Our 09/10/2026 test of four AI assistants: which directories and lists their Perth agency answers came from, and what that means for being named.
When we put 18 "who is the best agency in Perth" style questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity on 09/10/2026, the answers were built mostly from agency directories and "best agencies in Perth" articles, not from agency websites. Semrush's agency directory turned up in the sources for 13 of Perplexity's 20 answers, Sortlist in 7, and lists written by other agencies and blogs filled most of the rest.
Want AI assistants to name your business?
We build AI search into the SEO work for Perth businesses.
So if you run a Perth business and want an AI assistant to name you, the pages you need to be on are mostly not your own. This post covers what we asked, which sources the engines used, how often they named us, and what we would do about it. It is the same baseline we run for clients as part of AI SEO in Perth.
We wrote 20 questions of the kind a business owner types into an assistant. Eighteen do not mention Enkindle Group. Two do, so we could see what the engines say when someone asks about us by name.
The 18 non-brand questions cover the services we sell: general agency questions ("Which digital marketing agency in Perth is best for a small business?"), SEO, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, web design, Webflow, Shopify, Klaviyo and ecommerce email, startups, and GA4 and conversion tracking.
Each question went to four engines, set to Australia with web search on:
For every answer we recorded three things: whether we were named, whether our site was linked, and which websites the answer was built from. We also kept a watch list of 12 Perth agencies so we could see who was named in our place.
Directories first, lists second, agency websites a distant third. Our source records cover Perplexity and Claude. Across Perplexity's 20 answers, the most used sources were:
Claude drew on a wider spread. Semrush's agency directory was still near the top (4 answers), alongside the same kind of list articles and a handful of Australian agency websites.
An assistant answering "who is the best SEO agency in Perth?" is looking for a page that already compares several agencies, because that is the fastest way to write a confident summary. A directory or a list article is exactly that page. Your own site describes one agency, so it is useful when someone asks about you by name and much less useful when they ask who to hire.
Review counts and complete profiles matter here too. Directories sort their own listings by reviews and profile detail, and the assistants read those sorted pages.
Not often, and that is the point of a baseline. On the 18 non-brand questions, Perplexity named Enkindle Group on 1 and Claude on none. ChatGPT named us on 5 and Gemini on 2. Counting all four engines together, we were named on 6 of the 18.
The one question Perplexity named us on was "Who are the best boutique marketing agencies in Perth where the founders do the work?" My read, and it is a guess, is that our Sortlist description says the work is done by the founders, and the engine matched that phrase to the question.
On the two questions that use our name, Perplexity and Claude both named us and linked our site. So the engines can find and describe us. They just do not reach for us when the question is open.
The most useful finding was where no one was named. On six of the 18 questions, Perplexity named none of the 12 Perth agencies on our watch list:
These are the cheapest questions to win, because there is no established answer to displace. A page that answers the question in its first two sentences, with the business name, the place and a published price or scope, gives the engine something to quote.
The same pattern shows up in other trades: the engines build local recommendations from the places that already compare businesses. Here is the order I would work in.
None of this guarantees a mention. The answers change from day to day and from person to person. What it does is put your business in the places the engines already read.
On the day of the run we rewrote the opening sentence of five of our own service pages, so each one answers one of the open questions in the first line: SEO pricing, Google Ads, Webflow, email marketing and startups. We also built a page for the GA4 and conversion tracking question, which had no page on our site at all.
We also found that two of our directory profiles still carried older case-study wording that had since changed on our site, and brought them into line. If you set up directory profiles a while ago, they are worth reading again.
The next step is a re-run of the same 20 questions, with the same wording, so the before and after can be compared fairly. If you want to see the same kind of baseline for your own business, a free SEO audit is the place to start, and the full method is on our AI SEO page.
One run is one sample. Ask the same question twice and an assistant can give a different answer, so a single result is a starting point, not a verdict.
The engines were reached through APIs and logged-out sessions, not through a signed-in person's app with their history. A real customer may see something different. Our source records cover Perplexity and Claude, so the source counts above do not describe ChatGPT or Gemini.
We have not named the agencies the engines recommended. This was a study of where the answers came from, not a ranking, and the agencies named will shift from one run to the next. AI search also sits on top of ordinary SEO: the engines read pages that rank and sites that are trusted.
Mostly from agency directories and "best agencies in Perth" list articles. In our 09/10/2026 run, Semrush's agency directory appeared in the sources for 13 of Perplexity's 20 answers and Sortlist in 7. Individual agency websites were cited far less often than these comparison pages.
We tested 20 questions, 18 without our name and 2 with it, on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, each set to Australia with web search on. For every answer we recorded whether we were named, whether our site was linked, and which websites the answer drew on.
On the 18 questions without our name, Perplexity named us on 1, Claude on 0, ChatGPT on 5 and Gemini on 2, or 6 of 18 across all four. On the 2 questions that used our name, Perplexity and Claude both named us and linked our site.
Find out which directories and lists the engines cite for your trade, complete those profiles consistently, and collect reviews there and on Google. Then answer the common questions on your own site in the first two sentences. None of it guarantees a mention, because the answers vary from one asking to the next.
The ones where nobody is named yet. In our run, Perplexity named none of the 12 Perth agencies we track on six questions, including SEO cost per month and Google Ads for small budgets. With no established answer to displace, a clear answer-first page has the best chance of being quoted.
