Will ChatGPT recommend your accountancy practice?

168 accountancy practices, three engines

We asked each engine the question a new client asks before they have a name: “Who are the best accountants in <town>?”. Then we asked what each engine knew about every firm by name. Here is what came back for the 168 independent accountancy practices in our sample.

13 of 168

named by at least one engine when asked for the best accountants in their town

8 · 4 · 7

named by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity in turn

130 of 168

described by all three engines when asked about the firm by name

99 of 168

had at least one engine that could not say who runs the firm

88 of 168

had at least one engine treat their own claims as marketing

62 of 168

got different answers from the engines to the same factual question

The engines know most of these firms. They just rarely put them on a shortlist. For 10 firms, at least one engine mixed them up with a similarly named company.

Reviews and who got named

Of the 7 practices with 50 to 199 Google reviews, 5 were named. Of the 132 with fewer than 10 reviews, 5 were named. Most accountants in our sample had very few reviews, so the higher bands hold only a handful of firms. Treat this as a pattern worth acting on, not a precise rate.

Across all 1,000 firms in the study, 93% were not named by any engine, and reviews were the clearest dividing line: 1% of firms with no reviews were named, against 38% of firms with 200 or more. That is a correlation, not proof that reviews cause recommendations. Firms with many reviews tend to be busier and better known in other ways too.

Edinburgh and Norwich did best, with 3 of 11 practices named in each. No practice was named in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast, Cardiff, Nottingham or Southampton.

Where the engines get their facts

The firm’s own website was the main source. These are the outside sites cited most often in the answers about the accountancy practices we tested, with the number of times each was cited.

1. Companies Housefind-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk783
2. LinkedInlinkedin.com, uk.linkedin.com316
3. Endoleopen.endole.co.uk54
4. ICAEW Find a Chartered Accountantfind.icaew.com48
5. Companies in the UKcompaniesintheuk.co.uk47
6. Yellyell.com44
7. Accounting Firmsaccountingfirms.co.uk41
8. UK Accounting Firmsukaccountingfirms.co.uk25

Companies House was cited more than every other outside source on this list put together. If your registered name, address or directors there differ from your website, that is the version the engines see.

A checklist for accountancy practices

1. 1

   Make your ICAEW or ACCA entry match your website

   ICAEW's Find a Chartered Accountant was cited 48 times for the practices we tested. Check the firm name, address, services and principals match your site word for word. If you are ACCA-regulated, do the same on the ACCA directory. It did not show up in our citation counts, but it is the record a careful engine would check.

2. 2

   Tidy your Companies House record

   It was the most cited outside source by far. Make sure the registered office, the officers and your trading name are current, and that your website footer gives the same company name and number.

3. 3

   Ask every client for a Google review

   Review counts were the clearest difference between practices that were named and those that were not. Most practices in our sample had fewer than 10. A steady routine, such as asking after each year-end, does more than a one-off push.

4. 4

   Put your partners on a named team page

   For 99 of the 168 practices, at least one engine did not name who runs the firm. A team page with each partner's name, role and qualifications, plus matching LinkedIn profiles, gives the engines an answer.

5. 5

   Check the directories the engines actually read

   Yell, Accounting Firms, UK Accounting Firms and Endole all appeared in the answers. Claim the listings you can, and correct the ones you cannot claim. You do not need to be everywhere, just right where you already appear.

6. 6

   Add Organization schema to your site

   Structured data with your legal name, company number, address, founders and links to your ICAEW or ACCA and Companies House pages tells crawlers which facts are official.

7. 7

   Publish an llms.txt file

   A short plain-text summary of who you are, where you work and which services you offer. It is a basic, cheap step. It will not get you recommended on its own.

None of this guarantees a place in any list. AI answers change from day to day and with the wording of a question. These steps make the facts about your firm consistent and easy to check, which is the part you control.