What this study measures — and how it relates to the Scorecard
This study runs 100 real buying questions across five AI engines and measures how often UK SMEs appear at all, versus how often large incumbents dominate. It is the at-scale, public version of NeuralGen’s free AI Visibility Scorecard, which runs 20 buying prompts across the same five engines for a single brand.
AI visibility, in this sense, is simply whether an AI assistant names your business when someone asks it a buying question your business could answer. It is a binary, measurable thing: either you were named in the answer, or you were not. This study establishes what that looks like at the scale of an entire market rather than a single brand. See /ai-visibility-scorecard/ for the single-brand version of this method.
How often do UK SMEs appear in AI answers?
The table below reports SME appearance rates across the five engines, alongside how often large incumbents were named, for the 100-question set. It sets a baseline AI visibility rate for smaller UK firms.
| Engine | Answers naming ≥1 UK SME (%) | Answers dominated by large incumbents (%) | Avg. brands named per answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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| Perplexity | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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| Google Gemini | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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| Claude | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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| Google AI Overviews | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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| All engines (avg.) | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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Caption: <!-- CONFIRM: 100 questions + date range + sectors covered -->. Measures AI visibility, not business quality.
Where SMEs appear (and where they vanish): by sector and question type
SME visibility is not even. It varies by sector and by how the buyer phrases the question.
| Sector / question type | SME appearance rate | Pattern |
|---|---|---|
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| “best [X] near me” style | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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| “best [X] in the UK” style | <!-- DATA: % --> |
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<!-- CONFIRM: sector and question-type splits after study runs -->
Methodology
We ran exactly 100 real buying questions across five AI engines from a UK location and logged, per answer, every brand named and whether it was an SME or a large incumbent.
- Engines (5): ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews.
- Prompts: 100 real buying questions across , phrased as buyers actually ask (for example “best [service] in [place]”, “who should I use for [need]”).
<!-- CONFIRM: publish full 100-question list --> - SME definition: .
- Location: United Kingdom.
<!-- CONFIRM: locale/settings --> - Dates: . Each question run times per engine to reduce variance.
- Scoring: appearance rate (share of answers naming ≥1 SME), incumbent-dominance rate, brands per answer, plus notes on what differentiated visible SMEs.
<!-- CONFIRM: exact definitions --> - Tooling: AI-answer capture via NeuralGen’s SE Ranking account plus manual verification.
<!-- CONFIRM -->
What separates the SMEs that appear from those that don’t?
The visible SMEs share recognisable traits: strong, consistent entity signals, third-party citations such as reviews, directories and local press, and clean, structured sites. The invisible ones are inconsistent or thinly cited across the web.
This pattern matters because it is actionable. It is not about outspending a larger competitor on advertising; it is about making sure the facts about your business, who you are, what you do, where you operate, are stated consistently everywhere an AI engine might encounter them, and backed up by genuine third-party sources. Read more on entity SEO, measuring AI share of voice, and where AI answers come from.
Limits: what this study does and doesn’t tell you
This is a sample of 100 questions, not the whole market. Results vary by phrasing, date and personalisation, and appearance measures visibility, not quality.
It sets a directional benchmark for SME AI visibility, not a verdict on any firm. A business that did not appear in our 100 questions may still be highly visible for the exact questions its own customers ask; equally, a business that did appear should not read that as a guarantee of continued visibility. We state these limits plainly because they are true, not because we are hedging.
What this means for your business
If the average UK SME appears in only a minority of AI answers, being one of the visible ones is a real advantage, and it is earned through entity and citation work, not ad spend. The first step is to measure your own rate.
You do not need to guess where you stand. The same method behind this study, run at the scale of a single brand, is available for free.
For the fuller service behind that method, see our AI SEO agency page.
Will we repeat this study?
AI answers move as models retrain and re-crawl, so we intend to re-run the 100-question study periodically and republish with a fresh date to track whether SME visibility is rising or falling.
Treat any single run as directional. We expect to repeat this at <!-- CONFIRM --> intervals; check the “last updated” date on this page before citing a specific figure.