AI visibility for UK local services: publish the registration number somebody else can check
Measured on 15 October 2026 across 204 UK readings of ChatGPT and Gemini: the schemes a British trade is already registered with, postcode district service areas, and what the measured 0.8% says about directories.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 16 October 2026
The cheapest thing a British local business can publish, and the most valuable, is a registration number somebody else can check. A gas engineer's Gas Safe registration, an electrician's competent person scheme membership, a care provider's regulator rating, a broker's entry on the Financial Services Register, a company number at Companies House: each one is a fact an assistant can commit to because it is verifiable off your own website. Add the service area written as postcode districts and named towns, opening hours that account for bank holidays, and prices in pounds with the VAT position clear, and you have given an engine everything it needs to name you. Across the 204 UK readings in our 15 October 2026 benchmark, 102 questions put to ChatGPT and the same 102 put to Gemini, our own domain was cited once, by ChatGPT, and not at all by Gemini.
What was measured, and what it says about directories
The questions were buying questions in one category, AI visibility, asked across three markets. No separate measurement was run per trade, so there is no citation rate for plumbers, electricians or salons in it. What the dataset does carry, and what changes a local marketing budget, is where the citations went.
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Date run | 15 October 2026 |
| Engines | ChatGPT and Gemini |
| Usable readings | 597 of 612 attempted |
| UK readings | 204 |
| UK readings citing our own domain | 1 |
| Citations recorded | 10,652 across 2,708 distinct domains |
| Business's or agency's own site | 85.6% |
| Official or platform documentation | 9.7% |
| Review directories | 0.8% |
That bottom row is the one worth arguing about. The standard advice to a local business absent from an AI answer is to buy more directory presence. Review directories took 0.8% of 10,652 citations on that date, while 85.6% went to a page on the business's or the agency's own site. Keep the free listings correct, because they carry your trading facts, and put the money and the afternoons into your own pages. Our product reads five surfaces, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews, and this dataset covers two of them, with the method set out in what AI assistants actually cite across 597 readings of ChatGPT and Gemini in three markets.
The city evidence, and what it does not cover
On 15 and 16 October 2026 we also ran six buying questions per city across ten named cities on both engines, 120 readings, and our own domain was not cited once. In the three British cities in that set the sources that did get cited were small, city specific domains: generativeengineoptimizationuk.agency, firstmotion.com and agentcraft-ai.com in London, mainchester.co.uk, popula.co.uk and rank4ai.co.uk in Manchester, and get-found.co.uk and seocompare.co.uk in Birmingham. Those questions were about buying our own kind of service, not about hiring a tradesperson, so treat the result as a lesson about how the engines behave rather than as a measurement of your trade. The lesson is the useful bit: the domain that was specifically about the city took the answer, and none of those businesses is large. For a city we did not measure, there is no figure, and the honest thing to carry is the UK market number of 204 readings.
Registrations and ratings: write the number, not the badge
| Trade | The verifiable credential |
|---|---|
| Gas work | Gas Safe registration, with the registration number and the categories of work it covers |
| Electrical work | Membership of a competent person scheme such as NICEIC or NAPIT, with the scheme and number |
| Building and home improvement | TrustMark registration, and any scheme covering the specific work |
| Care, nurseries and clinics | The regulator's registration and published rating for the nation you operate in |
| Insurance, mortgage and finance intermediaries | The firm reference number on the Financial Services Register |
| Security and door supervision | Security Industry Authority licence details |
| Any limited company | Registered name and company number at Companies House, and the registered office |
| A VAT registered business | The VAT registration, which tells a commercial customer how to treat the invoice |
Two sentences on a page, naming the scheme, the number and the work it covers, with the date you last checked it, outranks a wall of scheme logos for exactly one reason: a logo is a picture and a sentence is text. If you are a sole trader rather than a limited company, say so plainly and say who is accountable. Buyers are not put off by a sole trader. They are put off by not being able to tell.
Service area in postcode districts, not a radius
British customers describe where they are by postcode district, by town and by neighbourhood, and almost never by distance from your yard. A page that says it covers a radius in miles cannot be matched to the way the question is asked. List the postcode districts you genuinely work in, with the towns and the larger villages named, and say where a call out charge changes or where you will not travel. That list is also the only honest basis for separate pages: one page per area you really serve, each carrying the local detail only you have, rather than a hundred near identical pages with a place name swapped in.
Hours, status and prices, written as a British customer asks about them
- Opening hours including bank holidays, and remember the bank holidays in Scotland are not the same as those in England and Wales. A business described as open when it is shut, or shut when it is open, is the single most expensive error in this trade, and it usually comes from a stale listing rather than from your own site. The source by source method for fixing it is in when AI says your business is closed.
- Prices in pounds, and the VAT position stated. A consumer price is the total the customer pays, so quote it that way; a trade price quoted excluding VAT should say so next to the figure.
- A from price with its drivers named. What the figure covers, what pushes it up, what a call out costs outside normal hours, and when a survey is needed before any figure is possible.
- Emergency and out of hours terms, because that is the question with the most urgency and the least published detail.
- Structured data that matches the page. A copyable block and what it does is in LocalBusiness schema.
The consistency argument behind all of this, written for any market rather than for Britain, is in one set of facts, everywhere, and what a local package should cost per location, line by line, is in local SEO services and the line items it has to name.
One more British line: the claim itself
Local advertising copy is where superlatives collect, and UK claims sit under the CAP Code with the ASA able to be asked about them. The practical version is simple and it helps here anyway: replace the adjective with the fact. Years trading, the scheme you are registered with, the areas covered, the response time you actually hold. Each one is checkable, each one is quotable, and none of them needs defending.
Questions about AI visibility for a UK local service business
Should I pay for a trade directory subscription?
Judge it on the leads it sends you, not on whether it feeds AI answers. On 15 October 2026 review directories accounted for 0.8% of the 10,652 citations recorded, against 85.6% to businesses' own sites, so it is not the route to being named.
My address is my home. Do I have to publish it?
No. Describe the service area instead, list the postcode districts, and keep the same wording everywhere. Consistency is what builds one clear business rather than three vague ones.
Do reviews still matter?
They matter to the customer deciding, and they matter on your profile. As a source for an assistant's answer the measured contribution of review directories was small, so treat reviews as a conversion asset and your own pages as the visibility asset.
How many area pages is too many?
One per area you genuinely serve and can write something true about. If two pages differ only by the place name, they are one page and should be merged.
How do I check this myself?
Ask the six questions your customers ring with, in their words, with no business name in them, twice on ChatGPT and twice on Gemini, and write down who was named and which sources were cited. Change the pages, then ask the same six again a month later.
The number on the van, in text
Every British trade already carries proof it is real: a scheme registration, a rating, a company number, a VAT number, an insurer. Most websites show them as pictures in a footer. Writing them out as sentences, alongside a postcode district list and prices in pounds, is an hour of work that changes what an assistant is able to say about you. We sell the scan and the pages that follow it, so here is our own figure to judge us by: one citation of our domain in 204 UK readings, and none across 120 city readings, on 15 and 16 October 2026. AI Knows Us publishes that because a trade built on verifiable registrations deserves a supplier that works the same way.