More people now ask an AI assistant where to eat, who to call or which agency to hire, instead of scrolling through ten blue links. So we asked ChatGPT the questions people in Dundee actually ask: 50 of them, from “Who’s a good electrician in Dundee?” to “Where’s the best brunch in Dundee?”. Then we asked every one again. And again.
This is the first Dundee AI Answers Index. We’ll run it every month, so it shows not just who AI recommends today but who it keeps recommending.
The short version
- Ask twice, get a different answer. Across the questions we asked three times, ChatGPT named 512 different businesses. Only 120 of them (23%) came up all three times. More than half came up once and never again.
- It reads your website. Every one of the 136 answers we got back cited its sources, and in 120 of them it linked straight to a recommended business’s own website.
- Directories still matter. More than a third of answers leaned on review sites and directories such as Tripadvisor, Yell, Checkatrade and Trusted Trader.
- Some trades are wide open. Ask about a mechanic three times and you get twelve different garages, none of them named every time. Roofers: nine names, none every time.
Being recommended once isn’t being recommended
This was the biggest surprise. AI answers aren’t a fixed league table like search results can feel. ChatGPT searches the web each time you ask and puts together a fresh answer, so the same question gives a different list from one go to the next.
Which means a business owner who checks once, sees their name and relaxes may be getting lucky. The businesses that matter are the ones that come up every time. Some examples from this month:
- Plumber: Baldovie Plumbing was named in all three answers, out of eight plumbers mentioned.
- Brunch: The Bach, every time, out of nine places.
- Coffee: Stenecki Coffee, Dundee Espresso Lab, Empire State Coffee and EH9 Espresso, all four every time.
- Fish and chips: Murray’s and The Silvery Tay.
- Van hire: Economy Car & Van Hire, every time. (They’re a client of ours, and we were pleased to see it.)
- Things to do: V&A Dundee came up in every answer about things to do, rainy days, days out and days out with kids.
And the open goals. For a garage, ChatGPT gave twelve different names and none every time. For roofers it was nine, for a date night fourteen. For used cars it named 26 different dealers, only four of them every time. In those categories, no business has made itself the obvious answer yet.
Where AI gets its answers
Every answer came with sources, and they tell you where to put your effort.
The single most-cited site was visitdundee.com, in 27 of the 136 answers. (Visit Dundee is a platform we build and run, so take that with whatever pinch of salt you like.) Dundee City Council’s site came next in 19, then The Courier in 16.
The lesson is a reassuring one. Your own website is the source AI trusts most. If it says plainly what you do, where, when you’re open and how to get in touch, AI can repeat it. If those facts are buried in a picture, a PDF or a Facebook post, it can’t. That’s exactly the gap we found when we audited 100 Dundee websites for our Dundee Digital Benchmark: fewer than half even mentioned Dundee in their page title.
How we did
We’d be daft not to look. We asked eight questions about our own trade: web design, SEO, digital marketing, apps, social media, Google Ads, branding and IT support.
- Purple Imp was named in 12 of the 24 answers, and for seven of the eight questions.
- For SEO, we were named in all three answers, and first.
- For web design, only once in three. There’s work to do there, and we’re doing it.
- Our own website was cited 11 times. The facts we’ve put on it plainly are the facts AI repeated.
We’ve deliberately left our own industry out of the download below. Marking our competitors’ homework in public doesn’t feel right.
What to do about it
- Ask the question yourself, more than once. Ask ChatGPT what you’d want a customer to ask, three or four times. If you’re not there every time, you’re not there.
- Make your website say it plainly. What you do, where you do it, your hours, your phone number and your address, in words on the page and in the structured data search engines and AI read. Our local SEO checklist covers the basics.
- Be where AI looks for your trade. For trades that means the review sites and directories in your field, kept up to date and consistent. For places to eat and things to do, it means the tourism and council sites and the local press.
- Earn the mentions. Reviews, local press and being listed properly all add up. AI doesn’t invent its favourites, it repeats what the web already says.
If you’d like to know what AI says about your business, get a free AI scorecard: twelve checks on your website and four questions to ChatGPT, emailed to you with what to fix. It’s the same work as our local SEO, aimed at a new kind of search.
How we did it
On 9 November 2026 we asked ChatGPT’s current model, with web search switched on and a UK location, 50 questions written the way a local person would type them, in seven groups: digital services, trades, professional services, eating and drinking, things to do, staying and shopping, and what’s on. Each question was asked three times as a fresh conversation. A second step listed the businesses each answer recommended, so “The Cannon” and “Cannon Bar” count as one. 136 of the 150 answers completed; a technical fault cut the last 14 short, so a few questions near the end of the list have fewer than three answers and aren’t counted in the consistency figures. Next month we’ll run the same questions again, and add other AI assistants.
AI answers change from day to day, so treat any single result as a snapshot, which is exactly why we’ll keep asking.
Download the data (CSV): every business named for every question outside our own industry, and how many of the answers named it.
Related: Is ChatGPT reading your website? · Can I Bing it? · WebMCP: AI agents are learning to use websites
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