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The State of AI visibility for Northern Irish business 2026.

We asked the four major AI assistants to recommend Northern Irish businesses the way their customers do. Here’s who they named, who they forgot, and what it tells us. A Level44 report, June 2026.

Scan date 15 June 2026.36 businesses.1,296 answers logged.CC BY 4.0.

Cold visibility, all sectors

19.2%

On cold questions, where a customer asks an open question and doesn’t name you, AI recommended one of our 36 businesses just 19.2% of the time. Ask it to “recommend a good one” and it falls to 11.1%.

A deliberate snapshot, not a census.

36 Northern Irish businesses across three sectors: 12 creative and web agencies, 12 accountancy firms, 12 hotels and restaurants. 9 questions each, some naming the business, most not, put to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity on 15 June 2026. 1,296 answers, logged for presence, position, sentiment, accuracy and every source cited.

Full method →

Name a business and the assistants know it cold.

Don’t name it and four times out of five they reach for someone else. The table below splits visibility by question type. Cold questions on top, named questions below.

Question typeWhat the customer asksName in prompt?AI named a business
Category"Best branding agencies in Belfast?"No24.7%
Problem-led"Who can rebrand my firm?"No17.7%
Recommendation"Recommend me a good one"No11.1%
All cold questionsname not mentionedNo19.2%
Comparative"Is A or B better?"Yes89.9%
Direct"Tell me about [business]"Yes94.4%

The pattern is blunt. Name a business and the assistants know it cold. Don’t, and four times out of five they reach for someone else.

Visibility tracks footprint, not quality.

Cold visibility by sector. Hotels and restaurants 35.4%, accountancy 14.6%, agencies 7.5%.

The sector richest in third-party reviews and citations, hospitality, was nearly 4.7 times more visible than agencies. Agencies lean on their own websites, the source AI trusts least. Visibility tracks footprint, not quality.

There isn't one AI search to win. There are 4.

Cold visibility by assistant. Gemini led, ChatGPT trailed.

The assistants agreed on whether to mention a given business only about two thirds of the time. A 33.3% disagreement rate. Win one and you can still be invisible on the others.

AI shortlists are short.

When a business did appear, it almost always appeared high. 82.2% of appearances were in the top three, and the single most common position was first. Roughly one in eight appearances sat sixth or lower (12%). The lesson is blunt. You’re named early, or you’re not named at all.

Top 3
82.2%
Most common rank
1
Buried (rank 6+)
12%

2,471 sources, almost none of them you.

To answer 1,296 questions, the assistants drew on 2,471 different sources, overwhelmingly third-party. Directories, “best of” listicles, review platforms and forum threads. A few examples of what kept coming up.

  • Hospitality

    • TripAdvisor
    • Reddit threads ("best hotel in Belfast" and similar)
    • OTAs: Expedia, Trivago, Hotels.com, Booking
    • The Michelin Guide (restaurants)
    • Small Luxury Hotels of the World (higher-end stays)
    • Travel editorial: Telegraph travel, named travel blogs, Rick Steves community
    • Official tourism: Visit Belfast, Discover Northern Ireland

  • Accountancy

    • Clutch and sector directories like ukaccountingfirms.co.uk
    • "Belfast accountants" listicles and local round-ups
    • Belfast Chamber and professional-body listings (Chartered Accountants Ireland / ICAEW)
    • FreeAgent's "find an accountant" directory
    • Reddit and Facebook threads where people ask for recommendations

  • Agencies

    • The Manifest, Sortlist and Clutch
    • Editorial round-ups like "creative studios in Belfast"
    • A long tail of NI design directories and listing sites

Across all three, the businesses’ own websites barely featured. AI recommendation is decided by what the rest of the web says about you, not by what you say about yourself.

AI doesn’t get NI businesses wrong. It just doesn’t mention them.

It would be neat to say AI gets businesses wrong. Mostly, it doesn’t. Across 669appearances we found one material error, an assistant placed a Belfast agency in the wrong city, plus a handful of minor slips like a wrong founding year. That’s ~99% accurate.

Which makes the real story cleaner and more uncomfortable. The problem isn’t that AI describes NI businesses badly. It’s that, most of the time, it doesn’t describe them at all.

Three steps you can run this week.

  1. 01

    Check the cold questions.

    The ones where nobody types your name. Category prompts, problem-led prompts, plain recommendation prompts. That's where customers actually start.

  2. 02

    See who's recommended instead.

    Look at what they're embedded in that you're not. Which directories, which round-ups, which reviews. Map the gap.

  3. 03

    Get cited where the assistants look.

    The directories, listings and reviews above. Not just your own site. AI weighs the rest of the web more than it weighs you.

Check your own AI visibility, free.

Run your domain through the same four assistants. See where you surface, where you don't, and what's recommended instead.

Check your AI visibility. Free.

Cite this work

Level44 (2026). The State of AI Visibility for Northern Irish Business 2026.

Published June 2026. Last updated: 15 June 2026.

About the author

Phill Hendry runs Level44, a Belfast brand and web studio building for the answer-engine era. This research was produced in-house using Level44’s own AI visibility platform.

The series

Part of Level44’s AI visibility research set.

A connected set of pages on how AI assistants decide which businesses to recommend. Read in any order.