We Logged Every Website ChatGPT and Gemini Cited for 36 UK Business Recommendations. Reddit Won.

Last Updated on July 21, 2026

The short version

• We asked ChatGPT and Gemini the identical question, “Recommend a trustworthy [business] in [town]”, 36 times across six categories and three UK towns, and logged every website they cited.
• Reddit was ChatGPT’s most-cited source: 10 of 18 answers. Yell, Yelp and Facebook were cited zero times. Trustpilot: once.
• The second biggest source was businesses’ own websites, cited 9 times. AI will quote your site directly, if it can read it.
• Gemini showed no sources at all in 13 of 18 answers. When it did cite, it was trades only: Checkatrade, TrustATrader, MyBuilder, Gas Safe Register.

Ask most UK business owners where they need to be listed and they will say Google, then maybe Yell or Facebook. Ask the AI tools their customers now use, and you get a very different list.

On 19 July 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Gemini for a trustworthy plumber, electrician, dentist, accountant, cafe and hair salon in Leeds, Nottingham and Reading. Thirty-six identical questions, one ask each, fresh chat every time. Then we logged every website behind every source link in every answer: 57 citations in total.

In a July 2026 Whito test of 36 identical questions, Reddit was cited in 10 of ChatGPT’s 18 answers, more than any business directory, and Yell was not cited once.

The league table

These are the websites that decided the answers, ranked by how many citations they earned across all 36 answers.

And the famous names that did not make it: Yell, zero citations. Yelp, zero. Facebook, zero. Trustpilot, one. The directories most businesses pay for barely featured.

Reddit is the front door

Reddit appeared in more than half of ChatGPT’s answers, across plumbers, electricians, dentists, cafes and salons. Real people recommending real businesses in local threads is exactly the corroboration an AI answer wants. If your town has an active subreddit and your name never appears in it, you are invisible to the most-cited source there is. You cannot spam it, and you should not try. But delighted customers mentioning you organically is now a ranking signal.

Your own website is the second biggest source

Nine citations went straight to businesses’ own websites, and for dentists it dominated: in Nottingham, all three cited sources were practices’ own sites. AI tools will quote you directly when your site states clearly what you do, where, and for whom. This is the strongest argument yet for a website a machine can read: services in plain text, town names on the page, no message hidden inside images. It is also exactly what a Whito Pro report checks each month.

The directories that matter are not the ones you think

ThreeBestRated, a curation site most owners have never paid a penny to, out-cited every household name. Checkatrade earned its place for trades on both tools. And each category had its own specialist source the AI trusted: SalonSpy for salons, Doctify and WhatClinic for health, VouchedFor for accountants, MyBuilder for trades on Gemini. The pattern: AI reaches for curated, structured, niche directories over big general ones. Being on the right two or three lists for your trade beats being on twenty generic ones.

Local press and tourism sites punch above their weight

Discover Leeds, Visit Reading, Yorkshire.com, Leeds Daily and Reading Today together earned five citations, mostly deciding the cafe answers. A mention in your local paper’s “best coffee” round-up is now AI training material. Local PR, long dismissed as unmeasurable, has a measurable new job.

Gemini plays it differently

Gemini named plenty of businesses but showed visible sources in only 5 of 18 answers, and every one was for trades: Checkatrade, TrustATrader, MyBuilder, Gas Safe Register, and the government’s Competent Person register. Two lessons. First, for trades, registration bodies are citation sources, so your Gas Safe or NICEIC listing is marketing as well as compliance. Second, most of Gemini’s picks arrive with no audit trail at all, which makes the signals it leans on, your Google Business Profile and reviews, matter even more.

What to do with this

In order, and mostly free:

1. Make your own website quotable: plain-text services, towns served, answer-first pages. AI cites readable sites directly.
2. Get on the two or three directories that matter for your category, not twenty generic ones. For trades: Checkatrade or TrustATrader plus your registration body. Salons: SalonSpy. Health: Doctify. Accountants: VouchedFor.
3. Earn local press mentions: best-of round-ups in local news and tourism sites feed the cafe and hospitality answers almost entirely.
4. Never buy Reddit mentions, but make being recommended easy: memorable name, consistent details, service worth posting about.

This is also why the Whito directory is built the way it is: structured, verified against Companies House, and readable by machines. When AI goes looking for a trustworthy list, we intend to be one.

Method notes

All 36 questions were asked on 19 July 2026, worded identically: “Recommend a trustworthy [category] in [town]”. Six categories (plumber, electrician, dentist, accountant, cafe, hair salon) across Leeds, Nottingham and Reading. ChatGPT free tier in temporary chat mode with memory off, fresh chat per question. Gemini free tier, fresh chat per question. We logged the domains behind visible source links in each answer, deduplicated per answer: 57 citations in total. One ask per question, so this measures which sources surface, not how often the same answer repeats; our lottery study covers that. Collapsed source panels were not expanded, so citation counts are conservative. Full capture log available on request.

The takeaway

AI recommendations are built from a short list of sources, and it is not the list most businesses spend money on. Real conversations, readable websites and the right niche directory beat the big names. Be quotable where the machines actually read. Structure before scale, as ever.

Jacob Whitmore Whito Ltd - Co founder

Jacob is a UK SEO and growth strategist helping small businesses grow without wasting money.With experience inside competitive, performance-driven brands, he focuses on what actually drives enquiries and revenue. Through Whito, he helps businesses simplify their marketing, fix what is not working, and build systems that deliver consistent results.

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