Ask who to hire and you get names. Ask how and you mostly don't.
Six prompts asked for a provider straight up. Both engines named agencies on every one they answered. Eleven prompts asked how, what, or how much. Google AI Mode still dropped agency names into 3 of those 11. Perplexity named zero.
So the buyer who types "who should I hire" sees a shortlist. The buyer who types "what should I budget" sees advice with citations.
Four agencies own the shortlist.
33 different agencies got named across the 33 unprompted answers. Most showed up once or twice. Base Coat Marketing and Footbridge Media got 6 mentions each. Painter Marketing Pros and Hook Agency got 5 each. Then it drops off fast.
Same question, different shortlist.
Five hire prompts got an answer from both engines. Add up each prompt's combined shortlist and you get 37 names. Only 13 appeared in both engines. That's 35%.
Getting named in one engine tells you little about the other.
Get named, get cited. Usually it's your own site.
Across all 20 prompts an engine named an agency 72 times. In 63 of those, the agency's own website sat in the source list for that same answer. That's 88%. Strip out the 3 prompts that name us and it's 54 of 63.
The engines read your site, then repeat what it says. One day of data, so call it a pattern. A loud one.
Two sources run the table: one agency's blog and Reddit.
Across all 20 prompts the engines showed 392 source links from 154 different domains. basecoatmarketing.com was a source in 23 of 39 answers. Reddit was a source in 24 of 39.
Only 39 domains got cited by both engines. Each one has its own reading list.
Bars count answers that cited the domain at least once. Reddit links in Google AI Mode could not be opened by our capture tool, so those 10 are counted from the source card label.
Google put ads inside 8 of its 19 answers.
Google AI Mode ran a Sponsored block inside the answer on 8 of the 19 prompts it answered. Perplexity showed none in 20.
One advertiser domain held a slot in 5 of the 8. And on "How does a painting contractor get recommended by ChatGPT?" the sponsored slot went to openai.com.
| Advertiser as shown | Answers |
|---|
Ask for us by name and both engines know us. Don't, and they don't.
Three prompts named Growth Recon AI. Both engines answered all three with our services and pricing, and cited growthreconai.com every time. On the other 33 answers we got zero mentions.
Known when asked for. Not on the shortlist yet. That gap is the job for any small agency, and for any local painter too.
We wrote this study and we're in it. The three prompts that name us are left out of the default leaderboard. Flip the Prompts filter to All 20 to see them counted.
Every prompt, both answers.
Open a prompt to see which agencies each engine named and which domains it cited.
What we'd do with this.
Publish the page the engine needs
63 of 72 mentions came with the agency's own site as a source. Put who you serve, what it costs, and proof on pages a machine can read.
Show up where the engines read
Reddit was a source in 24 of 39 answers. Comparison posts and trade sites filled most of the rest. Third-party mentions count.
Track the hire prompts first
Agencies got named on 11 of 11 answered hire prompts and on 3 of 22 how-to answers. Measure where a shortlist exists.
How this was captured, and where it's thin.
- 20 prompts, 2 engines, each run once on Oct 5, 2026. One run is a snapshot. AI answers change from run to run.
- Google AI Mode ran logged out in Chrome Incognito. Perplexity ran signed in with memory off and the default "Best" model.
- US location through a VPN exit in San Francisco. Five Perplexity answers mentioned San Francisco.
- 1 of 40 runs failed. Google AI Mode timed out on prompt 1 and it was not retried.
- Google AI Mode prompts 2 to 20 ran in one Incognito session, after the Perplexity pass. Source links were opened in that session between prompts.
- Agency names were coded by an AI model from the saved answer text, then machine-checked against that text. A name counts when a marketing or lead agency is named in the answer body. Marketplaces like Angi and Thumbtack don't count. Names that only appear in an ad, a citation chip or a source card don't count.
- 13 Google AI Mode source links could not be opened: 11 Reddit, 1 Nextdoor, 1 Yelp. Reddit is counted from the card label. The other two are left out.
- Growth Recon AI ran this study and is one of the agencies in it. Three of the 20 prompts name us.
- ChatGPT and Gemini are not in this write-up.