We pulled live SERP data for "content marketing agency" this week and the result was uncomfortable: of nine first-page results, seven were listicles and directories — "best agencies of 2026" roundups, agency listing directories, "top 20" lists. Only two were agencies' own pages, and both were regional service pages (a Des Moines agency, a Chicago service-locations page).
The demand for agencies is being intermediated. Buyers search, directories capture them, agencies compete to be listed.
Three things worth checking on your own site this week:
- Search your own category term and count. How many of page one are your competitors' pages vs directories? If directories dominate, your category page is competing with middlemen, not peers.
- Check whether your money pages are indexed at all. We found this the hard way: our product pages sat in "Discovered — currently not indexed" for weeks while thin content pages got crawled. Search Console → Indexing → Pages takes two minutes to check.
- Add an AI-referral segment now. GA4 has a native "AI Assistant" channel group (we covered the setup earlier this week). We've been picking up a trickle of sessions in it for a few weeks — tiny numbers, but real. Baseline today, thank yourself in a year.
None of this needs a tool. It needs twenty minutes and Search Console access.
Disclosure: we build SupaMarketers, a marketing-data MCP server, and run supamarketers.com. This post is our own search-data homework — the same checks work with any analytics stack.
Top comments (0)