The Good Men Project just published their 2026 ranking of the 10 best SEO agencies in Turkey. It is the kind of post that shows up every quarter in every market: Toronto, London, Sydney, Vancouver, Istanbul. The headline changes, the format does not.
I want to talk about what these listicles are, what they are not, and how to actually use them if you are in the market for an agency.
What Happened
On May 3, 2026, The Good Men Project published an updated ranking titled The 10 Best SEO Agencies in Turkey, 2026 (Last Update). The piece sits in the same genre as hundreds of similar roundups across Clutch, DesignRush, Sortlist, and dozens of independent publishers. It lists 10 firms, gives short summaries of services, and frames the ranking as a buyer's guide for businesses looking to hire an SEO partner in the Turkish market.
Source: The Good Men Project.
The post itself is unremarkable. The pattern it represents is worth talking about, because these listicles now play a real role in how AI systems decide which agencies to recommend.
The 66th Take
Here is the part nobody likes to say out loud. Most of these listicles are not journalism. They are content products. Some are pay-to-play. Some are written by a freelancer who Googled "top SEO agencies Turkey" and reshuffled the first 3 listicles they found. A few are properly researched. You usually cannot tell which is which from the page itself.
That does not make them worthless. It changes what they are useful for.
Why these posts matter more in 2026 than they did in 2022
AI search systems pull from exactly this kind of content when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity, "Who are the best SEO agencies in Vancouver?" The model is not running a tender process. It is summarising what the open web says about you. If your name shows up in 12 roundups across 12 publishers, you become a real entity to the model. If it shows up in 0, you do not exist.
This is the 20% of GEO I keep talking about. Entity management, citation building, structured signals. Getting listed in legitimate roundups is one of the highest-leverage things an agency or local business can do for AI visibility right now. We work on this for our clients every month.
How to read a listicle when you are the buyer
If you are a business owner reading one of these to find an agency, here is the filter I would use:
| Signal | What it actually tells you |
|---|---|
| Agency appears in 1 roundup | Almost nothing. Could be paid placement. |
| Agency appears in 5+ roundups across different publishers | They have real market presence and someone is doing PR or outreach work. |
| Roundup includes specific case studies with numbers | Editor did real work. Trust it more. |
| Roundup is generic 2-sentence blurbs | Likely templated. Treat as a starting list, not a ranking. |
| Agency has 50+ Google reviews with detail | Far more reliable than any listicle. |
| Agency shows up in ChatGPT and Perplexity for relevant queries | They understand their own discipline. |
What we tell our clients
When a local business asks how to evaluate an SEO agency, I tell them to ignore the rankings and look at 3 things. First, ask the agency to walk you through 2 client accounts in detail. Real screenshots, real keywords, real revenue impact. Second, check their Google reviews. We wrote about why reviews are an SEO asset in their own right, and the same logic applies in reverse when you are vetting a partner. Third, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity to recommend agencies in your city. See who comes up. That tells you who has done the entity work to be visible in the channels that matter in 2026.
The Turkey listicle is not a scandal. It is just a normal piece of content doing normal content things. The mistake is treating it as a ranked leaderboard when it is closer to a directory with vibes.
The honest version
If you run an agency, get into these roundups. Do outreach. Pitch editors. Make it easy for writers to cite you with a clean about page, clear service descriptions, and named case studies. That is real GEO work and it pays.
If you are hiring an agency, use the listicle as a longlist, then do the actual diligence yourself. Reviews, case studies, conversations with current clients. The listicle is a map. It is not the territory.
The agencies winning in 2026 are the ones that understand both sides of this. Strong fundamentals, specific content, real authority signals across the web. Everything else is noise.
