What a Hiring Manager Finds When They Google Your Recruitment Agency
A hiring manager who is considering your agency will look you up before they reply, and on most agency sites there is very little for them to find. In our June 2026 audit of 391 UK and US recruitment agencies, 44% ran a blog or insights hub of any kind, 22% of the sites that responded had published anything since 2025, and 7% were structured so an AI assistant could quote them. The check happens whether or not you have prepared for it.
We cannot tell you what any individual hiring manager typed into Google. What we can tell you, because we measured it across 391 sites, is what was waiting for them when they arrived. That is the half of the equation you control.
The moment this matters
Picture the sequence. A consultant sends a well-judged approach about a live role. The hiring manager is mildly interested, and does what anyone does before replying to a stranger asking for a fee: opens a tab and searches the agency name.
The question they are answering is narrow: whether this is a real firm that knows their sector. Everything on the site is evidence for or against, and an empty site is evidence.
This is the client-side mirror of the candidate check. It is also cheaper to fix, because a hiring manager needs less than a candidate does: enough specificity to believe you have done this before.
What 391 agency websites actually offer
Every figure below comes from our first-party audit of 391 UK and US recruitment agencies with 50 employees or fewer, read from each site's rendered pages in June 2026.
| What a hiring manager might look for | Share of agencies that have it |
|---|---|
| A blog or insights hub | 44% |
| Anything published since 2025 | 22% (of the 367 sites that responded) |
| A genuine lead-capture form | 50% |
| A downloadable report or guide | 2% |
| Organisation schema (so search engines know who you are) | 38% |
| Article or BlogPosting schema | 7% |
| FAQ or Q&A schema | 3% |
| An llms.txt file | 0% |
| Structured to be cited by AI answer engines | 7% |
| No social presence at all | 22% (of the 367 sites that responded) |
Read the first two rows together. Under half of agencies publish anything, and of those that do, most stopped. An insights hub whose most recent post is from 2023 answers the hiring manager's question in a way you would rather it did not.
The four things a hiring manager can verify
1. That you work in their sector, specifically
"We recruit across technology, finance and engineering" tells a hiring manager nothing they cannot get from 300 other agencies. A page about their sector, naming the roles, the salary bands and the hiring pattern this year, tells them you have done the work.
Sector pages are also where the search traffic is, so this is the same investment twice. Our sector benchmark found the spread between the best and worst-performing specialisms is wide: Engineering and Construction agencies average 32.4 out of 100 on marketing maturity, IT and Tech agencies 22.9.
2. That someone is home
A dated post from this quarter does something no amount of copy achieves: it proves the firm is trading and paying attention. With 22% of responding sites having posted since 2025, a monthly market note puts you in a small group at almost no cost.
3. That there are people behind it
Named consultants with sectors against them, and a way to reach one without filling in a form. Half the agencies we audited had a genuine lead-capture form, which means half offer a hiring manager no route in that is not a phone number and hope.
4. That you have something worth taking to their own board
Salary data, a market snapshot, a hiring benchmark. 2% of the agencies we audited published a downloadable asset of any kind. A hiring manager who forwards your salary guide to their finance director has made your case internally without you in the room.
The part that has changed since 2024
An increasing share of this checking happens inside an AI assistant rather than a results page. Someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini which agencies handle their niche in their city, and the model answers from what it can read and attribute.
That is a structural question rather than a content one. Our audit found 7% of agencies were built in a way that answer engines can cite, with the underlying signals lower still: Article schema on 7%, FAQ schema on 3%, and an llms.txt file on none of the 391. Meanwhile 98% of the responding sites leave AI crawlers unblocked, so the content is readable and simply not structured to be quoted.
We have written up that cut of the data separately in how visible recruitment agencies are in AI search, which goes signal by signal.
What to do about it this quarter
In order of return, and none of it needs a marketing hire.
- Write one sector page properly. Pick the specialism you actually want more of, and write the page a hiring manager in that sector would find useful. Roles, bands, what has changed this year.
- Put a date on your insights and keep it current. Monthly is enough. The date is doing as much work as the content.
- Name your consultants against sectors. Photographs, sectors, a direct route to each.
- Publish one asset worth forwarding. A salary snapshot for your niche, refreshed twice a year.
- Add the schema. Organisation, Article and FAQ markup are configuration rather than content, and they are what decides whether any of the above can be quoted back.
The bar here is low, which is the useful finding. Most of what a hiring manager wants to verify is missing from most agency websites, so a firm that supplies it stands out against its actual peer group rather than against the global staffing brands.
Frequently asked questions
Do hiring managers really research agencies online before responding?
Checking an unfamiliar supplier before replying is standard B2B behaviour. Our audit measures what agencies publish for that check.
How many recruitment agencies publish content?
44% of the 391 agencies we audited had a blog or insights hub. Of the 367 sites that responded, 22% had published anything since 2025.
What content works best for winning clients?
Sector-specific pages naming roles and salary bands, kept current. 2% of audited agencies published a downloadable asset, so a salary guide is close to unclaimed ground.
Can AI assistants recommend my recruitment agency?
Only if your site is structured to be quoted. 7% of the agencies we audited met that bar, 3% had FAQ schema and none had an llms.txt file.
Which sectors market themselves best?
Engineering and Construction agencies average 32.4 out of 100 on marketing maturity, ahead of Finance and Accounting at 32.3. IT and Tech agencies come last at 22.9.
Source: Redsun Research, The State of Recruitment Marketing 2026: a first-party audit of 391 UK and US recruitment agencies with 50 employees or fewer, June 2026. Signal-adoption and sector figures are share of all 391; content-freshness, social presence and AI-crawler figures are share of the 367 sites that responded. Figures may be cited with attribution.