Original Orkkid research on the Australian AEO market. We reviewed the public offerings of 60+ agencies across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth. Here is who actually does AEO, who rebadged their SEO, and what the numbers say.
Every agency in Australia suddenly "does AI search". Almost none of them can show you what that means. So we counted.
Over the first half of 2026 we researched and published eight ranking guides covering the SEO and Answer Engine Optimisation markets in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and nationally. Building those guides meant reviewing the public websites of more than sixty Australian agencies, profile by profile, and recording exactly what each one publicly offers: dedicated AEO or GEO service pages, llms.txt implementation, AI citation tracking, prompt panels, schema for AI extraction, or none of the above.
This post is the dataset behind those guides, aggregated for the first time. Every number below is reproducible from the published profiles, and we re-verified a sample of claims against live agency websites on 30 July 2026. The full method is in the methodology section, and you are welcome to cite any of it with credit.
Key findings at a glance
- 58% of agencies now market an AI-search service. Of the 55 unique agencies profiled across our eight guides, 32 publicly name an AI-search offering under some label (AEO, GEO, AI SEO, AIO, SGE, or AI optimisation).
- Only 5% mention llms.txt. Just 3 of 55 agencies reference llms.txt anywhere in their public offering. Four more were explicitly noted in our reviews as not mentioning it despite selling AEO.
- Only 6 of 55 name ongoing AI citation or mention tracking as a deliverable. Measurement is the single biggest gap between marketing and practice.
- Prompt panels are almost non-existent. One agency (ours) describes prompt panels as a named deliverable; one other describes prompt and query research.
- Roughly 4 in 10 AI-search offerings are indistinguishable from SEO on public information. 12 of the 32 agencies with a named AI-search service publish no AEO-specific deliverable that separates it from their existing SEO practice.
- Adoption is uneven by city. In our general SEO top-10 rankings, 60% of Sydney and Brisbane shortlisted agencies name an AI-search service, versus 40% in Perth and 33% in the broader Melbourne top-15. Melbourne, however, has the deepest bench of dedicated AEO specialists.
- Perth has no dedicated AEO or GEO service page at all among the agencies we reviewed. Two Perth agencies list AI optimisation or AI visibility as a service line; none used the AEO or GEO label at review time.
- There is a founding-year gap. Among AI-search-active agencies with a stated founding year, 11 of 12 were founded in 2016 or earlier. None in our sample was founded between 2017 and 2023. The AEO market is almost entirely veterans retrofitting, plus a small number of AI-native studios.
How many agencies actually offer AEO?
Across the eight guides we published 85 individual agency profiles, which resolve to 55 unique agencies once national firms appearing in multiple city rankings are de-duplicated. Here is how their public AI-search positioning breaks down.
| Public AI-search positioning | Agencies | Share of 55 |
|---|---|---|
| Named AEO or GEO offering (uses those terms as a service) | 26 | 47% |
| AI-search offering under a broader label (AI SEO, AIO, SGE, AI visibility) | 6 | 11% |
| AI-search positioning or content only, no named service | 3 | 5% |
| No public AI-search offering at review time | 20 | 36% |
The 26 with a named AEO or GEO offering include specialists such as Uprise Digital, One Orange Cow, Nifty Marketing Australia, Hyperdot, Myoho Marketing, Intesols, and SEO Melbourne, alongside larger firms that have added AEO or GEO to an established practice, such as StudioHawk, Reload Media, Webprofits, Prosperity Media, Impressive, and Online Marketing Gurus.
The six using broader labels are YBR Marketing (SGE), Red Search and Digital Hitmen (AI optimisation), Edge Marketing and Excite Media (AI SEO), and PWD (AI visibility optimisation). Three more, Clearwater Agency, Searcht, and Digital8, reference AI search in their positioning or published content without a distinct named service.
The remaining 20, at the time of our reviews, showed no public AI-search offering. That group includes well-regarded firms such as King Kong, SIXGUN, Megantic, Supple Digital, WME Group, Overdose, Emote Digital, One Stop Media, Digital Eagles, Local Digital, Rocket Agency, Safari Digital, SponsoredLinX, Rise SEO, Bonfire, Dilate Digital, Bang Digital, Living Online, SEO Perth Experts, and Perth Digital Edge. Absence of a public offering is not absence of capability, but in a discipline this new, the public site is usually an accurate proxy for practice maturity.
AEO adoption city by city
Counting every unique agency profiled per market, including national firms profiled in that market:
| Market | Unique agencies reviewed | Named AI-search offering | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 17 | 13 | 76% |
| Melbourne | 23 | 13 | 57% |
| Brisbane | 17 | 12 | 71% |
| Perth | 10 | 4 | 40% |
Those figures carry selection bias in both directions: the AEO-specific guides select for agencies with AEO offerings, while the Melbourne sample is diluted by a longer 15-agency general SEO list. The cleaner apples-to-apples read is the general SEO top rankings alone, where AEO capability was one criterion among five rather than the entry ticket:
| Market (general SEO ranking only) | Agencies | Named AI-search offering | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney top 10 | 10 | 6 | 60% |
| Melbourne top 15 | 15 | 5 | 33% |
| Brisbane top 10 | 10 | 6 | 60% |
| Perth top 10 | 10 | 4 | 40% |
Three patterns worth naming. First, Melbourne has the deepest specialist bench: it was the only city where we filled an AEO top-10 entirely with locally based agencies running genuine AEO or GEO service lines, from Cremorne to Camberwell to Derrimut. Second, Brisbane's local specialist pool is thinner than the 71% suggests. Four of the ten slots in our Brisbane AEO ranking went to non-Queensland agencies with deliberate Brisbane offerings, because the local market could not fill the list. Third, Perth trails on every measure: no Perth agency we reviewed had a dedicated AEO or GEO page at review time, which is why a Perth AEO ranking guide does not yet exist in our series.
The proof-of-work gap: llms.txt, citation tracking, prompt panels
Naming a service is cheap. Publishing the mechanics is not. We recorded three specific proof points across all 55 agencies:
| AEO proof point in the public offering | Agencies (of 55) | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Mentions llms.txt | 3 | Orkkid, Uprise Digital, SEO Melbourne |
| Names ongoing AI citation or mention tracking | 6 | Orkkid, Uprise Digital, ROI AI Growth Agency, Ronin, Yango, Webmasters Group |
| Names prompt panels or prompt research | 2 | Orkkid (prompt panels), A.P. Web Solutions (prompt and query research) |
| Offers an AI visibility or baseline audit | 7 | Orkkid, Uprise Digital, Hyperdot, Nifty Marketing Australia, BFJ Digital, A.P. Web Solutions, Webmasters Group |
The llms.txt number deserves emphasis. Our city reviews explicitly flagged four Brisbane-market agencies selling AEO whose public material does not mention llms.txt at all: Ronin, BFJ Digital, iEnhance, and Mino Design and Digital. And measurement is rarer still: fewer than 1 in 9 agencies commits publicly to tracking whether the work produced citations. In any other channel, an offering with no measurement layer would not survive a procurement conversation. In AEO, it is currently the norm.
How much of it is rebranded SEO?
Of the 32 agencies with a named AI-search offering, we checked whether the public material describes at least one AEO-specific deliverable: llms.txt, citation or mention tracking, prompt research, entity and knowledge-graph optimisation, schema built for AI extraction, or content structured for answer extraction.
- 20 of 32 (63%) publish at least one concrete AEO-specific deliverable. Examples include Nifty Marketing's entity and semantic mapping, Hyperdot's knowledge-graph-led baseline audits, Sharp Instincts' E-E-A-T and entity methodology at their GEO page, Mino's FAQ, LocalBusiness, and Service schema work, and Melotti Content Media's AI content engineering. Matter Design and Covert Digital also clear this bar.
- 12 of 32 (38%) market the label without publishing a method that distinguishes it from their existing SEO practice. To be fair to this group, several of them, including StudioHawk and Reload Media, explicitly frame AI search as a layer on top of a strong SEO foundation, which is a legitimate architecture. AI engines do lean on sources that already rank. But from the outside, a buyer cannot tell whether these offerings involve any AEO-specific work at all, and that is exactly the ambiguity our national AEO rankings warned about: most "AI SEO" in market is traditional SEO with new vocabulary.
The practical takeaway for buyers is unchanged from our rankings: ask to see a citation share report and ask what is in the agency's own llms.txt. Those two questions instantly sort the 20 from the 12.
The founding-year gap
Twelve of the AI-search-active agencies state a founding year publicly. The spread:
| Founding year | Agencies |
|---|---|
| 2002 | Edge Marketing |
| 2006 | Webprofits, SEO Melbourne, Excite Media |
| 2007 | PWD |
| 2008 | Reload Media |
| 2012 | Prosperity Media |
| 2015 | StudioHawk |
| 2016 | Hyperdot, Impressive, Digital Hitmen |
| 2024 | Orkkid |
Median founding year: roughly 2007. Eleven of the twelve were founded in 2016 or earlier, and not one agency in our sample founded between 2017 and 2023 had stood up an AI-search offering at review time. The agencies founded in that window that we did review, such as Rise SEO (2019) and Perth Digital Edge (2018), were still marketing traditional SEO only. The Australian AEO market in 2026 is essentially two cohorts: established firms retrofitting AI search onto a decade-old practice, and a very small number of studios built AI-first from day one.
Live spot-verifications
Counts above reflect the public websites as reviewed for our April to June 2026 guides. On 30 July 2026 we re-verified a sample of five claims against the live sites:
- Uprise Digital (verified 30 July 2026): the dedicated AEO page is live with the four-stage methodology, entity and schema work, and monthly tracking of AI visibility and brand mention frequency. The live page no longer names llms.txt explicitly, which our earlier review recorded, so treat that specific attribute as in flux.
- SEO Melbourne (verified 30 July 2026): llms.txt is live at seomelbourne.com/llms.txt, version 3.0, updated 22 May 2026, including entity disambiguation, citable atomic facts, and anti-hallucination rules. The most developed llms.txt implementation we have seen from any Australian agency.
- Intesols (verified 30 July 2026): the dedicated Answer Engine Optimisation service page is live, covering schema, FAQ and knowledge-graph optimisation, and AI content alignment for ChatGPT and Perplexity. No llms.txt or citation tracking mentioned, consistent with our review.
- One Orange Cow (verified 30 July 2026): separate AEO and GEO service pages remain in the site navigation, now joined by a third AI Search Optimisation (AISEO) service page.
- Bonfire, Perth (verified 30 July 2026): our June review recorded Bonfire's public positioning as Google-centric. As of 30 July 2026 the site lists AI Search Optimisation and AI Search Reporting as services. The market is moving inside a single quarter, which supports our decision to re-review these rankings quarterly.
That last check is the most important finding of the batch: adoption numbers in this market have a shelf life of months, not years.
Methodology
Sample. The 55 unique agencies profiled across the eight ranking guides we researched and published between April and June 2026: our national Top 10 AEO Agencies in Australia, the 15 Best SEO Agencies in Melbourne, and our 2026 AEO rankings for Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane plus SEO rankings for Sydney, Brisbane, and Perth. Those guides drew on a wider shortlisting pool of more than 60 agencies; agencies assessed but excluded for lacking a verifiable offering are not counted in any table here. All percentages use the 55 uniquely profiled agencies as the denominator unless stated otherwise.
Source material. Public agency websites only: service pages, published methodologies, pricing pages, and stated credentials, as recorded in our published profiles. No private briefings, no sales calls, no client data. Where an agency's site did not state something, we recorded it as absent rather than guessing.
Review dates. Profiles were researched between April and June 2026. Five live spot-verifications were run on 30 July 2026 and are reported separately above; the aggregate tables reflect the original review window.
Classification. "Named AI-search offering" means the agency's public site presents AEO, GEO, AI SEO, AIO, SGE, AI optimisation, or AI visibility as a service. "AEO-specific deliverable" means at least one of: llms.txt, AI citation or mention tracking, prompt research, entity or knowledge-graph optimisation, schema for AI extraction, or answer-extraction content structure. Orkkid is included in all counts; we have flagged wherever we are the only agency in a category, and you should apply the same scepticism to our inclusion that we apply to everyone else's.
Limitations. This is a review of public positioning, not delivery quality. A count of 55 is a strong shortlist of the credible market, not a census of every agency selling SEO in Australia. Public websites change quickly, as the Bonfire spot-check shows.
Frequently asked questions
How many AEO agencies are there in Australia in 2026?
Based on our review of 55 uniquely profiled agencies, 26 publicly offer a service named AEO or GEO and another 6 offer AI search under a broader label. But only about 20 publish a method with at least one AEO-specific deliverable, and only 6 name ongoing citation tracking. The genuinely specialist end of the Australian market is roughly a dozen firms.
Which Australian city leads AEO adoption?
Melbourne has the deepest bench of dedicated AEO and GEO specialists, and was the only city where we could fill an AEO top-10 with locally based agencies. Sydney and Brisbane sit around 60% adoption in our general SEO top-10 samples. Perth trails at 40%, with no dedicated AEO or GEO service page found at review time.
What separates real AEO from rebranded SEO?
Published mechanics. Real AEO offerings name deliverables that classic SEO does not: prompt panels, citation share tracking, llms.txt, entity and knowledge-graph work, and schema built for AI extraction. In our sample, 12 of the 32 agencies marketing an AI-search service publish none of these. Two questions expose the difference fast: "show me a citation share report" and "what is in your own llms.txt?"
How fast is the Australian AEO market changing?
Fast enough that counts age within a quarter. Between our June review window and a 30 July 2026 re-check, one Perth agency we had recorded as Google-centric had added AI Search Optimisation to its public services. We re-review our rankings quarterly for exactly this reason.
Can I reuse these numbers?
Yes. Cite "Orkkid, The State of AEO in Australia (2026)" and link to this page. The counts are reproducible from our published ranking guides, and we will update this research as the market moves.
If this research tells you anything, it is that the window is still open: most of the Australian market is selling the label, not the work. To see where your own business stands across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, book a free AI citation audit, or start with our AEO services overview and the GEO SEO complete guide.
Citing this research: you are welcome to quote any statistic in this report with attribution to Orkkid and a link to https://orkkid.com/blog/aeo-adoption-australia-research. For interviews or the underlying agency-by-agency table, contact us via the website audit page.