Updated 3 September 2026. Every number on this page carries the date it was measured and the source next to it. We will update this page as the numbers change, and we log corrections rather than making them quietly.
Whito tells UK businesses to publish proof instead of claims. This page is us taking our own advice: the operating numbers behind the site, including the ones that are unflattering.
What we have published
| URLs in our sitemap | 1,113 across posts, pages, listings, trades and help articles (site sitemap, 3 September 2026) |
| Posts and guides | 574 published (site content API, 3 September 2026) |
| Research reports and datasets | 148 in Research and Data (site content API, 3 September 2026) |
| Industry hubs | 39 (page sitemap, 3 September 2026) |
| Marketing leaderboards | 45 across 40 industries, every brand scored by hand (page sitemap, 3 September 2026) |
| Pages indexed by Google | 726 (Search Console, 24 July 2026). We have not re-read this since, so treat it as a July figure, not a September one. |
What AI search does with it
| Microsoft Copilot citations of Whito pages | 17,400 across 127 pages, 29 May to 28 August 2026 (Bing Webmaster Tools, read 29 August 2026) |
| Bing web search clicks in the same window | 167, from 10,400 impressions, a 1.6% click-through rate |
| Citations per click | 104. AI engines quote our work far more often than they send us visitors, and we think that trade is the future of being found |
Correction, 3 September 2026. Until today this section read 7,100 citations, 56 clicks and 127 citations per click. Those figures were true for the window 23 April to 21 July 2026, read on 23 July. They were superseded on 29 August by the figures above and this page was not updated at the time. The working is in Do AI citations drive traffic?, which sets out both sides of the ratio over the identical window.
What our checking has found
| AI-recommended businesses checked against Companies House | 728, of which 38, or 5.2%, could not be confirmed as trading in the town named (28 August 2026) |
| Tradespeople found by ordinary search and checked against Companies House | 64, of which 19 could not be verified as active registered companies (July 2026) |
| Directory listings checked in one study | 100, of which 29 were dead (July 2026) |
| Identical questions asked of AI engines in our recommendation study | 30, which returned 51 different plumbers (July 2026) |
| How often AI engines agreed on the best tradesperson | 8%, being 1 of 12 identical questions (30 June 2026) |
| Care services on the CQC register with no website recorded | 27,551 of 57,082, or 48.3% (register file dated 26 August 2026) |
The unflattering ones
We ran Whito through our own Whito Visibility Check in July 2026 and scored 48 out of 100. We published that result and what we were fixing. We re-ran the same check on 3 September 2026 and scored 80 out of 100. Both numbers stay on this page, because a business that only publishes the score it likes is doing the thing we tell people not to do.
Our own check has a known defect, recorded on 25 August 2026: its AI crawler guidance does not match what the crawler vendors document. We have said so on the pages that touch the subject rather than leaving it unmentioned, and it is not fixed yet.
Our Bing search clicks, 167 in three months, are small. We publish them anyway, because the citation number beside them is the one that matters and you cannot trust one without seeing the other.
The rules this site runs on
Every directory listing is checked against Companies House. Paid placement is always labelled. Reviews are never invented. Opinion is labelled as opinion and kept separate from research. Where we use numbers, we link them, and where a number is not published by a company, we say “not published” rather than guessing.
Hold your own business to the same standard
The free Whito Visibility Check checks how findable and trusted your business looks to customers and AI search in about two minutes.