We Searched "Best Electrician in London" on Google and Asked Gemini the Same Thing. Most of the Businesses AI Recommended Don't Even Rank on Google.

Every UK trades business owner has, at some point, googled their own trade and city to see where they land. Fewer have asked an AI assistant the same question and compared the two answers side by side. We did — twenty times, across four trades and five cities, with live browser automation and screenshots as evidence rather than guesswork — and the gap between what Google shows and what Gemini recommends is bigger, stranger, and more exploitable than we expected.

This is original research, not a syndicated report. Between the electrician, plumber, roofer and carpenter website work we do at GeoRankLocal, we kept hearing the same anxious question from trades clients: "if someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini for a recommendation, do I even come up?" So we tested it properly. We ran the exact same twenty searches — "best electrician in London," "best plumber in Manchester," "best roofer in Birmingham," "best carpenter in Leeds," and so on across London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow — first on Google UK, then on Google's own Gemini, in a real, logged-in browser session, on the same day. Then we checked, name by name, whether the businesses Gemini recommended actually appeared anywhere in Google's own results for the identical query.

The honest answer, most of the time, is no.

This piece covers the aggregate numbers and the cross-trade patterns. If you want the full screenshot-by-screenshot evidence for your own trade specifically — every Google result, every Gemini answer, the exact prompt typed into both — we've since broken each trade out into its own dedicated article: best electrician, best plumber, best roofer, and best carpenter.

Methodology: what we actually did

We picked four trades — electrician, plumber, roofer, carpenter — because they're the trades where "best X near me" is a genuinely common, high-intent search, and because they're the four trades we build websites for at GeoRankLocal. We picked five cities — London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow — to cover a spread of UK regions rather than just London.

For each of the twenty trade-and-city combinations we ran two searches:

1. Google, using google.com/search with UK region and language parameters forced (gl=uk&hl=en), recording the organic top-10, the local "map pack" businesses with their star ratings and review counts, and any sponsored ads, from a full-page capture.
2. Gemini, using the live gemini.google.com web app in a real, already-logged-in Chrome session (not an API call, not a simulation), asking the identical query in a fresh chat each time, and recording every business Gemini named in its answer, along with any ratings or descriptions Gemini itself attached to them.

We then cross-referenced every single business Gemini named against that same combination's Google results, screenshot in hand, and classified the result as a match (the exact business, verifiable, appears in Google's own organic or local-pack results for the identical search), a partial match (the business's name appears inside a directory's own indexed page, e.g. listed inside Checkatrade's or Trust A Trader's Google-ranking directory listing, rather than via its own site), or zero overlap (the business does not appear anywhere in Google's own top-10 or map pack for that query).

Every screenshot referenced in this piece was captured live during this test on 8 August 2026. Nothing here is simulated, extrapolated, or based on prior knowledge of how these tools "typically" behave — it's twenty real searches, twenty real AI answers, and a name-by-name check of both.

The headline numbers

Across all twenty combinations:

• 5 of 20 combinations (25%) showed zero overlap — not one single Gemini citation traceable anywhere in Google's own results for the identical query: "best electrician in London," "best roofer in Manchester," "best electrician in Birmingham," "best carpenter in Leeds," and "best plumber in Glasgow."
• 6 of 20 (30%) had only one verifiable match — a single Gemini citation traceable to Google, with the rest of the answer built from businesses invisible on Google's first page entirely.
• 5 of 20 (25%) had two verifiable matches, 3 of 20 (15%) had three, and one combination — "best electrician in Glasgow" — had four, the strongest single result anywhere in the test: four of Gemini's five citations independently matched Google's own organic or map-pack results for the identical query.
• Put those together and 9 of the 20 combinations (45%) had two or more independently verifiable matches; the other 11 (55%) had one match or none at all.
• Two businesses in the entire test achieved full "triple visibility" — appearing in Google's organic top-10, Google's local map pack, and Gemini's answer, all at once, for the identical search: Bespoke Carpentry London, for "best carpenter in London," and Qubic Carpentry Services, for "best carpenter in Birmingham."
• At least two confirmed cases of Gemini recommending a business with a below-average star rating: Churchill Roofing and Guttering (3.0★) for "best roofer in Manchester," and John Fulton (Plumbers) Ltd (3.5★) for "best plumber in Glasgow" — the latter cited at the identical 3.5★ rating on two separate occasions we ran the query, a reproduced rather than one-off result. Being cited by AI is clearly not a proxy for being the highest-rated option.

Put simply: if you're a genuinely good electrician, plumber, roofer or carpenter in one of these five cities, there is currently roughly a coin-flip chance that an AI assistant answering "best [your trade] in [your city]" won't mention you even if you rank on Google — and a meaningfully high chance it recommends someone else entirely, sourced from somewhere Google's own results never showed us.

What Gemini is actually drawing on — in its own words

The most useful evidence in this test isn't the mismatches themselves, it's the handful of times Gemini told us, unprompted, where its answer was coming from.

For "best plumber in Glasgow," Gemini's very first line read: "several businesses consistently receive high praise across trade verification directories like Checkatrade, Trusted Trader, and Google Reviews." For "best roofer in Leeds," Gemini's own description of DDK Roofing Leeds Ltd stated the business was "Checkatrade verified" — using Checkatrade's own trust language as if it were a native part of the answer. And for "best carpenter in Leeds," Gemini's text described RB Carpentry Services as "highly rated across checkatrade platforms (9.9+/10)" — despite RB Carpentry Services not appearing anywhere in Google's own top-10 results for that identical search.

That last example matters more than it looks. It means Gemini is pulling directory-sourced trust signals (a Checkatrade rating) for a business that isn't visible in Google's own organic results or map pack at all. The directory data is reaching the AI answer through some channel other than "this business ranks well on Google" — most likely Checkatrade's own structured, frequently-crawled pages, or a licensed/indexed data feed Google's Gemini has separate access to. Either way, ranking on Google and getting cited by Gemini are turning out to be two different games with two different scoreboards, and Checkatrade appears to be winning both.

That's a genuinely uncomfortable finding, because our search data shows real customers don't trust these directories much at all. In a Reddit r/london thread that itself ranks in Google's own top-10 organic results for "best plumber in London," the top answer reads: "All those aggregator sites like Checkatrade are rubbish — nobody wants a list of people…" In a Reddit r/glasgow thread ranking for "best electrician in Glasgow," a real user asks: "i don't really trust check a trade anymore, can anyone recommend any electricians?" Two separate cities, two separate trades, the same sentiment from real people — and yet Checkatrade appeared in the organic top-10 for all 20 of 20 searches we ran, Trust A Trader in 19 of 20, and Which? Trusted Traders in 15 of 20. Whatever real customers say they want, both Google's algorithm and, per the evidence above, Gemini's answer generation are currently rewarding the exact directories those customers say they distrust — because those directories are large, authoritative, and structured in a way individual trade websites usually aren't.

Direct evidence that third-party listicles are feeding AI answers

The single clearest, most traceable finding in the whole test came from "best roofer in London." Google's own organic results for that search included an article from HN Magazine titled "The 11 Best Roofers in London (Tested by Someone Who…)" — a third-party listicle, not a business's own website. Its number-one pick was a company called Bernard Andrews Roofing, styled "The Heritage Specialists."

When we asked Gemini the identical query, its top citation was — verbatim — Bernard Andrews Roofing. Not the roofer with the most Google reviews (that was Golden Roofing Expert, in Google's local map pack, which Gemini didn't mention at all). Not London Roofing Ltd either — a three-generation family business that was, in its own right, the highest-ranking individual roofing company anywhere in Google's organic results, sitting just one place below the HN Magazine listicle itself — but Gemini didn't cite it. The business Gemini named first was the one sitting at #1 inside someone else's magazine listicle, not the business with the strongest organic ranking or the best reviews of its own.

We found the same pattern, in a subtler form, on "best carpenter in London." Google's organic results included londonmultitrader.co.uk, with the on-page title "Best Carpenters In London — London Multi Trader." Gemini's answer cited a business labelled, near-verbatim, "Best Carpenter in London - London Multi Trader" — reproducing that page's own SEO-optimised title as if it were the business's actual recommendation ranking.

Neither of these findings is a coincidence. Together they're the clearest, most actionable finding in this entire study: a single, well-structured piece of third-party ranking content can directly seed what an AI engine tells your potential customers — for better if that content ranks you well, or for worse if it doesn't mention you at all. Out of the 20 searches we ran, we found genuine third-party "Top 5/Top 10 Best [Trade] in [City]" listicle content ranking on Google's own first page in at least 8 cases. Almost none of the actual trade businesses in our test had published anything like it about themselves. We found exactly one exception — MJ Kloss Carpentry & Joinery in London had self-published its own "Top 10 Best Carpenters and Joiners in London" listicle, ranking itself accordingly — which tells you how rare this AEO-native tactic still is among the businesses that would benefit most from it.

Star ratings don't gate AI citation — structure does

If you assumed AI assistants only recommend the highest-rated option, our data says otherwise, twice over. For "best roofer in Manchester," Gemini cited Churchill Roofing and Guttering, whose own listed rating was 3.0 stars — well below every other business Gemini or Google surfaced for that search. For "best plumber in Glasgow," Gemini cited John Fulton (Plumbers) Ltd at 3.5 stars, again below the businesses Google's own local pack ranked highest (The Glasgow Plumbers at 4.8★, Glasgow Plumbing Solutions at 4.9★).

We can't know Gemini's exact retrieval mechanism from the outside, but the pattern across all twenty tests is consistent: businesses with long trading histories, structured directory presences, or well-indexed content got cited regardless of their star rating, while several businesses with excellent Google reviews — 4.9 and 5.0 stars, hundreds of reviews — were never mentioned by Gemini at all for the identical search. Being good at your trade and being visible to Google reviewers isn't the same thing as being legible to an AI system. That's the entire premise of generative engine optimisation, and this test is about as concrete a demonstration of it as we've been able to produce.

Full result-by-result breakdown

The table below covers all twenty trade-and-city combinations tested, with the number of businesses Gemini cited, how many independently matched Google's own results for the identical query, and the single most notable piece of evidence from each.

City	Trade	Gemini citations	Verified on Google	Overlap	Notable finding
London	Electrician	5	0	Zero	None of Gemini's 5 citations appeared anywhere in Google's own organic or map-pack results
London	Plumber	3	1	Partial	Pimlico Plumbers matched; the other two were invisible on Google
London	Roofer	5	1	Partial	Bernard Andrews Roofing = #1 pick in an HN Magazine listicle that itself ranks on Google
London	Carpenter	5	2	Partial	Bespoke Carpentry London = only business with full Google organic + map pack + Gemini visibility
Manchester	Electrician	3	1	Partial	Matched name lifted from inside Checkatrade's own Manchester directory listing
Manchester	Plumber	2	1	Partial	JB7 Plumbing and Heating matched Google's organic result verbatim
Manchester	Roofer	4	0	Zero	Churchill Roofing and Guttering cited despite a 3.0★ rating
Manchester	Carpenter	5	1	Partial	Manchester Carpentry matched Google's local pack exactly (4.9★ both platforms)
Birmingham	Electrician	4	0	Zero	Re-tested live; zero of 4 citations traceable to Google, versus 2 matches on an earlier run — see note below
Birmingham	Plumber	3	2	Strong	Hancox Gas and Plumbing fully invisible on Google despite Gemini citing it
Birmingham	Roofer	4	3	Strongest	Windsor Roofing Solutions, Bratt Builders & Roofing, Paul Charles Roofing all matched
Birmingham	Carpenter	5	1	Partial	Triple-visibility: Qubic Carpentry Services matched Google organic, local pack, and Gemini simultaneously
Leeds	Electrician	5	2	Strong	Fletcher Electric and SmartWired Electrical Contractor both matched
Leeds	Plumber	5	3	Strongest	Plumbers Leeds and SFR Plumbing & Heating named in Google's local pack; John The Plumber visible as a pin on Google's own Maps result
Leeds	Roofer	6	2	Strong	DPR Roofing Leeds and AntiAqua Roofing Solutions both matched Google's organic results
Leeds	Carpenter	1	0	Zero	Zero overlap reproduced on a second run, with an entirely different business cited each time
Glasgow	Electrician	5	4	Strongest	Re-tested live; PWS, Bains Electrical, Home Rewire and Inspire Electrics all independently matched — the strongest single result in the whole test
Glasgow	Plumber	4	0	Zero	Re-tested live; zero of 4 citations traceable to Google, versus 1 partial match on an earlier run — see note below
Glasgow	Roofer	4	3	Strongest	J.Shearer Roofing, ADM Roofing and Cathcart Roofing all independently matched
Glasgow	Carpenter	5	2	Strong	AB Carpenters Ltd and The Baldy Carpenter both matched Google's organic results

A note on the "re-tested live" rows. While auditing our own screenshots for this piece, we found that six of the original Gemini captures had failed to render properly (a scroll-triggered fade animation had frozen mid-transition), so we re-ran those six queries from scratch, on fresh chats, to get usable evidence. Gemini gave us different cited businesses each time — not just reordered, but different companies entirely — which is itself a finding worth taking seriously: the specific businesses Gemini names for an identical prompt can change meaningfully between one run and the next, even on the same day. The table above reflects the re-run, verified data throughout. Birmingham electrician swung from 2 matches to zero; Glasgow electrician swung from 2 matches to 4, the strongest single result in the entire test. The overall pattern — a meaningful but incomplete overlap between what Google shows and what Gemini recommends — held steady across both the original and re-run data; only the specific business names moved. We've published the full re-run evidence, screenshots included, in our per-trade breakdowns linked below.

Which trade is most exposed?

Of the four trades tested, carpenters came out weakest on average. Across the five cities, Gemini's carpenter answers averaged just 1.2 independently-verified matches per city — the lowest of any trade — and "best carpenter in Leeds" produced a zero-overlap result we reproduced twice, on two separate runs, with a different business cited each time. Roofer had the single highest average of any trade, at 1.8 matches per city, though its results were also the most polarised: two of the three strongest 3-match results in the whole test were roofer searches (Birmingham and Glasgow), while the third roofer search, in Manchester, produced one of the five total zero-overlap results in the entire test. Roofing searches seem to consistently pull in accreditation bodies like the NFRC, CompetentRoofer and the Confederation of Roofing Contractors — exactly the kind of structured, authoritative, easily-parsed content an AI system can confidently attach to a named business, when that content exists locally. Electrician and plumber tied at an average of 1.4 matches per city, though electrician's results were the most polarised of any trade in the test: two cities (London, Birmingham) came back with total zero overlap, while Glasgow produced the single strongest result anywhere in this study, at 4 of 5 citations independently verified.

For the full city-by-city breakdown of each individual trade — every screenshot, every business name, every match — see our dedicated deep dives: best electrician, best plumber, best roofer, and best carpenter.

Carpentry, by comparison, has no equivalent trade-body infrastructure showing up anywhere in these twenty searches — which may be exactly why AI engines default more often to directory listings and generic listicles rather than a carpenter's own site. If you run a carpentry business in one of these five cities, this is the most concrete evidence we can offer that you are, right now, more likely than an electrician, plumber or roofer to be invisible to a customer asking an AI assistant for a recommendation.

What this actually means if you run a trades business

Three things stood out enough, across all twenty tests, that we'd call them findings rather than anecdotes.

Directory dominance and AI citation are two different, only loosely related problems. Checkatrade ranked in Google's organic top-10 for every single search we ran, and its data visibly feeds into Gemini's answers — sometimes as a citation source Gemini names directly. But Checkatrade being the most Google-visible source in your trade doesn't mean you — the actual person doing the work — are the one AI recommends. Across all 20 tests, Gemini named 83 businesses in total, and 54 of them — 65% — were invisible anywhere on Google's own first page for the identical search, meaning AI recommendation and Google ranking are not simply the same competition played on a different platform. You can win one and lose the other.

A single well-placed piece of third-party content can define your AI reputation, for good or bad. Bernard Andrews Roofing didn't get cited by Gemini because of its own marketing — it got cited because it was #1 in someone else's magazine listicle. If a business like that exists in your trade and city and doesn't mention you, that's a real, specific, addressable gap — and if none exists yet, publishing one yourself, the way MJ Kloss Carpentry did in London, is one of the few AEO tactics in this whole test we can point to with hard evidence that it works.

Being good and being findable are not the same skill. Star ratings, review counts, and genuine customer satisfaction clearly still matter to your business and to real people finding you on Google Maps. But they were not a reliable predictor of whether Gemini mentioned you. Structured, well-indexed, machine-readable information about your business — the kind schema markup, FAQ content, and clear service pages provide — appears to matter more to whether an AI engine can confidently cite you than your star rating does.

What to actually do about it

If you're one of the roughly half of businesses in your trade and city that would be invisible in this exact test, the fix isn't complicated, but it does require treating your website as a source an AI system can parse and trust, not just a page a human can read.

Start with our free GEO score tool to see where your own site currently sits — most trade websites we've audited score far closer to the invisible end of this test than the visible one. Then read our guide to schema markup for AI, because structured LocalBusiness, Review and Service schema is exactly the kind of machine-readable signal that appears to separate the businesses AI engines confidently cite from the ones they skip. If you want to see specifically where you currently do and don't get mentioned, our citation checker tool runs a version of the exact test we ran manually for this piece, against your own business name.

And if you'd rather have someone build this properly rather than patch it yourself, that's what we do for electricians, plumbers, roofers and carpenters specifically — websites and ongoing GEO built from the ground up to be legible to Google and to Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude at the same time, not one at the expense of the others. You can see our pricing here.

A note on limitations

This test covered one AI system — Gemini, via its live consumer web app, Flash model — tested once, on one day, for twenty specific searches. It's real, unsimulated evidence of how one major AI assistant answered these exact questions at this exact moment, not a permanent map of how every AI system will always behave. ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's own AI Overviews inside Search may weight sources differently, and Gemini's own answers will shift over time as its underlying data and retrieval methods change. We also found, while re-running six of the twenty queries to replace unusable screenshots, that Gemini itself is non-deterministic — the same prompt on a fresh chat, the same day, can return an entirely different set of cited businesses. What we're confident won't change is the underlying dynamic this test exposes: AI answer engines draw on a different, only partially overlapping set of signals than Google's organic and map-pack rankings do, and right now, most trade businesses in most UK cities have done nothing at all to make themselves legible to that second set of signals. That gap is the opportunity.

If you want to see the underlying evidence yourself rather than take our word for it, the four per-trade breakdowns — electrician, plumber, roofer, carpenter — each contain the full screenshot for every Google search and every Gemini answer referenced in this piece, city by city, with the exact prompt visible in every image.

We'll rerun this test periodically as the market shifts, the same way we've tracked the broader GEO landscape in our other research on this site. For now, the honest summary is this: if you're a genuinely excellent electrician, plumber, roofer or carpenter in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or Glasgow, there's a real chance the AI your next customer asks doesn't know you exist yet — not because your work isn't good enough, but because nothing about your website currently tells a machine that it is.