Study: Who ChatGPT and Perplexity Recommend When You Look for a Marketing Agency in Miami (October 2026)

More and more business owners ask an AI before they search on Google. We wanted to know, with data rather than opinions, how ChatGPT and Perplexity decide whom to recommend when someone looks for a marketing agency in Miami. So we measured it.

Transparency note: Brito Marketing is a Miami agency and shows up in some of those answers. That's why we publish our own results below, good and bad, and we don't name the other agencies: the study is about patterns, not a ranking.

How was the study done?

• —50 fixed questions: 5 about a specific brand, 10 about the category in Miami, 15 combining a service and a city, 15 by industry and 5 general questions. Of the 45 that don't name a company, 24 are in Spanish and 21 in English.
• —Two engines: ChatGPT in a temporary chat (no memory or custom instructions) and Perplexity in incognito mode, free plan.
• —One run per question and engine, on October 8, 2026, from Miami, without sharing location.
• —Each answer was read with a script (which businesses it names, whether it links to a website) and the unclear cases were checked by hand.
• —Gemini and Grok were left out because they answered using the memory of the account, which would have skewed the results.

Finding 1: AI has no fixed winner

In the 45 non-brand questions, Perplexity named other businesses in 35 answers, adding up to more than 100 different names. Only 11 appeared in more than one answer, and no business showed up in more than 4 of the 45. In other words, there's no agency AI recommends for everything. Each question gets its own list.

For a business, that's good news: specific searches (a service, an industry, a language) can be won even if you're not the biggest company in town.

Finding 2: in city searches, local wins

In the 14 questions that combine a service and a city (Doral, Hialeah, Kendall, Coral Gables, Fort Lauderdale, Homestead, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Aventura and Miami Lakes), Perplexity named about 50 different companies, and only 2 of them appeared in more than one city. AI prefers businesses with an office in that city or listings in its local directories, even when an agency from elsewhere has pages dedicated to it.

Finding 3: in 7 out of 45 questions, AI recommends no one

In 7 of the 45 non-brand questions (16%), Perplexity named no business at all: it answered with advice or price ranges. That happened with questions like how much an agency costs, how to choose one, or how to show up in ChatGPT. In those answers, AI cites whoever explains the topic best, not whoever sells the service.

Finding 4: language changes who shows up

The same business can be visible in one language and invisible in the other. We saw it with our own agency, which works in both: Perplexity named it in 11 of the 24 Spanish questions and in only 2 of the 21 English ones. AI draws on different sources in each language: reviews, lists and articles in English carry the weight in English answers, and the same goes for Spanish.

Finding 5: what only your website says isn't enough

When the only source for a claim was the business's own website, Perplexity flagged it with phrases like "this is the company's own claim" or "its promises should be verified." The agencies recommended most often had many reviews and appeared in third-party lists and directories. ChatGPT, for its part, often relied on Google Maps listings: the listing name, its rating and its number of reviews.

Our own results

We publish them in full because the same conclusions apply to us.

In the 5 brand questions, both engines described Brito Marketing accurately. Beyond that, we do well in Spanish for "AI marketing," "bilingual" and some industries, and poorly in English and in city searches. That's exactly what we're working on.

What does this mean for your business?

• —Measure before you invest: ask ChatGPT and Perplexity 10 or 20 real questions your customers ask, with no memory, and write down who shows up.
• —Take care of your Google listing: your real business name, the right category and recent reviews. It's one of the sources ChatGPT uses most.
• —Get third-party proof: reviews, industry directories and media mentions. What only you say, AI treats with caution.
• —Work each language separately if you serve customers in English and Spanish: reviews, profiles and content in both.
• —If you want customers in a specific city, have a real presence there (an address, local directories or clients in that area). A page per city isn't enough.
• —Publish clear answers to what your customers ask (prices, how to choose, what to expect). For those questions, AI cites whoever explains it best.

Limits of the study

• —It's a single measurement per question: AI answers change from day to day. That's why we'll repeat it every month with the same method, next on November 8, 2026.
• —It covers two engines and 50 questions about marketing agencies in South Florida. Other industries and cities may behave differently.
• —Name counts are a minimum: for some answers we only recorded the first recommendations.
• —We're an interested party: Brito Marketing appears in the results. That's why we publish the method and our own numbers.

If you want to know how AI sees your business today, start with our free diagnostic: one of its 8 areas is AI visibility.