questions, directional | 61 | 75% | 0% | 35 | 38 | kore1.com, fractionaljobs.io, mentorcruise.com |
| Salesforce consultancies | 30 questions, own study | 411 | 50% | 1% | 28 | 46 |
Each niche has 4 questions, so rows are directional. Salesforce consultancies has its own study.
Small providers' own sites take 53% of citations. Established vendors and marketplaces take 37%, forums and social take 7%, and third-party sources take 4%, mostly review sites such as clutch.co.
Both agency markets in the market study are mostly third-party content: 2 of 2 have a content share of 80 percent or more. Directories such as agencies.semrush.com and themanifest.com get cited there.
| Type | Share of citations | Cited examples |
|---|---|---|
| Small providers' own sites | 53% | underdefense.com (4 of 16), defendify.com (3 of 16), kore1.com (3 of 16), fractionaljobs.io (2 of 16), gofractional.com (2 of 16) |
| Established vendors and marketplaces | 37% | prontomarketing.com (4 of 16), elementor.com (3 of 16), mentorcruise.com (3 of 16), inspirable.com (2 of 16), synack.com (2 of 16) |
| Review sites | 4% | clutch.co (2 of 16), goodfirms.co (1 of 16) |
| Forums and social | 7% | reddit.com (11 of 16), quora.com (2 of 16), facebook.com (1 of 16), instagram.com (1 of 16), linkedin.com (1 of 16) |
Pooled, own-site share is 44% on general questions and 62% on specific ones. ChatGPT shows 53% against 79%, and Google shows 37% against 53%. The share is higher on specific questions than on general ones.
| Question type | Questions | Citations | First-party | Third-party | ChatGPT first-party | Google organic first-party |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General | 8 | 128 | 44% | 8% | 53% | 37% |
| Specific | 8 | 114 | 62% | 0% | 79% | 53% |
| Both engines | 16 | 242 | 53% | 4% | 64% | 45% |
Own pages get cited here, so the next step is to score a page with the free AEO checker on how easily an engine can quote it.
Median site
43
Bar
32
Content share
100%
Tested site
25
Editorial verdict, as of 2026-10-02: Contested. The median cited site scores 43 and the bar is 32. Content share is 100%. The engines treated the country as a topic, so a local agency is measured against national content.
Content share is the share of cited sources that were articles about the category (100% here), and a vendor's own page does not count. A tested site scored 25 against a bar of 32. It cleared the bar on 0 of 5 questions, and on 4 of 5 questions a site below the bar was cited anyway.
Get listed and reviewed in the agency directories the engines quote. In this market the directory page gets the citation.
100 domains were cited across the 5 questions; these are the most-cited, each with one page the engines read.
Median site
50
Bar
39
Content share
88%
Tested site
9
Editorial verdict, as of 2026-10-02: Contested. The median cited site scores 50 and the bar is 39. Content share is 88%.
Content share is the share of cited sources that were articles about the category (88% here), and a vendor's own page does not count. A tested site scored 9 against a bar of 39. It cleared the bar on 0 of 5 questions, and on 0 of 5 questions a site below the bar was cited anyway.
Get quoted in the roundups and city guides the engines already cite. Articles about the category make up 88% of the cited sources.
74 domains were cited across the 5 questions; these are the most-cited, each with one page the engines read.
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