Short answer
What we found
How many businesses each assistant names
Average number of businesses recommended per answer, and how often each assistant gave a clear recommendation at all:
Average businesses named per answer. Answer rate: Perplexity 100% · ChatGPT 99% · Claude 96% · Gemini 82%.
Why this matters for your business
More people now ask an AI assistant for a recommendation instead of scrolling Google. This data shows the game has changed twice over: being recommended by AI is a separate job from ranking on Google, andthe assistants don’t copy each other — so there’s no one list to win. The only way to know where you stand is to check each assistant for your own trade and area.
That’s exactly what a free MyBizRanked auditdoes — it asks the AI assistants who they recommend for your business, tells you in plain English whether you’re named, and gives you the fixes that make you more likely to be.
Method
Between 15–16 July 2026 we ran 120 searches — every combination of 12 common UK trades (plumbers, electricians, roofers, builders, painters & decorators, plasterers, landscapers, cleaners, locksmiths, carpenters, dentists, hairdressers) and 10 cities (London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Newcastle). For each, we asked all four assistants, with live web access, “Who are the best [trade] in [city], UK?” and recorded the businesses each one named. That’s 480 AI answers, using the same engine that powers every MyBizRanked audit.
An honest caveat:we extract recommended businesses from each assistant’s answer and its cited sources, so a small number of entries are article or directory titles rather than business names. That means per-engine “distinct businesses” counts are upper bounds — but it can only inflate apparent agreement, so the finding that the assistants almost never agree (0–2%) holds regardless.
Cite this research
MyBizRanked (2026). How AI recommends UK local businesses. Retrieved from https://www.mybizranked.com/research/how-ai-recommends-uk-local-businesses
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY 4.0). Journalists: contact ben@fixrsystems.com for the underlying data or regional/trade breakdowns.
FAQ
Do ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity recommend the same local businesses?
Almost never. Across 120 UK "best [trade] in [city]" searches, all four assistants named a single business in common in 0 of them, and the average overlap between any two engines was just 2%. Being recommended by one AI tells you little about the others.
Does ranking well on Google mean AI will recommend my business?
No — they are separate systems. Google's local pack and each AI assistant build their answers differently, so a business can rank on Google Maps yet be invisible to ChatGPT, and vice versa. That's exactly why we check both.
How can I find out if AI recommends my business?
Run a free MyBizRanked audit. It asks the AI assistants who they recommend for your trade and area and tells you, in plain English, whether your business is named — and the fixes that make you more likely to be.
Does AI recommend your business?
Find out in 60 seconds — free, no sign-up to start.
Run my free audit