Broadband,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about broadband — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Virgin Media owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Virgin Media is the default answer.
Named in 45% of broadband answers, typically in position 3.7. BT follows at 40%, Sky at 35%.
Every brand AI names, ranked.
Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Virgin Media | 45% | 3.7 | 38% | 40% |
| 2 | BT | 40% | 3.1 | 6% | 6% |
| 3 | Sky | 35% | 3.1 | 13% | 0% |
| 4 | Vodafone | 28% | 3.7 | 19% | 100% |
| 5 | EE | 25% | 3.0 | 13% | 40% |
| 6 | Hyperoptic | 23% | 5.7 | 0% | — |
| 7 | TalkTalk | 20% | 6.1 | 3% | 0% |
| 8 | Plusnet | 18% | 4.1 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Community Fibre | 18% | 5.5 | 0% | — |
| 10 | CityFibre | 17% | 4.4 | 3% | — |
| 11 | Gigaclear | 13% | 7.0 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Now Broadband | 10% | 2.8 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Zen Internet | 7% | 5.0 | 3% | 100% |
| 14 | YouFibre | 7% | 5.5 | 0% | — |
| 15 | 4th Utility | 5% | 1.7 | 0% | — |
Virgin Media is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.
Being named is visibility. Underneath it, every answer describes a brand in three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. In broadband, EE leads attachment at 114 against Hey Broadband at 89, indexed on the category at 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. See the full broadband desire edition →
Before it answers, it goes looking for BT.
An assistant does not answer from memory alone. It runs its own web searches first, and whoever it searches for is the shortlist it then chooses from. Across 61 searches in broadband, BT is named in 30% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web, Copilot do not report their searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.
These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.
The referees of broadband.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering broadband questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Virgin Media converts reads into citations. Sky doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Virgin Media converts 40% of reads; Sky just 0%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Virgin Media | 45% | 3.7 | 38% | 40% |
| 2 | BT | 40% | 3.1 | 6% | 6% |
| 3 | Sky | 35% | 3.1 | 13% | 0% |
| 4 | Vodafone | 28% | 3.7 | 19% | 100% |
| 5 | EE | 25% | 3.0 | 13% | 40% |
| 6 | Hyperoptic | 23% | 5.7 | 0% | — |
| 7 | TalkTalk | 20% | 6.1 | 3% | 0% |
| 8 | Plusnet | 18% | 4.1 | 0% | — |
| 9 | Community Fibre | 18% | 5.5 | 0% | — |
| 10 | CityFibre | 17% | 4.4 | 3% | — |
| 11 | Gigaclear | 13% | 7.0 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Now Broadband | 10% | 2.8 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Zen Internet | 7% | 5.0 | 3% | 100% |
| 14 | YouFibre | 7% | 5.5 | 0% | — |
| 15 | 4th Utility | 5% | 1.7 | 0% | — |
The models do not agree on who leads.
Ask about broadband and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → BT, Gemini → Virgin Media, ChatGPT → Virgin Media. Their top-five lists share just 50% of names.
Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.
The data behind this chart
| Brand | Claude | Gemini | ChatGPT | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virgin Media | 25% | 65% | 45% | 40pp |
| BT | 40% | 55% | 25% | 30pp |
| Plusnet | 30% | 0% | 25% | 30pp |
| EE | 25% | 40% | 10% | 30pp |
| TalkTalk | 20% | 35% | 5% | 30pp |
| Vodafone | 15% | 45% | 25% | 30pp |
| CityFibre | 5% | 30% | 15% | 25pp |
| Hyperoptic | 15% | 35% | 20% | 20pp |
| Community Fibre | 20% | 25% | 10% | 15pp |
| Gigaclear | 15% | 20% | 5% | 15pp |
How-to guides carry broadband.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; How-to guides convert best — 88% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 111 | 15 | 88% |
| Comparisons | 93 | 32 | 74% |
| Editorial | 76 | 43 | 64% |
| Product pages | 25 | 8 | 76% |
| Community threads | 18 | 25 | 42% |
| pricing | 11 | 6 | 65% |
| News | 9 | 7 | 56% |
| Other | 7 | 22 | 24% |
Answer up front is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the broadband pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Answer up front is worth 9 percentage points; cites its sources pages fare 32pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.
The data behind this chart
| Feature | Pages with | Cited % | Pages without | Cited % | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Answer up front | 289 | 73% | 566 | 64% | +9pp |
| Structured data | 221 | 73% | 634 | 65% | +9pp |
| Specifications | 207 | 73% | 648 | 65% | +8pp |
| Comparison table | 275 | 65% | 580 | 68% | -3pp |
| Named author | 418 | 63% | 437 | 71% | -8pp |
| Hard statistics | 316 | 59% | 539 | 72% | -13pp |
| Updated this year | 375 | 57% | 480 | 75% | -18pp |
| Cites its sources | 67 | 37% | 788 | 69% | -32pp |
Toob builds pages AI can quote.
Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Toob is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toob | 57 | 0% | 7 |
| Hyperoptic | 38 | 0% | 26 |
| Vodafone | 36 | 19% | 53 |
| TalkTalk | 36 | 6% | 31 |
| Hey Broadband | 31 | 0% | 10 |
| G.Network | 29 | 100% | 3 |
| Three | 27 | 10% | 20 |
| Community Fibre | 25 | 0% | 10 |
| Sky | 24 | 22% | 27 |
| Virgin Media | 23 | 7% | 444 |
Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.
The questions broadband pages have to settle.
Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.
Nineteen more categories.
Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Wed, 07 Oct 2026 06:40:54 GMT.