None of the brands below were contacted or involved in this measurement. We asked an AI assistant the kind of questions a buyer would ask and wrote down which brands it named.
Why we did this
Some people now ask an AI assistant which company to use instead of searching for it themselves. We wanted to see which brands actually come up when someone asks a normal buying question, in five everyday categories: food delivery and meal kits, business bank accounts for freelancers, online furniture, CRM for small businesses, and hotel booking.
How we measured
For each category we picked ten brands well known to UK buyers, and wrote two buyer questions, phrased the way a person would type them. Every question opened with "I live in the UK." or "I live in London." We ran each question three times in Perplexity, in a new conversation each time, between 20:51 and 21:27 UTC on 2 October 2026 (23:51 to 00:27 Kyiv time), so every brand had six chances to be named: two questions, three runs each.
A brand counts as named in a run if the text of the answer names it. Source chips next to the text don't count on their own. The follow-up questions Perplexity suggests under each answer don't count, and neither does the collapsed "N sources" list at the bottom of the answer, which we didn't open. A mention counts whether the answer recommends the brand or advises against it.
We ran the questions from a Perplexity Pro account with search history, with its interface set to Russian, from an IP address in Ukraine, without a VPN. None of the 30 answers mentioned Ukraine; we checked each saved answer. We can't tell how much the stated "I live in the UK" and the account's own location and history each shaped the answer.
Google AI Overviews were not part of this round. We plan to measure them next, with the same questions.
Results by category
Each number is how many of the six runs named the brand.
Business bank accounts for freelancers
| Brand | Named in runs (of 6) |
|---|---|
| Starling Bank | 6 |
| Mettle | 5 |
| Wise Business | 5 |
| Monzo | 3 |
| Revolut | 2 |
| Zempler Bank (formerly Cashplus) | 2 |
| Barclays | 2 |
| Tide | 1 |
| ANNA Money | 1 |
| Countingup | 0 |
CRM for small business
| Brand | Named in runs (of 6) |
|---|---|
| HubSpot | 6 |
| Zoho CRM | 6 |
| Pipedrive | 6 |
| Capsule CRM | 6 |
| Salesforce | 3 |
| monday.com | 2 |
| Freshsales | 2 |
| Insightly | 0 |
| Keap | 0 |
| Nimble | 0 |
Food delivery and meal kits
| Brand | Named in runs (of 6) |
|---|---|
| Deliveroo | 3 |
| Just Eat | 3 |
| Uber Eats | 3 |
| HelloFresh | 3 |
| Gousto | 3 |
| Mindful Chef | 2 |
| Riverford | 1 |
| SimplyCook | 0 |
| Abel & Cole | 0 |
| Allplants | 0 |
Online furniture stores
| Brand | Named in runs (of 6) |
|---|---|
| IKEA | 6 |
| Dunelm | 3 |
| Furniture Village | 3 |
| John Lewis | 3 |
| Wayfair | 2 |
| Habitat | 2 |
| Made.com | 0 |
| DFS | 0 |
| Swoon | 0 |
| Cult Furniture | 0 |
Hotel booking services
| Brand | Named in runs (of 6) |
|---|---|
| Booking.com | 6 |
| Trivago | 6 |
| Travelodge | 4 |
| Premier Inn | 4 |
| Expedia | 3 |
| Agoda | 3 |
| lastminute.com | 3 |
| Hotels.com | 2 |
| Airbnb | 1 |
| TripAdvisor | 0 |
This category mixes booking and price-comparison sites with hotel chains and TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor, better known for its reviews, wasn't named once.
What we found
12 of the 50 brands weren't named in any of their six runs, by our count: Countingup for bank accounts, Made.com, DFS, Swoon and Cult Furniture for furniture, Insightly, Keap and Nimble for CRM, TripAdvisor for hotels, and SimplyCook, Abel & Cole and Allplants for food. [1]
Eight brands showed up every time. Starling Bank for bank accounts, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive and Capsule CRM for CRM, IKEA for furniture, and Booking.com and Trivago for hotels. CRM had the most brands at 6 of 6: four of the ten we asked about.
Furniture had the most brands at zero (four), with IKEA the only one named every time. Three of the other nine furniture brands, including John Lewis and Dunelm, reached half the runs; two more reached a third; the remaining four didn't come up once.
Food had no clear leader. No food brand was named in more than three of six runs, and the two questions went different ways: the meal kit question got HelloFresh and Gousto every time, Mindful Chef twice and Riverford once, and never a delivery app; the late-night takeaway question got Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats and never a meal kit.
What this does and doesn't show
It's one assistant, one account, one short window of time, and three runs per question. Answers from AI assistants change from run to run, so a 0 here means the brand didn't come up in these six runs, not that it never does. Some of these brands have changed owners or scaled back in recent years, and we didn't check each one's current status, so a 0 can also reflect that. We also can't tell from this data why a brand was left out. The next round will repeat these questions in Perplexity and add Google AI Overviews as a separate measurement.
Appendix: questions and brands
Questions, two per category (each one exactly as we typed it):
- Food delivery / meal kits: "I live in the UK. What's the best meal kit delivery service for someone who hates cooking?" and "I live in London. Which food delivery app should I use for late-night takeaway?"
- Business bank accounts: "I live in the UK. What's the best business bank account for a freelancer?" and "I live in the UK. I'm a sole trader, which bank should I open a business account with?"
- Online furniture: "I live in the UK. Where should I buy a sofa online?" and "I live in the UK. What's a good online furniture store for a small flat on a budget?"
- CRM: "I live in the UK. What CRM should a small business use to track customers?" and "I live in the UK. Which CRM is easiest to set up for a two-person company?"
- Hotel booking: "I live in the UK. What's the best site to book a hotel for a city break?" and "I live in the UK. Where should I book a hotel to get the cheapest price?"
The brands tested in each category are the ten listed in its table above.
Notes
[1] Our own count from the 30 saved Perplexity answers, 2 October 2026 (UTC). Brand by brand figures are in the tables above.