What ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude actually say about accountants — our own sweep data
Crunch converted 8 of its 8 ChatGPT mentions into a recommendation. On Claude the same firm scored a perfect 6 for 6. On Gemini, in the same sweep, it converted zero of its 2 mentions — because Gemini converted nothing, for anyone.
Steen Stones · Reviewed 5 Aug 2026
Look at any single firm across all three engines in our accountants sweep and the spread between engines dwarfs the spread between firms. Crunch converted 4 of its 8 ChatGPT mentions and all 6 of its Claude mentions into a specific recommendation. Its 2 Gemini mentions — same sweep, same week — converted none. That is not Crunch performing badly on Gemini. It is Gemini, across all 50 questions and all 187 firms we tallied, never once naming a specific pick.
Avouch multi-engine market sweep, 5 August 2026 — 50 buyer questions, UK accountants, ChatGPT + Gemini + Claude, 187 firms tallied
The same firm, three engines, three different outcomes
UK accountants, 5 August 2026 — Gemini shown for comparison, not as a target
Every single one of the 187 firms in this sweep shows a 0% Gemini conversion rate — not a low number, zero, checked against the full tally rather than a sample. ChatGPT and Claude both convert real, substantial shares of their own mentions, and not always for the same firms: Crunch and Taxfix lead on volume, but Blick Rothenberg's 100% conversion (on the strength of just three mentions, all recommended) shows a small, specialist firm can out-convert a much larger, more-mentioned one.
What the recommending answers actually said
Two quotes from the sweep, not used elsewhere in this territory, showing the same pattern that holds throughout: a specific reason, not a general endorsement.
“For a typical one-person limited company, I'd recommend Maslins. It specialises in contractors and freelancers, includes FreeAgent, uses qualified accountants and currently charges £119 + VAT monthly.”
“Sayer Vincent — my strongest recommendation. It specialises in charities and social-purpose organisations.”
Where the citations actually come from
uk.trustpilot.com was the single most-cited domain in the sweep — 11 citations, ahead of crunch.co.uk and coxhinkins.co.uk, which tied at 8 each. That's a real sector difference worth noting rather than smoothing over: in our solicitors sweep a legal directory led the citation list, and in R&D tax a firm's own site did. For accountants, third-party review volume led both of those. Buyers choosing an accountant appear to lean on what other clients said more than on any single directory or the firm's own claims about itself, at least in this data.
Common questions
- Is this a different sweep from the pillar page?
- No — this is the same 5 August 2026 sweep, read in more depth, exactly as the pillar page describes its method.
- Why is Gemini's conversion rate zero across every single firm?
- We can see the pattern clearly but not the cause from this data — Gemini appears to default to listing options for this kind of comparative professional-services question rather than picking one, in every sweep we've run so far: solicitors, R&D tax, and now accountants. It's exactly why every number in this territory is reported per engine, never blended.
- Should firms' own websites still matter less than third-party sources?
- Our wider research says a firm's own site is never sufficient on its own — it was never once the sole source behind a recommendation across 1,828 re-checked cases in a separate study. What this page shows is that in accountancy specifically, third-party review platforms carried more of the weight than in either territory we've swept before it — not that a firm's own site stopped mattering.
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