Free sample · Whito Intelligence
UK Electricians, July 2026. Read the sample before you buy the report.
We asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode to recommend a trustworthy electrician in 15 UK towns, recorded every business they named, and checked all 182 of them against the Companies House register.
This page is the sample. It contains the full method, the headline findings and one complete town. The paid edition covers all fifteen.
The headline findings
The engines are not describing the same market
Across 45 answers the three engines produced 237 business mentions covering 182 unique businesses. Only 11 of those, about 6%, were named by all three. In 8 of the 15 towns the engines shared no business at all.
If you sell visibility to trades, that is the commercial fact that matters. There is no single ranking to optimise for, and appearing in one engine tells you almost nothing about the others.
Half of the businesses could not be verified
93 of the 182 businesses named, 51%, could not be confirmed as an active registered company operating in the town they were recommended for. Most of that gap is sole traders, who are legitimate but do not appear on the register at all. We count them as unverified, not as fake, and we keep that distinction throughout.
The engines recommend companies that no longer exist
Nine of the 182 had a nearest register match that was dissolved or in liquidation. Six were clear-cut enough to name, and they are named in the full report with company numbers and dissolution dates. In 6 of the 15 towns, at least one engine recommended a company we could show was no longer trading.
The finding underneath the findings
None of these engines checks whether the business it recommends still exists. There is no register lookup in the loop. That is not a bug awaiting a patch, it is a structural gap, which is why this index is worth reading every quarter rather than once.
The method, in full
Stated so you can attack it. If a figure here cannot survive you checking it, we would rather you found that out before you paid us.
The prompt
One prompt, identical everywhere, typed as a customer would type it: "Recommend a trustworthy electrician in [town]". No follow-up questions. The first answer was recorded as given.
The engines
ChatGPT (free tier), Gemini (free tier, Flash-Lite) and Google AI Mode (logged in). All data collected on 9 July 2026. ChatGPT dropped to its Mini model partway through the run and we recorded it as-is, because that is what a free-tier customer sees. Gemini served two conflicting answers to the same Nottingham question via an A/B screen.
The towns
Reading, Sunderland, Swansea, Leeds, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Bristol, Doncaster, Ipswich, Preston, Stoke-on-Trent, Milton Keynes, Norwich and Plymouth. Chosen to spread across England and Wales and to avoid the largest cities, where brand recognition rather than local visibility drives the answer.
How names were matched
Two engines rarely write a business name the same way. Before comparing we lower-cased each name, removed punctuation, stripped company suffixes, removed a trailing town name and singularised. So "Wired Electrical" and "Wired Electricals" count as one business.
This is a judgement call and we are telling you it is one. A stricter rule pushes the unique-business count to 192 and the three-engine agreement rate down to about 4%. The direction of the finding does not change either way, but the second decimal place is not real, so we do not print one.
Verification against Companies House
| Category | What it means |
|---|---|
| A. Verified | Active registered company, name matches, registered in or near the town it was recommended for. |
| B. Active, unconfirmed | An exact-name active company exists, but the register does not confirm it operates in that town. |
| C. No match | No plausible match. Many of these will be legitimate sole traders. |
| D. Dissolved or in liquidation | The nearest register match is dissolved or in liquidation. |
| E. Wrong place | Active company, registered a long way from the town it was recommended for. |
Totals across all 182: A 89, B 16, C 67, D 9, E 1.
One town in full: Coventry
This is what the other fourteen town pages look like. Names are reproduced exactly as each engine wrote them.
| ChatGPT | Gemini | Google AI Mode |
|---|---|---|
| Volts | BES Electrical Limited | JM Electrical (Coventry) Ltd |
| Ray of Light Electrical Services Ltd | Ray of Light Electrical Services | MF Electrical Solutions |
| BT Electrical Services Coventry | JM Electrical (Coventry) Ltd | Ez-Electricians |
| Sparkes Electrical Solutions Ltd | Electrical Experts | BES Electrical Limited |
| Daniel's Electrical Services (Cov) Ltd | C A Martin Electrical | |
| Eco-Voltz Ltd Electrical Contractors | ||
| Coventry Electrical Solutions | ||
| BES Electrical Contractors |
Coventry verification: 13 unique businesses named. 8 verified as active in the area (62%), 0 active but unconfirmed, 4 with no register match, 1 dissolved. One business recommended by ChatGPT had been dissolved since 2023. It is named in the full report.
Three engines, one question, thirteen different businesses. Only one name appears in all three answers.
The full edition
All fifteen towns with their own named results and verification split. Every dissolved company named, with company numbers and dates. Engine by engine analysis, what it means by buyer type, and the raw data as CSV so you can run your own cuts rather than trusting ours.
£59526 pages, PDF plus CSV, licensed to one company. VAT added at checkout where applicable.
Whito Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 10918465. Findings describe what the named AI engines returned on 9 July 2026, verified against the public Companies House register. AI engine responses vary between runs and change over time. Nothing here is a statement about the quality, competence or conduct of any business named. If you find an error, tell us and we will correct it, publish the correction and email everyone who bought the report. See our editorial policy and data and sources.