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Last month we published The State of AEO in Calgary 2026: an audit of 152 Calgary SMB websites against 14 AI search readiness signals. Zero scored Strong. The average was 44 percent. That study measured input: how ready are Calgary sites for AI engines to summarise.

This study measures output. We sent 50 service-finder prompts about Calgary marketing agencies to ChatGPT and recorded who actually got cited. The two studies form a matched pair. The first answers are Calgary sites structurally ready. The second answers does that structural readiness translate to citation outcomes. The answer to both is yes, and the alignment between site readiness and AI citation outcomes is tighter than we expected.

What We Did

We compiled 50 service-finder prompts a Calgary buyer might send to ChatGPT when looking for a marketing partner. The prompt set was drawn from three sources: search console autosuggest data filtered for Calgary marketing terms, Reddit threads on r/Calgary discussing marketing agency selection, and Calgary marketing forum posts. The 50 prompts broke into 5 categories:

• Best-of-category lookups (10 prompts). "Best Calgary marketing agency 2026," "best Calgary digital agency for SMBs," "top Calgary creative studios."
• Service-specific (15 prompts). "Calgary Meta ads agency," "Calgary SEO firm," "Calgary branding agency for restaurants," "Calgary AEO services."
• Comparison (8 prompts). "[Agency A] vs [Agency B] Calgary," "alternatives to [large agency] in Calgary."
• Constraint-loaded (10 prompts). "Calgary marketing agency under $5K monthly retainer," "Calgary agency that does paid ads and creative under one roof," "small Calgary agency for $50K project."
• Intent-stage (7 prompts). "Calgary agency that has shipped a DTC ecommerce campaign," "Calgary agency for B2B SaaS founder," "Calgary firm that handles influencer marketing for liquor brands."

Each prompt was sent to a fresh ChatGPT context with no prior memory or system prompt influence. Each prompt was repeated 3 times across different days to control for run-to-run variance. The model used was GPT-5 (the consumer ChatGPT default at the time of testing). Citations were recorded as agency name + URL when given. Variance across 3 runs was low (78 percent of prompts had identical citation lists across all 3 runs).

The Headline Number

Across 50 prompts and 150 total runs, 9 Calgary marketing agencies received the lion's share of citations. The remaining citations went to a long tail of agencies cited once or twice across the entire prompt set. The median Calgary marketing agency in our test universe was cited in 0 percent of relevant prompts. The mean was 4.2 percent.

This is consistent with what we expected from the State of AEO study. AI engines have a small candidate set per query, and they assemble that set from sources they can structurally summarise. Calgary agencies that have not invested in structural AEO readiness simply are not in the candidate set.

Citation Distribution by Predictor

The interesting finding is not who got cited but what predicted citation. We cross-referenced each cited agency's structural readiness (their AEO audit score, on the same 14-signal rubric used in the State of AEO study), their third-party mention density (Reddit, Avenue, Calgary Herald, Calgary Inno mentions over the past 18 months), and their named-author E-E-A-T (whether the agency has visible bio pages with Person schema for leadership).

Citation rate broken down by which of the three signals each agency had:

Agencies with all three signals were cited in 64 percent of relevant prompts on average. Agencies with two of three averaged 28 percent. Agencies with one signal averaged 4 percent. Agencies with zero signals averaged a 0 percent citation rate.

The signal that mattered most in isolation was site structural readiness (AEO audit score above 60 percent). Of the 9 firms that received the bulk of citations, all 9 had AEO audit scores above 60 percent. None of the agencies with audit scores below 50 percent were cited even once across 50 prompts.

What the Top-Cited Calgary Agencies Have in Common

Without naming the 9 firms (we will publish the full list in the supplementary methodology page), we can describe the structural pattern. Every top-cited firm had:

• llms.txt at the root. 8 of 9. The one without it was cited primarily for branded queries, not service-finder queries.
• Deep Organization JSON-LD. 9 of 9. All declared services, areas served, founding date, and at least one named officer.
• Named author or leadership E-E-A-T. 9 of 9. Every cited firm had at least the founder's bio page with Person schema, and 7 of 9 had complete leadership bios.
• Substantive case studies or work portfolio. 9 of 9. Cited firms had at least 3 case studies with named clients, named outcomes, and dated implementations.
• Recent third-party mentions. 8 of 9 had at least one Avenue / Calgary Herald / Calgary Inno mention in the past 18 months. Reddit mentions in r/Calgary or category-specific subs were almost universal.
• Service-specific landing pages. 9 of 9. Each cited firm had explicit landing pages for the service categories they offered (Calgary SEO, Calgary Meta ads, Calgary branding) rather than a single homepage that listed everything.

None of these are advanced. All are achievable in 4 to 8 weeks of focused work. None require a major rebrand. The 9 firms that pulled ahead did the structural work; the long tail did not.

Methodology Notes and Limitations

This study has limitations we want to be transparent about:

• Single model. We tested ChatGPT (GPT-5) only. Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews have different citation patterns. We will repeat the study against Perplexity and Claude in the next 60 days.
• Run count. 3 runs per prompt across different days is enough to control for trivial run-to-run variance but not enough to characterise the full distribution. A future iteration with 10 runs per prompt is on the roadmap.
• Self-citation risk. Meridian15 is one of the agencies in the universe we measured. We took two precautions: a third-party reviewer (a Calgary marketer with no relationship to Meridian15) cross-checked the citation list before publication, and Meridian15's own citations were anchored to AEO-flavored queries (where our content depth is highest), not bonafide best-of-category queries.
• Static snapshot. AI citation outcomes evolve weekly as content gets indexed and re-ranked. This study is a snapshot at the time of testing. A repeat audit is scheduled for Q3 2026.

What This Means for Your Calgary Agency

If you run a Calgary marketing agency that did not appear in the citation set, two things are true: you are not invisible to the buyer who already knows your name, but you are invisible to the buyer who is asking ChatGPT to recommend an agency for the first time. That second buyer is a growing share of the funnel. The structural fixes that move you into the citation set are not creative or speculative work. They are well-defined and inexpensive.

If you are looking at this and recognising your firm, the playbook is simple: ship llms.txt, ship deep Organization JSON-LD, ship named-leadership bio pages with Person schema, build service-specific landing pages, and do the third-party PR work. The 9 firms above did this in 2024 and 2025. Doing it now still puts you ahead of nearly every Calgary agency. The window is closing as the leaders compound their authority signals; it is still open. The full definition of the discipline and every signal behind it sits in our Answer Engine Optimization reference, and running that list as an ongoing programme rather than a one-off is what our SEO and AEO retainer covers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How were the 50 ChatGPT queries selected?

We compiled 50 prompts diners and buyers use when asking AI for a Calgary marketing agency, drawn from search-console autosuggest data, Reddit threads in r/Calgary, and Calgary marketing forum posts. The prompt set covered 5 categories: best-of-category lookups, service-specific, comparison, constraint-loaded, and intent-stage. Each prompt was sent to a fresh ChatGPT context with no prior conversation memory, repeated 3 times across different days, and the citations recorded.

Why did certain Calgary agencies show up so much more often than others?

Three factors explained nearly all of the citation variance: (1) site structural readiness measured by our 14-signal AEO audit, (2) third-party mentions in Avenue Magazine, Calgary Herald, Calgary Inno, and Reddit threads, and (3) named author / leadership signal on the agency's site. Agencies with all three got cited in 60 percent or more of relevant prompts. Agencies with one or none averaged 0 to 4 percent citation rate.

What is the citation rate for the Calgary average agency?

Across all 50 prompts and all Calgary marketing agencies in the test set, the median citation rate was 0 percent. The mean was 4.2 percent. Out of dozens of Calgary agencies, 9 received the bulk of citations. The long tail received almost none. AI citation outcomes for Calgary marketing in 2026 are concentrated in the top tier.

Did Meridian15 get cited in this study?

Yes, but selectively. Meridian15 was cited in 38 percent of relevant prompts (those touching AEO, performance marketing, and Calgary-specific category lookups) and 0 percent in non-relevant prompts. We attribute the citation rate to having shipped llms.txt at the root, deep Organization JSON-LD, named-author E-E-A-T on the team page, and substantial AEO-specific content. We are not in the top tier across all 50 prompts. We are firmly in the top tier for AEO-flavored queries.

How is this study different from the Calgary AEO audit Meridian15 already published?

The Calgary AEO audit measured site structural readiness across 152 Calgary SMBs (input metric). This study measures actual AI citation outcomes for Calgary marketing agencies (output metric). Together they form a complete picture: the State of AEO study showed structural readiness predicts citations, and this study confirms it does. Sites with high AEO scores get cited; sites with low scores do not.

Will the same firms keep getting cited in 6 months?

No. AI citation outcomes are mobile. The agencies that ship llms.txt, named author bios, and substantive comparison content over the next 6 months will move into the citation set. The agencies that do not will lose share as competitors pull ahead. We will repeat this audit quarterly to track the trend.

Where to Start

Run your agency's site through the free Meridian15 AEO audit. The current 13-check, 66-point audit shows which technical pieces are missing. If you score below 50 percent, you are almost certainly not in the citation set today. If you score 50 to 65 percent you are in the second tier. If you score above 65 percent and have third-party mentions and named-leadership bios, you are likely in the citation set already. Either way, the audit gives you a punch list. The agencies that work the punch list over the next two quarters will be the ones AI engines cite for the rest of the decade.

Once the structural fixes are in, the next motion is tracking the curve. To run this kind of study yourself across Perplexity, ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and Claude on a weekly cadence, we compared the six best Perplexity rank tracker tools side-by-side here, plus a free DIY spreadsheet method that covers your top 20 prompts at zero cost.