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 53% of broadband answers, typically in position 3.7. BT follows at 50%, Sky at 42%.
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 | 53% | 3.7 | 33% | 36% |
| 2 | BT | 50% | 3.6 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Sky | 42% | 3.4 | 5% | 14% |
| 4 | Vodafone | 37% | 3.8 | 10% | 20% |
| 5 | EE | 32% | 3.1 | 17% | 15% |
| 6 | Community Fibre | 20% | 3.9 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Plusnet | 20% | 4.7 | 0% | — |
| 8 | TalkTalk | 18% | 5.0 | 2% | — |
| 9 | Hyperoptic | 18% | 5.4 | 0% | 0% |
| 10 | CityFibre | 17% | 4.9 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Three | 17% | 4.9 | 2% | — |
| 12 | YouFibre | 13% | 5.4 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Now Broadband | 12% | 3.7 | 2% | 100% |
| 14 | Zen Internet | 10% | 4.0 | 5% | 100% |
| 15 | Gigaclear | 8% | 5.6 | 0% | — |
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 36% of reads; Sky just 14%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Virgin Media | 53% | 3.7 | 33% | 36% |
| 2 | BT | 50% | 3.6 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Sky | 42% | 3.4 | 5% | 14% |
| 4 | Vodafone | 37% | 3.8 | 10% | 20% |
| 5 | EE | 32% | 3.1 | 17% | 15% |
| 6 | Community Fibre | 20% | 3.9 | 0% | — |
| 7 | Plusnet | 20% | 4.7 | 0% | — |
| 8 | TalkTalk | 18% | 5.0 | 2% | — |
| 9 | Hyperoptic | 18% | 5.4 | 0% | 0% |
| 10 | CityFibre | 17% | 4.9 | 0% | — |
| 11 | Three | 17% | 4.9 | 2% | — |
| 12 | YouFibre | 13% | 5.4 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Now Broadband | 12% | 3.7 | 2% | 100% |
| 14 | Zen Internet | 10% | 4.0 | 5% | 100% |
| 15 | Gigaclear | 8% | 5.6 | 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 43% 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% | 85% | 50% | 60pp |
| Sky | 20% | 60% | 45% | 40pp |
| Vodafone | 15% | 55% | 40% | 40pp |
| TalkTalk | 5% | 35% | 15% | 30pp |
| CityFibre | 0% | 30% | 20% | 30pp |
| BT | 40% | 65% | 45% | 25pp |
| EE | 15% | 40% | 40% | 25pp |
| Plusnet | 10% | 20% | 30% | 20pp |
| Three | 5% | 20% | 25% | 20pp |
| Community Fibre | 25% | 15% | 20% | 10pp |
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 — 89% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 55 | 7 | 89% |
| Comparisons | 50 | 14 | 78% |
| Editorial | 38 | 28 | 58% |
| Product pages | 12 | 5 | 71% |
| News | 6 | 3 | 67% |
| Community threads | 6 | 12 | 33% |
| Other | 4 | 9 | 31% |
Specifications 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. Specifications is worth 15 percentage points; cites its sources pages fare 44pp 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specifications | 102 | 79% | 466 | 64% | +15pp |
| Answer up front | 148 | 74% | 420 | 64% | +10pp |
| Comparison table | 186 | 63% | 382 | 68% | -5pp |
| Named author | 287 | 61% | 281 | 73% | -12pp |
| Hard statistics | 209 | 57% | 359 | 72% | -15pp |
| Updated this year | 251 | 56% | 317 | 75% | -20pp |
| Cites its sources | 35 | 26% | 533 | 69% | -44pp |
Vodafone 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. Set against how often those pages are actually cited.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vodafone | 29 | 60% | 10 |
| EE | 23 | 25% | 40 |
| Zen Internet | 19 | 100% | 4 |
| Sky | 17 | 50% | 8 |
| Virgin Media | 15 | 100% | 17 |
| BT | 12 | 100% | 16 |
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 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:22:53 GMT.