Mortgages,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about mortgages — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Nationwide owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Nationwide is the default answer.
Named in 10% of mortgages answers, typically in position 2.8. Clydesdale Bank follows at 7%, Paragon Bank at 5%.
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 | Nationwide | 10% | 2.8 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Clydesdale Bank | 7% | 1.5 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Paragon Bank | 5% | 1.7 | 3% | 100% |
| 4 | Virgin Money | 5% | 2.0 | 8% | 60% |
| 5 | HSBC | 5% | 3.7 | 29% | 56% |
| 6 | Skipton Building Society | 5% | 3.7 | 0% | — |
| 7 | The Mortgage Works | 3% | 1.0 | 3% | 33% |
| 8 | NatWest | 3% | 1.5 | 8% | 0% |
| 9 | Santander | 3% | 4.0 | 5% | 100% |
| 10 | Barclays | 3% | 7.0 | 8% | 50% |
| 11 | First Direct | 2% | 1.0 | 3% | 11% |
| 12 | Halifax | 2% | 1.0 | 8% | 0% |
| 13 | Coventry Building Society | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Yorkshire Building Society | 2% | 3.0 | 3% | 50% |
| 15 | Leeds Building Society | 2% | 4.0 | 3% | 25% |
The referees of mortgages.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering mortgages questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Virgin Money converts reads into citations. Halifax doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Virgin Money converts 60% of reads; Halifax just 0%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nationwide | 10% | 2.8 | 0% | — |
| 2 | Clydesdale Bank | 7% | 1.5 | 0% | — |
| 3 | Paragon Bank | 5% | 1.7 | 3% | 100% |
| 4 | Virgin Money | 5% | 2.0 | 8% | 60% |
| 5 | HSBC | 5% | 3.7 | 29% | 56% |
| 6 | Skipton Building Society | 5% | 3.7 | 0% | — |
| 7 | The Mortgage Works | 3% | 1.0 | 3% | 33% |
| 8 | NatWest | 3% | 1.5 | 8% | 0% |
| 9 | Santander | 3% | 4.0 | 5% | 100% |
| 10 | Barclays | 3% | 7.0 | 8% | 50% |
| 11 | First Direct | 2% | 1.0 | 3% | 11% |
| 12 | Halifax | 2% | 1.0 | 8% | 0% |
| 13 | Coventry Building Society | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Yorkshire Building Society | 2% | 3.0 | 3% | 50% |
| 15 | Leeds Building Society | 2% | 4.0 | 3% | 25% |
The models do not agree on who leads.
Ask about mortgages and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Clydesdale Bank, Gemini → Nationwide, ChatGPT → Clydesdale Bank. Their top-five lists share just 0% 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 Money | 5% | 0% | 10% | 10pp |
| Nationwide | 5% | 15% | 10% | 10pp |
| Skipton Building Society | 5% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Paragon Bank | 0% | 5% | 10% | 10pp |
| Clydesdale Bank | 5% | 5% | 10% | 5pp |
| Halifax | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
| The Mortgage Works | 5% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Santander | 5% | 0% | 5% | 5pp |
| NatWest | 5% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Leeds Building Society | 0% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
How-to guides carry mortgages.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; Comparisons convert best — 100% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 105 | 4 | 96% |
| Editorial | 98 | 1 | 99% |
| Comparisons | 20 | 0 | 100% |
| News | 11 | 2 | 85% |
| Documentation | 9 | 5 | 64% |
| Other | 7 | 1 | 88% |
Comparison table is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the mortgages pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Comparison table is worth 2 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 3pp 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparison table | 89 | 97% | 208 | 94% | +2pp |
| Updated this year | 143 | 96% | 154 | 94% | +2pp |
| Answer up front | 180 | 95% | 117 | 95% | +0pp |
| Named author | 157 | 95% | 140 | 95% | -0pp |
| Hard statistics | 180 | 94% | 117 | 97% | -3pp |
HSBC 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HSBC | 36 | 100% | 8 |
| Halifax | 33 | 100% | 3 |
| NatWest | 29 | 100% | 3 |
| Nationwide | 29 | 100% | 3 |
| Barclays | 25 | 100% | 3 |
| Lloyds Bank | 0 | 100% | 3 |
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 mortgages 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 10:07:27 GMT.