Ahrefs’ Singapore question bank yields only 10 recruitment and payroll questions that pass our filters, so this view of AI search for recruitment agencies in Singapore is indicative. On those 10 questions per engine, Randstad Singapore and ManpowerGroup Singapore share the highest score, 62.5 out of 100. Morgan McKinley, the agency Google ranks first for “recruitment agency singapore”, is joint 12th in AI.
People ask things like “Which recruitment agency is best in Singapore?” or “How much do recruitment agencies charge in Singapore?”.
The ranking: 20 recruitment and HR businesses by AI visibility
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 4 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 3 · Google AI Overviews: 3
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 2 · Gemini: 2 · Perplexity: 2 · Google AI Overviews: 4
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 2 · Gemini: 2 · Perplexity: 2 · Google AI Overviews: 2
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 1 · Gemini: 1 · Perplexity: 1 · Google AI Overviews: 4
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 1 · Gemini: 1 · Perplexity: 2 · Google AI Overviews: 3
Show all 20 assessed businesses
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 1 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 4
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 2 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 3
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 1 · Perplexity: 1 · Google AI Overviews: 3
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 1 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 3
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 4 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 1 · Gemini: 1 · Perplexity: 1 · Google AI Overviews: 1
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 1 · Gemini: 1 · Perplexity: 1 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 3 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 2 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Citations by engine
ChatGPT: 0 · Gemini: 0 · Perplexity: 0 · Google AI Overviews: 0
Linked citations in four scored engines. Equal scores share a rank. Scores describe visibility in this panel, not business quality. Indicative panel.
Source: Ahrefs Brand Radar, Singapore, November 2026.
View data: AI citation leaderboard
| Rank | Business | Score | ChatGPT | Gemini | Perplexity | AI Overviews | Google rank | DR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| =1 | Randstad Singapore | 62.5 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 3 | – | 53 |
| =1 | ManpowerGroup Singapore | 62.5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | – | 42 |
| 3 | JTE Recruit | 50.0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | – | 3.8 |
| =4 | Corestaff | 43.8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | – | 26 |
| =4 | Michael Page Singapore | 43.8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | – | 50 |
| =6 | Robert Walters Singapore | 31.2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | – | 35 |
| =6 | Adecco Singapore | 31.2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | – | 81* |
| =6 | Hays Singapore | 31.2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | – | 42 |
| =9 | LUNOS | 25.0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | – | 1.2 |
| =9 | RecruitFirst | 25.0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | 36 |
| =9 | Robert Half Singapore | 25.0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | – | 84* |
| =12 | Morgan McKinley | 18.8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 70* |
| =12 | PERSOL Singapore | 18.8 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | – | 32 |
| 14 | Links International | 12.5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | – | 51 |
| =15 | Elevon Consulting | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| =15 | EPS Recruitment Singapore | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 20 |
| =15 | JAC Recruitment Singapore | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 34 |
| =15 | Liberte Consulting | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | 35 |
| =15 | One HR | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | 3.6 |
| =15 | The Supreme HR | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | 12 |
Engine columns show listed citation counts, summed across host variants. One answer can contribute more than once. The panel contains 10 questions and 40 stored answers, none missing. Score: up to 25 points per engine, with full marks at 4 citations, so scores move in steps of 6.25 (how the score works). It is not a quality rating. ”=” marks a shared score; the order within a tie is not a difference in performance. Google rank is the organic position for “recruitment agency singapore” (Ahrefs, 6 October 2026); ”–” means not in the recorded results. DR is Ahrefs Domain Rating; * marks a global domain shared with other countries. Answers last updated 15 October to 6 November 2026. Indicative: thin panel. Source: e-Alchemists analysis of Ahrefs Brand Radar data, Singapore, November 2026.
Four businesses (Links International, Liberte Consulting, One HR and The Supreme HR) entered through Ahrefs’ Google results for “hr outsourcing singapore”, dated 13 March 2023, so read their selection as historical. Three of the four have no citations on any of the six engines we recorded.
Randstad Singapore and ManpowerGroup Singapore each have 10 citations across the four scored engines. Five businesses are cited on all four engines and six on none.
Three findings
Morgan McKinley tops Google and shares =12 in AI
Morgan McKinley holds organic position 1 for “recruitment agency singapore”. On the AI score it shares =12 with PERSOL Singapore, on 3 citations. JAC Recruitment Singapore (Google 2), Elevon Consulting (Google 4) and EPS Recruitment Singapore (Google 6) have no citations in this panel on any of the six engines we recorded.
Listicles hold a fifth of the citations
Aggregators, mostly “best recruitment agencies in Singapore” listicles, take 30 of the 153 citations (20%) in the four scored engines’ top-15 lists. An aggregator is the single most-cited domain on Gemini and on Perplexity. On Perplexity it is terris.sg, a Singapore web-design agency whose blog ranks recruitment agencies; across all six engines it has 13 listed citations, against 11 for the top agency, Randstad Singapore. Recruitment businesses’ own sites take 71 of the 153 (46%) and government sites 33 (22%).
Fee guides appear among JTE Recruit’s cited pages
JTE Recruit has a Domain Rating of 3.8 and 8 citations, spread across all four scored engines. Its cited pages include a guide to what recruitment agencies cost in Singapore. Corestaff (DR 26) also has fee and “best agency” guides among its cited pages, and 4 AI Overview citations. Michael Page Singapore, with a DR of 50, has 7. These are small counts: one or two citations separate most neighbours in this table.
Who AI cites instead
On ChatGPT, government sites take half of the top-15 citations (25 of 50); the Ministry of Manpower is the single most-cited domain (9 citations) and ask.gov.sg is second (6). Microsoft Copilot (recorded, not scored) leans on listicles: aggregators take 15 of its 26 top-15 citations (58%), and secondtalent.com and terris.sg share first place on 3 each. Google AI Overviews gives agency websites their largest share, 29 of 44 (66%), and four domains share its lead on 4 citations each: Corestaff, Robert Walters Singapore, ManpowerGroup Singapore and the Ministry of Manpower.
Job boards matter more in the supplementary keyword panel (36 Google keywords with AI Overviews, about half of them job searches), where JobStreet and LinkedIn are each cited 13 times and MyCareersFuture 12.
Google vs AI in recruitment
Google organic position 1
AI rank: =12
Joint highest AI score: 62.5 / 100
Google term: recruitment agency singapore. AI ranks apply only within this panel; tied scores share their rank.
View data: Google vs AI in recruitment
| Position | Google: “recruitment agency singapore” | AI, by composite score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Morgan McKinley (AI =12) | =1 Randstad Singapore (not in Google’s organic results) |
| 2 | JAC Recruitment Singapore (AI =15, no citations) | =1 ManpowerGroup Singapore (not in Google’s organic results) |
| 3 | asanify.com (staffing-agency listicle) | 3 JTE Recruit (not in Google’s organic results) |
Technical readiness
Of the 20 businesses:
- 3 publish an llms.txt file.
- 4 put a barrier in front of AI crawlers; all four refuse a request that identifies itself as GPTBot.
- 13 have JSON-LD structured data on the homepage.
- 7 use LocalBusiness-type schema, and fewer than 3 have FAQ schema.
Fewer than three block GPTBot or another training crawler in robots.txt, and none bars an AI search crawler from its homepage there. Counts only, from one homepage check on 14 November 2026.
The recruitment playbook
Each move below is a test to run and track, not a result this study measured.
→ Test a fee page. Three of the 10 questions ask what agencies charge, and fee guides from JTE Recruit, Corestaff and LUNOS are among the pages AI cites. A clear page on your fee model is worth testing.
→ Check the listicles that get cited. Find the “best recruitment agencies in Singapore” pages your target engine cites, and check whether you are on them and described correctly.
→ Review crawler access deliberately. 4 of 20 businesses refuse a GPTBot user-agent; if that is a firewall default rather than a decision, look again. Confirm the AI search crawlers you care about can reach you, using their published verification methods and your logs; admitting GPTBot, a training crawler, is a separate policy call.
→ Write for both sides of the desk. Two of the 10 questions come from job seekers, three are about payroll and five about choosing or paying an agency. Test pages for candidates and for clients.
How this was measured
We took all 10 recruitment, employment-agency and payroll questions with a Singapore or buying modifier in Ahrefs Brand Radar’s Singapore prompt database and counted the citations to each business’s website in the 40 stored answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews (AI Mode and Copilot recorded, not scored). The 20 businesses are every eligible agency or HR firm on Google page one for “recruitment agency singapore” and “hr outsourcing singapore”, plus the businesses AI cites most; multinationals with a Singapore office count. With 10 questions, one or two citations either way is not meaningful. Measured, not modelled; pulled 14 November 2026. Full methodology.
The 10 questions in the recruitment panel
- Which recruitment agency is legit in Singapore?
- How does payroll work in Singapore?
- What agency can help me find a job in Singapore?
- Which recruitment agency is best in Singapore?
- How much do recruitment agencies charge in Singapore?
- Which agency is the best for Singapore jobs?
- Is Singapore payroll easy?
- How much does payroll services cost in Singapore?
- Do I have to pay a recruitment agency in Singapore?
- How much do employment agencies charge in Singapore?
Is something about your business wrong? Email admin@e-alchemists.com and we will check it against the data and correct it within five working days.