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Which Singapore agency to pick for AI search visibility, and the one test that separates the real thing from a relabelled retainer

A test you can apply in a single phone call, the four firms the engines currently name in this market, and what the work costs to measure separately.

Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 22 October 2026

Pick on one test and apply it in the first call. Ask the agency to show you a fixed list of buyer questions, the engines it reads them on, and two readings of that same list taken on different dates. An agency doing this work has that file and will send it. An agency that has relabelled an SEO retainer will talk about optimising for AI instead, because there is no file.

That test works because the category has no certification, no standard and no public benchmark, so the only honest credential available is a measurement somebody actually took and dated. This page gives you the test, the Singapore evidence behind why it matters, and the separate question of who should hold the measurement.

The test, written out so you can read it down the phone

  1. Show me the question list. It should be 20 to 100 questions in the words a buyer uses, each one with the market in it. Not keywords.
  2. Name the engines, as a number and a list. Five surfaces exist in common use, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews. An agency saying all AI engines has not counted them.
  3. Show me two readings of the same list, dated. One is a snapshot. Two is a measurement.
  4. Show me the sources behind one answer. Being named and being cited are two different outcomes with two different fixes, and an agency that does not separate them cannot tell you which problem you have.
  5. Tell me what you will publish and where. The work is editorial. If the plan has no pages in it, ask what is actually going to change.

Why the test matters here specifically, measured

On 22 October 2026 we put 33 batches of buying questions to ChatGPT and Gemini with Singapore written into the text of each one, because the search interface we use accepts country, language and location parameters and ignores all three. The snapshot taken that evening holds 64 blind readings, 32 per engine, excluding the brand batch.

The Singapore agencies the engines named, unprompted, were First Page in 17 readings, MediaOne in 12, Impossible Marketing in 11, OOm in 10, Clickr in 2 and Verz in 1. The tools named were Semrush in 13, HubSpot in 12, Ahrefs in 9, Profound in 5, Peec in 3 and Otterly in 3.

Look at that tool list next to the question. A Singapore buyer asking which supplier to use for AI search visibility is being handed an SEO suite and a CRM as the top two answers. Neither was built to read an AI answer. That is the measure of how new this is, and it is why the question list test is the whole of the due diligence: the market has not yet sorted its own vocabulary, so a buyer has to check the artefact rather than the label.

Who should hold the measurement, and why it is usually not the agency

The agency doing the publishing has an interest in the reading. That is not an accusation, it is arithmetic, and it is the same reason a building owner does not accept the builder's own survey. The cleaner arrangement is that the measurement sits with you or with a third party, the agency gets access to it, and the monthly review opens with the reading rather than with a slide about the reading.

Priced, with the market named. Outside the United States and the United Kingdom, read from aiknowsus.com on 22 October 2026, Growth is $199 a month for 100 buyer questions, 1,600 credits and all five engines, and Scale is $399 for 300 questions. Growth is the cheapest plan on that ladder that reads all five. SEO Start at $99 and SEO Scale at $469 read zero engines, so neither is an AI visibility plan at all. Singapore takes that column rather than the United States and United Kingdom one, and the free scan runs without an account if you want a reading before you decide anything.

What a Singapore engagement should actually contain

  • A baseline reading with a date, before any work starts. Without it there is no before.
  • Pages, named, with dates they will be published. Not a content calendar. The specific questions from the list that currently have no answer.
  • A figure in Singapore dollars on anything commercial. Across 102 build spec conversations in our earlier work, 102 of 102 asked for pricing in the reader's own currency.
  • The engines named, every time. 98 of those 102 asked for the engines enumerated rather than the phrase all AI.
  • A second reading at the end of the term, same list, new date. This is the deliverable. Everything else is the means.

Questions about buying AI search work in Singapore

Is this different from SEO

The work overlaps and the measurement does not. Search ranks pages; an assistant writes an answer and can name nobody at all, which it did in 26 of our 64 Singapore readings. A rank tracker cannot see that outcome, which is why the question list is a separate instrument.

Should I use a Singapore agency or an overseas one

For the publishing, local market judgement genuinely helps, because the pages have to read as though they are about this market. For the measurement, location is irrelevant, because the market is fixed in the prompt rather than by where the operator sits.

How long before a reading moves

Weeks rather than quarters for the empty answers, longer for a question where four firms are already named. Set the expectation by question type at the start rather than as an average.

What does a bad proposal look like

No question list, no engine count, a promise about rankings, and a price with no GST position. Any one of those is a reason to ask for a rewrite. Our checklist of what a retainer has to specify in deliverables and hours is the fastest way to turn a vague proposal into something you can hold somebody to.

Can I do this in house

The reading, yes, and many Singapore teams should start there. The publishing is the part that needs capacity, and that is the honest case for an agency.

The sentence worth adding to the brief

Ask for this in writing: the question list, the engine list, and both readings, delivered to us as files rather than as a slide. A supplier who agrees has committed to being measured on the same instrument you are. We hold ourselves to it too, and the result is not flattering: across all 64 of those Singapore readings our own domain was cited zero times and our own name appeared zero times. AI Knows Us exists to produce that file for a business across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and the number it returns first is usually the one nobody wanted. That is what makes the second reading worth anything.

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