Category data · Professional services · Sydney
Which sources do AI assistants cite about digital marketing agencies in Sydney?
Government business guides and software vendors, not agencies. ChatGPT leans on business.gov.au and business.qld.gov.au, Perplexity cites Salesforce and Adobe most, and only one or two agencies crack any engine's top sources.
Measured 2026-08-22
Across 166 recommendation and buying-journey prompts about digital marketing agencies in Sydney, these are the sources each AI engine cited most in its answers. A citation is a source the engine actually linked in a response, which makes this list a map of who each engine trusts in this category right now.
The top 3 cited sources, by engine
| Engine | #1 cited source | #2 | #3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | business.qld.gov.au cited in 8.4% of answers | business.gov.au cited in 8.4% of answers | 3pdigital.com.au cited in 7.8% of answers |
| Perplexity | salesforce.com cited in 25.3% of answers | business.adobe.com cited in 19.9% of answers | 3pdigital.com.au cited in 16.9% of answers |
| Google AI Overviews | youtube.com cited in 9.6% of answers | mailchimp.com cited in 9.0% of answers | magnetoitsolutions.com cited in 6.0% of answers |
Sample: 166 prompts, responses collected 2026-08-22 to 2026-08-22 (166 from ChatGPT, 166 from Perplexity, 166 from Google AI Overviews). 34 prompts naming a specific business were excluded from citation counts, per the TOP Score rules. Percentages are the share of that engine's responses containing at least one citation of the domain.
What the data says
The uncomfortable read for our own industry: when buyers ask AI about digital marketing, the engines mostly cite governments and software companies, because those are the publishers answering the questions in a citable form. This category page includes the market Sydney Digital Marketing competes in, and this site is run by SDM, so read it with that disclosed. The data is reported exactly as collected, and the method page explains how to check it.
Disclosure
Top of Prompt is run by Sydney Digital Marketing, which competes in this category. SDM's own domain appears in the underlying data and is reported exactly as collected, nothing added, nothing removed. The full disclosure policy is here.
How to read this page
- 1Citations are not mentions. This page measures which sources the engines link when they answer, not which businesses they name. Who gets named is the TOP Score, and it's measured separately.
- 2Engines disagree, so we never pool them. Each engine is reported on its own row because an average hides a total absence on the engine your buyers actually use.
- 3This is a measurement with a date on it. Models and retrieval change; a source moving between collections has not necessarily done anything. The method, cadence and limits are on the standard page.
Are you cited in your category?
A free Namecheck shows whether AI engines name and cite your business, with the actual answers we saw. If the measurement on this page looks wrong, the corrections process applies to it like everything else here.