Last Updated on July 10, 2026
Every day, thousands of people do the same thing when the boiler packs in. They search for a heating engineer in their town and pick from the first page. The quiet assumption is that the top results are trustworthy local engineers. We decided to test that assumption with real searches, and the results are not what most people expect.
What we did
We ran the same search, “heating engineer [town] boiler repair”, across 15 UK towns spread from Sunderland to Plymouth. We took the first page of results for each, 149 links in total, and sorted every one into a plain category. Was it a real local firm’s own website, a directory, a manufacturer’s finder, or something else. Then we took a sample of the real local firms and checked whether you could actually verify them. The method and full list are at the end.
Finding one: a quarter of the first page is not a business you can check
Across the 149 results, 112 were genuine local firms with their own website, about three in four. That sounds reassuring until you look at the other quarter.
Twenty five percent of what appeared on page one was not a specific local business at all. Some were directories and national call-out brands with a page spun up for each town. A few were manufacturer finder tools. And a surprising chunk, more than one in ten of all results, were something we did not expect to find so often.
Finding two: the manufacturer name that is not the manufacturer
Every single doorway page we found, 18 in total, came from one network. It brands its pages “Fix Boilers” and it runs a set of websites built on the names of four well known boiler makers: idealboilers.net, vaillant-boilers.com, worcesterbosch-boiler.co.uk and glow-wormboilers.co.uk.
None of these are the manufacturers’ real websites. The genuine ones are idealheating.com, vaillant.co.uk, worcester-bosch.co.uk and glow-worm.co.uk. The network simply borrows the trusted brand name, spins up a near identical page for each town, and ranks. It showed up on the first page in 10 of our 15 towns.
For a homeowner this is easy to misread. You search, you see the name of your boiler brand at the top, and you assume you are dealing with the manufacturer or an approved local engineer. You are dealing with neither. You are dealing with a lead form.
Finding three: even the real firms rarely show a number you can check
Here is the part that matters most for trust. We took a sample of the genuine local firms and looked for the one thing that lets you verify a gas engineer: a Gas Safe registration number you can actually read.
Almost all of them said “Gas Safe registered” somewhere on the page. Only 3 of the 15 we checked showed an actual Gas Safe number in readable text. Just over half showed a company registration number. The rest asked you to take the words on trust.
That is the gap in one line. The claim is everywhere. The checkable number is rare.
Why this matters for AI search
This is not just a problem for people. It is a bigger problem for the AI tools more and more people now use to find a trade.
When you ask an AI assistant to recommend a heating engineer, it reads what is on the web and repeats it. If a doorway page borrows a manufacturer’s name, the AI has no easy way to know it is not the manufacturer. If a firm shows the words “Gas Safe registered” but hides the number inside a logo image, a person can see it but the AI cannot read it. So the AI passes on the claim it can read, verified or not.
A credential a machine cannot read is a credential that does not exist as far as AI search is concerned. That is the whole reason we built Whito. A listing that is checked against Companies House and written so both a person and an AI can read the detail is worth more than a page that simply asserts it.
What it means if you are looking for an engineer
Do not trust the brand name at the top of the results. Check whether the site is a real local firm or a national lead form, and be wary of a manufacturer name in an unusual domain. Look for a Gas Safe number, not just the words, and check it on the Gas Safe website. Then check the business on Companies House. Two minutes of checking cuts straight past the doorway pages. Our guide on checking the Gas Safe number, not the claim walks through exactly how.
What it means if you are an engineer
If you run a real, registered, Gas Safe business, the striking thing about this study is how easy it would be to stand out. Most of your competitors, and all of the doorway pages, do not show a checkable number. You can.
Put your Gas Safe number and your company number on the page in plain readable text, not buried in an image. Make yourself easy for a person to verify and easy for an AI to read. In a market where a quarter of the first page cannot be checked at all, being verifiable is not a nice to have. It is the advantage. That is the first move in our Start, Build, Scale guide for heating engineers.
Methodology and limitations
We searched “heating engineer [town] boiler repair” for 15 UK towns in July 2026 and classified the first page of organic results, 149 links, by domain and page type. Classification is our judgement based on the site, and some firms appeared more than once. For the verification sample we used automated fetching of 16 local firm sites, of which 15 loaded, checking the homepage and a linked contact page for a readable Gas Safe number and a company number. A credential shown only inside a logo image would not be counted, because it cannot be read by an automated tool or an AI assistant, which is the point rather than a flaw. This is a snapshot of one query type, not a census, and results will vary by search and over time.
The sharp takeaway
Search for a heating engineer and a quarter of the first page is not a business you can verify, led by a network of sites borrowing manufacturer names. Even among the real local firms, only a fifth showed a Gas Safe number you could actually check. The lesson cuts both ways. If you are buying, check the number, not the claim. If you are selling, show the number and win the trust that everyone else is asking you to take on faith.
Whito verifies UK heating engineers against Companies House and writes each listing so people and AI tools can read the detail. Find a verified heating engineer, or list your business free.
