Best Roofer in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds & Glasgow: Google vs Gemini, With Screenshots of Every Search
We tested "best roofer in [city]" on Google and Gemini across all five cities, with live screenshots of every search — including direct, traceable proof that a third-party "Best Roofers" listicle seeded Gemini's top London recommendation.
Awais M.
Founder of GeoRankLocal
This is the roofing-specific breakdown from our wider 20-search study across four UK trades, separated out so roofers can see their own city-by-city results directly. We ran "best roofer in [city]" through Google UK and through Gemini's live web app, in a real logged-in browser session, for London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow — every screenshot below captured live on 8 August 2026, same phrase, same day, both platforms.
Methodology, briefly
For each city we searched the identical query text on google.com/search (UK region forced), recording the organic top-10 and the local map-pack businesses with ratings and review counts, then asked Gemini the same question in a fresh chat at gemini.google.com/app, recording every business it named. Each Gemini citation was then checked, name by name, against Google's own results for the identical search. Full methodology is in the main study.
London: direct, traceable proof that a listicle seeded the AI answer
Google's organic results include HN Magazine's "The 11 Best Roofers in London (Tested by Someone Who…)" — a third-party listicle, not a business's own website — whose #1 pick is "Bernard Andrews Roofing – The Heritage Specialists." The local pack shows Golden Roofing Expert Ltd (5.0★, 468 reviews), DJM Roofing Ltd (4.9★, 140 reviews) and Victoria Roofing Expert Ltd (5.0★, 299 reviews) — none of which Gemini mentioned.
Gemini cited 1st Roofing Specialists, Environ Roofing Company, Bernard Andrews Roofing, Atlas Roofing Construction and GWS Roofing. This is the clearest single piece of evidence in either this article or the wider study: Bernard Andrews Roofing is a direct, verbatim match to the #1 entry in HN Magazine's listicle — not the roofer with the most Google reviews (that's Golden Roofing Expert, in the local pack, absent from Gemini's answer entirely), not the highest-organic-ranking individual roofer (London Roofing Ltd, a three-generation family business sitting just below the listicle in Google's own organic results, also absent from Gemini's answer) — the business sitting at #1 inside someone else's magazine ranking. 1st Roofing Specialists, Environ Roofing Company, Atlas Roofing Construction and GWS Roofing don't appear anywhere in Google's results for the identical search.
Manchester: zero overlap, and a below-average citation
Manchester's local pack shows MANCHESTER ROOFS LTD (5.0★, 116 reviews), LC Roofing (4.9★, 89 reviews) and K.H. Roofing (5.0★, 144 reviews). Best Roofers, Evolution Roofing and dm4roofingmanchester.co.uk appear organically.
Gemini cited North West Roofers, Urmston Roofing Ltd, Churchill Roofing and Guttering, and Manchester Industrial Roofing. Zero overlap with either Google's organic results or its local pack. Churchill Roofing and Guttering's own listed rating is 3.0 stars — well below every business in Google's own local pack (4.9–5.0★) — direct evidence that being cited by Gemini is not a proxy for being the highest-rated option in the market.
Birmingham: the strongest result in this article
Birmingham's local pack shows Bratt Builders & Roofing Specialists (4.9★, 181 reviews), Windsor Roofing Solutions (5.0★, 143 reviews) and SRB Roofing & Building (4.9★, 56 reviews). Paul Charles Roofing, C R Roofing and Elite Birmingham Roofing appear organically.
Gemini named Windsor Roofing Solutions (ranked #1, "Best Overall"), Cotton Roofing Services, Bratt Builders & Roofing Specialists and Paul Charles Roofing. Three of four verify — the strongest overlap in this article: Windsor Roofing Solutions and Bratt Builders & Roofing Specialists both match Google's own local pack exactly, and Paul Charles Roofing matches Google's organic result verbatim ("Paul Charles Roofing: Best Roofers Birmingham & Black Country," paulcharlesroofing.co.uk). Only Cotton Roofing Services is unverified on Google. Gemini also appended a detailed vetting checklist citing NFRC, TrustMark and the Federation of Master Builders.
Leeds: strong overlap, re-verified on a second run
Leeds' local pack shows Leeds And District Roofing Services LTD (4.8★, 230 reviews), Yorkshire Roofing (4.9★, 155 reviews) and West Leeds Roofing (5.0★, 75 reviews). DPR Roofing Leeds and AntiAqua Roofing Solutions appear organically, alongside Checkatrade, Which? and FMB.
We ran this query twice during the project, on separate fresh chats, and confirmed strong overlap both times. On the run behind this screenshot, Gemini cited DPR Roofing Leeds, G Horne Roofing Ltd, Greenhill Roofing, Yorkshire Heritage Roofing, R & D Sheridan Ltd and a business named as "SID Roofing/AntiAqua Roofing." Two matches verify independently: DPR Roofing Leeds matches Google's organic result verbatim, and the AntiAqua reference matches Google's organic "AntiAqua Roofing Solutions." Worth noting: Yorkshire Heritage Roofing is a different business from Google's local-pack "Yorkshire Roofing," despite the similar name — a reminder to check the actual business, not just a name that looks close. This run also displayed inline citation chips in the Gemini UI itself — grey pill labels reading "Good Builders," "Best Roofers Near You," "Which? Trusted Traders" and "Checkatrade" attached directly to specific claims — direct visual evidence of which third-party sources were feeding the answer.
Glasgow: another strong result
Glasgow's local pack shows Essence Roofers Glasgow (4.9★, 151 reviews), Cathcart Roofing (4.9★, 259 reviews) and Glasgow Roofing Contractors (4.9★, 169 reviews). J Shearer Roofing and ADM Roofing appear organically.
Gemini named J.Shearer Roofing Ltd, ADM Roofing, Fort Roofing Scotland and Cathcart Roofing. Three of four verify: J.Shearer Roofing and ADM Roofing both match Google's organic results verbatim — ADM's "award-winning" framing in Gemini's answer even matches the business's own site copy ("Won Best Roofing Contractor 2019") — and Cathcart Roofing matches Google's local pack exactly. Only Fort Roofing Scotland is unverified on Google.
The roofer scoreboard, all five cities
| City | Gemini citations | Verified on Google | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 5 | 1 | Partial — but directly traceable to a listicle |
| Manchester | 4 | 0 | Zero overlap |
| Birmingham | 4 | 3 | Strongest result in the test |
| Leeds | 6 | 2 | Strong |
| Glasgow | 4 | 3 | Strongest |
Across all five cities, Gemini named 23 roofing businesses, of which 9 (39%) were independently verifiable on Google. Roofing produced the highest number of 3-match "strongest" results of any trade in our wider four-trade study — Birmingham and Glasgow both scored 3 of 4 here — likely because roofing searches pull in accreditation bodies like the NFRC, CompetentRoofer and the Confederation of Roofing Contractors, which are exactly the kind of structured, authoritative content an AI system can confidently attach to a specific business.
What this means if you're a roofer
The London result is the single most actionable finding across our entire study, for any trade: a third-party "Best Roofers" listicle put one business at #1, and Gemini repeated that ranking almost exactly, ahead of roofers with more reviews and stronger organic positions of their own. If a "Top 10 Best Roofers in [Your City]" article exists and doesn't mention you, that's a specific, findable, addressable gap — not an abstract disadvantage. Birmingham and Glasgow show the flip side: when your business is genuinely well-reviewed, consistently named, and backed by recognisable trade-body language on your own site, Gemini and Google tend to agree with each other, not just with whichever article ranks highest that week.
Run "best roofer in [your city]" on Google and Gemini yourself and see where you land — it takes about two minutes. Our free GEO score tool shows what's missing from your own site's structure, and our guide to schema markup for AI covers the specific changes that seem to help most. If you'd like this built properly, roofer website design is one of our core services at GeoRankLocal.
For the same test across electricians, plumbers and carpenters — plus the combined four-trade dataset — see the main study.
Awais M.
Founder of GeoRankLocal
Awais M. is the founder of GeoRankLocal, a UK-wide agency that builds AI-citable websites and manages ongoing GEO and SEO for businesses across the United Kingdom. He writes about generative engine optimisation, the shift from search to AI discovery, and what UK SMBs need to do to stay visible in the AI search era.
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