Last Updated on August 24, 2026
Ask an AI engine for a trustworthy tradesperson and it no longer gives you a list. It gives you an answer. This index records who is in that answer, sector by sector, town by town, and which sources put them there. Collected 22 August 2026 across 20 UK towns. Updated quarterly.
The Whito AI Visibility Index is a free quarterly index of which businesses Google’s AI Mode recommends for local work in the UK. Edition one covers 8 sectors in 20 towns: 160 answers, 734 recommended businesses, every answer logged on 22 August 2026. Roofers are the most platform-dependent sector, with a review platform behind the AI’s recommendation in 100% of towns. Dentists are the least, at 5%. Checkatrade sits behind 50 of the 60 trade answers.
Most businesses still ask “how do I rank on Google”. The question that matters more each quarter is narrower: when someone asks an AI engine to recommend a trustworthy electrician, plumber, roofer, cleaner, vet, dentist, accountant or estate agent in their town, whose name comes back, and what put it there.
Nobody was measuring that across UK sectors on a fixed panel. So we did. One prompt, “Recommend a trustworthy [trade] in [town]”, run once for each of eight sectors in each of 20 towns from Reading to Belfast, on Google AI Mode, on one day. No retries, no cherry-picking, every answer logged. The full method is at the bottom of this page.
The index: how each sector’s AI visibility works
Sectors are ranked by platform dependence: the share of town answers where a third-party review platform or comparison portal (Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Which? Trusted Traders, MyBuilder, ThreeBestRated, GetAgent, Rightmove and similar) was cited as a source behind the recommendation. High means the platforms are the gatekeepers. Low means your own website and Google reviews are.
| Rank | Sector | Platform dependence | Businesses named per answer | Average star rating of named businesses | Named below 4.5 stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roofers | 100% of towns | 4.0 | 4.87 | 2 of 71 |
| 2 | Plumbers | 95% of towns | 4.5 | 4.92 | 1 of 82 |
| 3 | Electricians | 90% of towns | 4.2 | 4.96 | 0 of 78 |
| 4 | Cleaners | 70% of towns | 5.5 | 4.78 | 10 of 88 |
| 5 | Estate agents | 40% of towns | 4.8 | 4.75 | 5 of 79 |
| 6 | Accountants | 25% of towns | 4.3 | 4.89 | 5 of 76 |
| 7 | Vets | 15% of towns | 4.7 | 4.68 | 8 of 71 |
| 8 | Dentists | 5% of towns | 4.9 | 4.83 | 3 of 56 |
160 answers: 20 towns per sector. Star figures cover businesses whose Google rating was shown in the answer. Two answers needed a same-day re-run and one generated partially; all disclosed in the method.
What the data shows
1. The trades run through Checkatrade. The professions do not.
Checkatrade was cited as a source in 50 of the 60 electrician, plumber and roofer answers, with TrustATrader behind it. In the professional sectors the platforms nearly vanish: dentist answers cited a trade platform in 1 town of 20, vets in 3, accountants in 5. There, the engine built its recommendations from the businesses’ own websites (cited in every dentist and accountant answer) and Google review profiles. Two different economies, one prompt.
2. There is a rating floor, but not for brands
Among electricians, not one recommended business showed a rating below 4.7. Across all eight sectors, 34 businesses in roughly 600 shown with ratings sat below 4.5 stars, and the list is dominated by big names: national cleaning franchises (Time For You in three towns at 4.3, Well Polished at 3.5 to 4.4, Merry Maids at 3.8, Daily Poppins at 3.0), mydentist branches, Belvoir, and Scotland’s largest independent accountancy firm at 3.4 stars. An independent needs a near-perfect score to be named. A recognised brand gets named anyway.
3. Reddit and Facebook are now referees, and they cut both ways
Community sources, mostly local subreddits and town noticeboards, fed 51 of the 160 answers, and estate agency was the most community-driven sector of all (11 towns in 20). The engine did not just relay praise. In Reading it warned against three named agency chains “based on local homebuyer communities”. In Milton Keynes it flagged a national chain for conditional selling, citing Reddit. In Glasgow it passed on a “stay away” warning about a lettings firm. What a town’s Reddit thread says about a business is now part of the answer.
4. The engine contradicts itself between towns
The same national estate agency chain that was flagged as a red flag in the Milton Keynes answer was recommended as the top choice in the Wolverhampton answer, on the same day, from the same prompt. Sector-level patterns are stable; individual verdicts are not. That is precisely why this index reports rates, not league tables.
5. A 2.0-star business was called trustworthy
In Swansea, the roofing answer recommended a firm whose own Google listing, shown inside the same answer, displayed 2.0 stars from 4 reviews. The recommendation rested on a trade body membership. Credentials can outrank customers, and the engine will not warn you when they do.
6. An SEO-bait layer is feeding the machine
Sites of the “Top 10 X in [town]” variety, ThreeBestRated, BestLocalRated, topratedroofers.co.uk, top10propertyagents.co.uk and their cousins, were cited in 23 of the 160 answers, most heavily for accountants. Pages most business owners have never heard of are quietly deciding who the engine names.
What a small business should do with this
This is Build stage work, not clever tactics. Find where your sector sits in the table. If you are a trade, the platforms are the gatekeepers: your Checkatrade or TrustATrader record needs to be current, complete and above the rating floor before you spend a pound on anything else. If you are a practice or a firm, your own website and your Google review profile are doing the work, and the local Reddit thread about you is part of your marketing whether you have read it or not.
The full sector detail, £595
This page shows the sector-level picture. The paid report for any one sector contains the complete record: every business named, in every town, with every source the engine cited, ratings, and the town-by-town tables. Built to order from the same collection run and delivered within one working day.
Buy a sector report, £595 Or see everything Whito Intelligence offers
Method in full
Prompt. One prompt shape used identically everywhere: “Recommend a trustworthy [trade] in [town]”. One run per prompt. No retries of answers that generated, no regeneration, no cherry-picking.
Towns (20). Reading, Sunderland, Swansea, Leeds, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Bristol, Doncaster, Ipswich, Preston, Stoke-on-Trent, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Plymouth, Glasgow, Belfast, Mansfield, Blackpool, Wolverhampton. The same panel as our July 2026 studies, so future editions compare like with like.
Sectors (8). Electricians, plumbers, roofers, cleaners, vets, dentists, accountants, estate agents. A sector enters the index only when its full 20-town panel has been collected.
Engine. Google AI Mode, queried at google.com/search?udm=50 from a signed-in UK account on 22 August 2026. This is a one-engine index and says so on its face. Other engines will be added only when a full clean panel can be collected on them.
Extraction. Every business presented as a recommendation in the answer body was recorded, whether it appeared as a local business card or a headed prose entry. Ratings and review counts were recorded exactly as displayed. Sources are the platforms, directories, community threads and websites the answer cited.
Failures, disclosed. During collection Google intermittently refused to generate answers (“Something went wrong”) after roughly 100 rapid queries; collection paused and resumed. The Blackpool vets answer generated partially, naming one business, and is recorded as given. The Wolverhampton vets answer succeeded on a later same-day run after three refusals. Three vets answers (Milton Keynes, Norwich, Plymouth) were captured on a same-day second run after a logging fault voided the first. Nothing else was re-run.
Limits. AI answers vary between runs, so a single-run panel is a snapshot, not a stable ranking of any individual business. The contradiction finding above shows exactly that. This is why the index reports sector-level rates, not business league tables. The second decimal place is not real.
Cadence. Collected and published quarterly on the same panel. Next edition: December 2026. Movement against this baseline will be published from edition two.
Common questions
Which platforms does Google AI Mode use to recommend tradespeople?
In this collection, Checkatrade was the most-cited platform for the trades, appearing as a source in 50 of 60 trade-sector answers, followed by TrustATrader, Which? Trusted Traders, ThreeBestRated and MyBuilder. For professional sectors the engine leant on business websites and Google review profiles instead.
What star rating does a business need to be recommended by AI?
Among electricians in this panel, nothing below 4.7 stars was named. Across all eight sectors only 34 of roughly 600 rated businesses sat below 4.5, and most of those were recognised national brands, which were recommended with ratings as low as 3.0.
Does AI recommend independent businesses or big brands?
In the trades, almost entirely independents. In cleaning, national franchises took a large share of recommendations even with weaker ratings. In veterinary and dental answers the engine repeatedly favoured independents and said so explicitly.
Do Reddit and Facebook affect AI recommendations?
Yes. Community sources were cited in 51 of 160 answers, and in several towns the engine relayed warnings from local threads naming specific companies to avoid.
How often is this index updated?
Quarterly, on the same prompt, towns and method, so results are comparable between editions. This page always holds the current edition.
This research may be quoted with attribution. If your business is affected by anything reported here, the corrections route at the foot of this page applies.
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