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MBC / Group / Blog / AI & Automation
AI & Automation 11 min read Sep 21, 2026
Search “ai automation agency” and Google returns a page of results. On 21 September 2026 we ran that search twice — once from a plain United States location, once from Denver — and read everything that came back. Both searches return the same eight relevant results, in the same order. Then the page falls apart.
Result nine and everything below it is about a different subject entirely. Nationally: seven separate tutorials on automating tracks in FL Studio, Logic Pro and Studio One, a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard song called “Automation”, the r/homeautomation subreddit twice, and the SAE standard defining the six levels of self-driving cars. From Denver, result ten is Merriam-Webster’s dictionary definition of the word “automation”. Google has eight real answers to this question and no more — which tells you something useful about how thin this market still is.
Matthew Montez
Founder · MBC Group
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00 Key Takeaways 01 What we searched 02 Google runs out after eight results 03 Two of the eight are for people starting an agency 04 Three agencies, and not one price 05 The directory: 49 companies, 32 start at $10,000 06 Nobody on this page is in Denver 07 The five questions we would ask 08 Method, and what this does not prove 09 Common questions
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A business owner notices that half of what their team does each week is the same steps in the same order, goes looking for someone to build that once so it runs itself, and searches for an AI automation agency. On 21 September 2026 we ran that exact search twice and opened everything that came back.
00 — Key Takeaways
Run nationally and from Denver on 21 September 2026, “ai automation agency” returns the same eight relevant results in the same order — and nothing relevant after them.
From result nine down, Google answers a different question: music-production tutorials, home automation, automation video games, and at result ten from Denver, the dictionary definition of “automation”.
Two of the eight are not written for buyers. Result one is a Reddit thread asking whether running an AI automation agency is profitable; result two is a LinkedIn post titled “What I learned building an AI Automation Agency”.
Three of the eight are agencies selling the service, and not one publishes a US dollar price. Two say only “Book a Call” or “Free Consultation”; the third is a UK firm whose two real tiers are both priced “£call”.
The directory at result five lists 49 companies. Of the 44 publishing a minimum budget, 32 — 73% — will not start below $10,000. The median hourly rate is $50, so the usual entry point is about 200 hours committed before anything switches on.
Of those 49 companies, 18 are outside the United States. Two are in Colorado — Boulder and Lakewood. None is in Denver, and the word “Denver” never appears on the page.
We put the exact phrase “ai automation agency” through Google twice on 21 September 2026 — once from a generic United States location, once from Denver, Colorado — both on desktop, both pulling the full result set rather than the first screen. Running it twice is the part that matters: one search tells you what one person saw once, while two searches from different places returning the same eight results in the same order tells you this is the shape of the market, not a local quirk.
Then we opened every result that was an ordinary web page — six of the eight — and read all six in full, stripping navigation, headers, footers and sidebars first so we were counting what each page says rather than what its menu says. The other two are a Reddit thread and a LinkedIn post, read as they appear.
Here is the entire relevant result set. Eight entries. That is not the top eight of a long list — it is all of it.
Result
What it actually is
Reddit, r/agency
A thread asking whether an AI automation agency is a profitable business to run
LinkedIn post
“What I learned building an AI Automation Agency”
theaiautomationagency.ai
An agency. UK-based — 0333 phone number, results quoted in pounds
automationagency.com
A marketing production subscription for coaches and consultants
DesignRush
A directory listing: “Top AI Automation Companies in 2026”
jadasquad.com
A guide: “AI Automation Agencies: 2026 Guide”
axeautomation.co
An agency. Zapier, Make.com and n8n work
nextautomation.us
A guide: “How to Choose an AI Automation Agency (2026)”
Result nine is where it ends. Nationally, positions nine through thirty-five include seven separate tutorials about automating tracks in FL Studio, Logic Pro and Studio One, a King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard song called “Automation”, the r/homeautomation subreddit twice, the SAE standard defining the six levels of driving automation, a video about automation video games, and a university degree in Automation Leadership.
The Denver search is blunter. Result nine is a Minecraft mod tutorial on automating mystical agriculture. Result ten is Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word “automation”. Result fourteen is Britannica on the same word.
When Google reaches for a dictionary, it has run out of pages that answer the question. For a term with 4,400 searches a month and an advertiser cost of roughly $19 a click, that is unusual. Almost nobody has written a serious page for the people typing this in.
The two highest results are not written for a business owner looking to hire anybody. Result one is a thread in r/agency whose opening question is whether this is “a profitable business and has potential or it’s just an AI gimmick”, asked by someone in data who is thinking about starting one. Result two is a LinkedIn article titled “What I learned building an AI Automation Agency”.
That is the top quarter of the page answering the opposite question from the one being asked. It is not Google being careless — it is a fair reflection of who is writing. The people producing the most confident content about AI automation agencies right now are the people starting them, and there are far more of those than there are firms with a few years of builds behind them.
Three of the eight results are agencies selling the service. We checked each for the thing a buyer wants to know first.
So across the three firms selling here, the number of US dollar prices quoted for automation work is zero. The guides do better: the most detailed puts a two-to-four-week discovery audit at $5,000 to $15,000 and a single automated workflow — lead form to CRM to follow-up, say — at $3,000 to $15,000.
And then there is result eight, titled “How to Choose an AI Automation Agency (2026): 5 Agency Types, Pricing, Red Flags”, whose description in Google promises “what each costs”. The page contains no dollar figure at all. Its own FAQ asks “How much do AI automation agencies cost?” and answers “It depends on the model, not the logo”. The word “pricing” appears six times on a page that never prices anything.
Result five is DesignRush’s “Top AI Automation Companies in 2026”, and it is the only place on the page where real numbers sit beside real company names. It lists 49 firms; 44 publish a minimum budget.
Minimum budget
Companies
$50,000 and up
9%
$25,000 – $50,000
18%
$10,000 – $25,000
20
45%
$1,000 – $10,000
11
25%
Under $1,000
2%
Thirty-two of the 44 will not start below $10,000. Exactly one will start for under $1,000. Put that next to the hourly rates — 40 of the 49 publish one, median $50, range $10 to $150 — and the typical entry point is roughly 200 hours of work, five full-time weeks, committed before anything is switched on. For most small businesses that is the whole reason this category stays theoretical. The work is not too complicated. The first invoice is too big.
We checked where those 49 companies are based. Thirty-one are in a US state; 18 are outside the country — four in India, three in Canada, two in Singapore, and one each in the Netherlands, Colombia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Australia and Romania. California has nine, New York five, Texas four. Colorado has two: Boulder and Lakewood. Denver has none, and the word “Denver” does not appear anywhere on that page.
That is worth sitting with if you run a business here. Local matters more in this category than in most, because an automation build touches your CRM, your phone system, your intake forms and the way your team actually works on a Tuesday — hard to get right from eight time zones away, easy from across town. We looked at what local presence is worth in who actually owns page one in Denver, and the automation half of what we do lives on our AI marketing automation page.
Since page one will not tell you how to judge these firms, here is what we would ask. None of it requires you to be technical.
Both searches ran on 21 September 2026 through a live Google results API, one from a generic United States location and one from Denver, both desktop, both pulling the full result set. Search results move, so anyone rerunning this next month will see something different; every claim above names the page it came from. We read six of the eight results in full, stripping navigation, headers, footers and sidebars before counting anything. The directory figures come from its 49 listings: 44 publish a minimum budget and 40 an hourly rate, so the percentages are out of 44 and the median is out of 40.
Two limits, plainly. “Relevant” is our judgment and it is the only judgment here — we counted a result as relevant if it was about hiring, running or listing AI automation agencies. A dictionary entry for “automation” is not a borderline case, but the line is ours to defend. And a published minimum budget is what a company tells a directory, not necessarily what it charges: we have not hired any of these firms and make no claim about the quality of their work.
We run this same read on other markets — see local SEO for small business and how to choose an AI marketing agency.
Q What is an AI automation agency?
A A firm that builds the self-running parts of your business — the steps that currently need somebody to remember to do them. Usually that means connecting tools you already pay for so work moves between them without anyone copying and pasting: a lead form that files itself into the CRM and triggers a follow-up, an invoice that chases itself, a report that arrives without being built. The AI part is the judgment inside those steps.
Q How much does an AI automation agency cost?
A On the directory ranking fifth for this term, 73% of listed companies will not start below $10,000 and only one of 44 starts under $1,000. The most detailed guide on page one puts a single automated workflow at $3,000 to $15,000 and a two-to-four-week discovery audit at $5,000 to $15,000. None of the three agencies actually selling on page one publishes a US dollar price. Ask for a number for the first workflow rather than a range for a programme.
Q Is an AI automation agency worth it for a small business?
A It depends almost entirely on whether you can name the task. If you can point at something a person does every week following the same steps every time — chasing a quote, re-typing a booking, sending the same three emails — that is worth automating and it is usually the cheapest thing anyone will quote you. If you cannot name the task, a discovery engagement will name it for you at $5,000 to $15,000, which is a real amount of money for finding out. Start with the one you can already name.
Q Do I need an agency or can I just use Zapier?
A If one or two steps need connecting and somebody on your team enjoys fiddling with it, use the tool directly — Zapier, Make.com and n8n all have free tiers. You need help when the build crosses systems that matter, when it has to handle the cases that are not the happy path, or when nobody in the building will own it after launch. The failure mode is rarely building the wrong thing; it is building the right thing and having nobody notice for three weeks when it stops.
Q Are there AI automation agencies in Denver?
A Yes, and we are one — The MBC Group is based in Denver and builds automations inside Aiden OS for businesses across Colorado. The point of this study is that you would not know that from searching: the directory Google ranks fifth lists 49 companies, two of them in Colorado and none in Denver, and the highest-ranked agency result is in the United Kingdom.
Q Who did this research?
A The MBC Group, an AI marketing agency in Denver. We ran both searches on 21 September 2026, read six of the eight results in full, and counted all 49 directory listings by hand. If you want to talk through what is worth automating in your business, talk to us.
Find out what is actually worth automating
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