Which German SEO agencies AI recommends in 2026, and where it gets that from

Updated on 19 October 2026. Until 7 October, an output limit in our scanner cut Gemini's answers short. A cut answer names fewer agencies than the full one would. We fixed the limit on 7 October. The October figures on this page come from the two scans after the fix, on 11 and 19 October 2026: 99 answers from four engines. That is two days of answers instead of nine, so the margins are wider than in September. For the leading agencies they are about ±9 percentage points, against ±3 then. Google's AI Overviews count from 11 October only, because our capture lost their lists on 19 October. The leading group now has six agencies instead of three. Seokratie stays in it; Peak Ace is no longer in either group. The September figures remain available as a CSV file. Six agencies lead. Claneo was named in 36 of 99 answers. Online Solutions Group, Suchhelden, Seokratie and Aufgesang were named in 26 to 30, HECHT INS GEFECHT in 21. Their margins of error overlap with Claneo's, so the six form one group without a fixed order. Most agencies on our list were not named at all: 66 of 109. The four engines disagree on who comes first. And the websites they cite most are review platforms and agencies writing about agencies. The method is the one we used for GEO agencies in the US.

The overall table further down rewards agencies that come up on broad questions. Buyers often ask narrower ones. So here are the agencies named most for each of the ten questions. Each question got ten answers, the last one nine. That is not many, so read a row as a pointer, not a verdict. A few rows are clear anyway. Asked for SEO with content marketing, nine of ten answers named Claneo. Asked for SEO and Google Ads from one team, seven of ten named SUMAX. Asked how to find a reputable agency, no answer named an agency at all. The engines gave a checklist instead.

Claneo was named in 36 of 99 answers, a little more than one in three. Five agencies follow with 21 to 30 namings each. With 99 answers, each of these counts has a wide margin of error. All five margins overlap with Claneo's. So this is a leading group of six, and the order inside it is open. The line under the group is thin. Bloofusion and SEO-Küche, with 17 namings each, miss it by less than two percentage points. TRYSEO and SUMAX follow. After them, no agency was named more than nine times. The bigger finding sits at the other end. 66 of the 109 agencies were not named once. Another 26 were named one to five times. The ten most-named agencies took 228 of all 334 namings, or 68%. In September, with 713 answers, 46 agencies went unnamed. With 99 answers an agency has far fewer chances to come up, so the two counts do not compare directly.

The September edition rested on 713 answers. Its leading group had three agencies: Claneo, Aufgesang and Seokratie. All three are in the group again, at shares close to September's. Claneo was named in 36.4% of the answers (31.7% in September), Seokratie in 28.3% (26.2%) and Aufgesang in 26.3% (28.2%). Their ranges overlap with September's. Three agencies joined them. Online Solutions Group, Suchhelden and HECHT INS GEFECHT were named in 15.0%, 15.1% and 6.0% of the September answers. Now it is 30.3%, 29.3% and 21.2%. None of the three ranges overlaps with its September range any more. For Suchhelden the gap between the two ranges is narrow, and the ranges treat every answer as independent, so that rise is the least certain of the three. Peak Ace went the other way, from 15.1% to 8.1%. Its two ranges still overlap, so that drop is not established. This page does not say why anything moved. Between the two editions, Gemini's answers went from cut to complete, ChatGPT and Perplexity moved to newer models, and the sample shrank from nine days to two. Within October, the first scan alone had the same six agencies in its leading group. Single counts move more from scan to scan. HECHT INS GEFECHT was named in 18 of 69 answers on 11 October and in 3 of 30 on 19 October. SEO-Küche went the other way, from 6 of 69 to 11 of 30. One scan of 30 answers is too small to call either a trend.

Each engine has its own favourites. ChatGPT named Claneo most often, in 12 of 30 answers. Perplexity also put Claneo first, with 10 of 30. Gemini named Seokratie in 19 of its 30 answers. Google's AI Overviews named Aufgesang most, in 5 of 9. Seokratie shows how much one engine can decide. 19 of its 28 namings came from Gemini. Perplexity did not name it once in 30 answers. The engines also name very different numbers of agencies. A Gemini answer named almost five agencies from our list on average. A Perplexity answer named fewer than two, and 7 of its 30 answers named none of them. For a buyer, one engine's shortlist is one opinion. For an agency, visibility in AI is four separate results. We have looked at the reasons in why AI engines disagree about your brand.

The 99 answers cited more than 250 different websites. The most cited are OMR Reviews, mostly its pages on SEO agencies, and onlinesolutionsgroup.de, the website of Online Solutions Group. Each was cited in 40 answers. Online Solutions Group has a second website near the top: seoagentur.de, cited in 30. Being cited is not the same as being named. Perplexity cited seoagentur.de in 25 of its 30 answers but named Online Solutions Group in 8. DREIKON's website was cited in 31 answers. Perplexity mostly cited its page about the best SEO agencies. DREIKON itself was named in six answers. We have written about that gap in cited is not named. Lists that agencies write about agencies are still a big source. HECHT INS GEFECHT publishes its own ranking of the ten best SEO agencies in Germany and puts itself first. Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews cited that page, and Gemini cited hechtinsgefecht.de in 17 of its 30 answers. Gemini names websites, not pages. Suchhelden's own list of 31 SEO agencies, which Perplexity cited in three answers, starts with Suchhelden. The page says the list is not sorted by quality. SEO-Küche's own ranking of the ten best GEO and SEO agencies in Germany also puts SEO-Küche first. In September the most-cited list came from another agency. The pattern has not changed. ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity also show the web searches they run before answering. 86 of their 90 answers came with searches, 263 different ones. The words they added most often were Leistungen (services), KMU (small business), Referenzen and Bewertungen (reviews). OMR appeared in 16 searches and Clutch in 14. The engines look for proof: what an agency does, who it worked for and what clients say. Nobody publishes search volumes for these queries, and we do not estimate any.

It counts what four engines said on two days. It does not measure the quality of anybody's work. An agency that is never named may be excellent. Two days are a small sample. 99 answers are enough to set the leading six apart from the long tail. They are not enough to put the six in order. Later scans will narrow the margins, and we will update this page. Google's AI Overviews are the thinnest part. They count from 11 October only, with 9 answers. On 19 October our capture lost the lists in seven of ten overviews. So we left that day's overviews out instead of counting them as answers that name nobody. One overview of 11 October came back empty and is left out as well. The models behind the engines change, too. ChatGPT and Perplexity have answered with newer models since late September. Both October scans used the same models. The tables cover the 109 agencies on our list. The engines named others, among them adojo, SEO Agents, Side Boost and Trofy in at least three answers each. Names outside the list are captured less strictly, so these are minimums. And the questions were asked in German for the German market. The same questions in English produce different answers.

Three things follow from the data, and none of them is a trick. Say clearly what you do. Asked for SEO with content marketing, nine of ten answers named Claneo. Claneo's content marketing page was among the pages ChatGPT cited. A page that answers the question directly is easy to match. Be present where the engines read. For these questions that means OMR Reviews, Sortlist, Agenturtipp and Clutch. Like it or not, it also means the best-of lists that other agencies publish. Publish the proof the engines search for: services, references, reviews, and prices if the buyer asks about prices. On the pricing question, Perplexity recommended Online Solutions Group in both scans and quoted its published package price. If you want to see what the engines say about your own agency, the free AI visibility check shows it in about a minute. We will repeat the measurement at this address.

The table further up shows the two groups. Here are all 43 agencies that were named at least once, in the same format. The data for all 109 agencies is also available as a CSV file, published under CC BY 4.0. Use it freely, credit CrunchJunkie and link to this page as the source.

These 66 agencies were on the list, and none of the 99 answers named them. That says nothing about their work. It says that four engines did not bring them up for these ten questions on 11 and 19 October. 42DIGITAL, ARISE Online Marketing, Baseplus, Bits & Passion, Bytebizz, CAMEDIA, CreativeConsult.de, cyberpromote, Die Linkagentur, Die SEO-Firma, Digital Nativ, Digitaleffects, Dirk Schiff, ditegra, DIXENO, effektor, eMinded, Exportarts, Farbentour, felixlitsch.de, G38, get traction, IMA Marketing & Consulting, internetwarriors, ithelps, Kim Labs, KlickPiloten, KOCH ESSEN, LA Click, luna-park, marmato, Matthias Klenk, mindshape, move elevator, Nabenhauer Consulting, NETPROFIT, netspirits, njoy online marketing, No-black-box-seo, Noah Lutz, Online Marketing Solutions, Online-Profession, PerformanceLiebe, RegioHelden, Schoch & Friends, Semotion, SEO Agentur Hamburg, SEO Beratung KMU, SEO Monkey, SEO NW, SEO Revolution, seoCon, seooffensive, SEOPT, SEYBOLD ONE, Sumasearch, SUNZINET, takevalue, V4 Visions, Veriseo, VISIO.7, Waldhirsch, wambo, web-netz, Webgalaxie, Webneo.