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, Halifax owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Halifax is the default answer.
Named in 12% of mortgages answers, typically in position 2.9. Nationwide follows at 10%, Santander at 8%.
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 | Halifax | 12% | 2.9 | 20% | 36% |
| 2 | Nationwide | 10% | 2.7 | 17% | 33% |
| 3 | Santander | 8% | 3.2 | 9% | 100% |
| 4 | HSBC | 8% | 4.6 | 9% | 20% |
| 5 | First Direct | 5% | 1.3 | 4% | 20% |
| 6 | NatWest | 5% | 1.7 | 11% | 8% |
| 7 | Lloyds Bank | 5% | 4.3 | 9% | 0% |
| 8 | Barclays | 5% | 5.3 | 2% | 0% |
| 9 | Virgin Money | 5% | 5.3 | 4% | 33% |
| 10 | Skipton Building Society | 3% | 3.5 | 2% | 0% |
| 11 | Accord Mortgages | 3% | 9.5 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Metro Bank | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | The Mortgage Works | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Paragon Bank | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Yorkshire Building Society | 2% | 2.0 | 7% | 50% |
Halifax is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.
Being named is visibility. Underneath it, asked to rate each brand directly, the AI assistants judge it three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. They put 15% of the 34 brands rated above indifference. Nationwide leads the brands the answers name, at 73% of maximum Desire. On attraction, the most divided driver, Monzo indexes 142 against Foundation Home Loans at 74, on a category average of 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared (84 / 92 / 100 / 108 / 116). Above indifference means Desire above two-thirds of its maximum. See the full mortgages desire edition →
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.
Santander converts reads into citations. NatWest doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Santander converts 100% of reads; NatWest just 8%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Halifax | 12% | 2.9 | 20% | 36% |
| 2 | Nationwide | 10% | 2.7 | 17% | 33% |
| 3 | Santander | 8% | 3.2 | 9% | 100% |
| 4 | HSBC | 8% | 4.6 | 9% | 20% |
| 5 | First Direct | 5% | 1.3 | 4% | 20% |
| 6 | NatWest | 5% | 1.7 | 11% | 8% |
| 7 | Lloyds Bank | 5% | 4.3 | 9% | 0% |
| 8 | Barclays | 5% | 5.3 | 2% | 0% |
| 9 | Virgin Money | 5% | 5.3 | 4% | 33% |
| 10 | Skipton Building Society | 3% | 3.5 | 2% | 0% |
| 11 | Accord Mortgages | 3% | 9.5 | 0% | — |
| 12 | Metro Bank | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | The Mortgage Works | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Paragon Bank | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Yorkshire Building Society | 2% | 2.0 | 7% | 50% |
Three models. Three different answers.
Ask about mortgages and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Barclays, Gemini → Santander, ChatGPT → Nationwide. Their top-five lists share just 20% 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barclays | 10% | 5% | 0% | 10pp |
| Lloyds Bank | 10% | 0% | 5% | 10pp |
| Santander | 5% | 15% | 5% | 10pp |
| Virgin Money | 5% | 0% | 10% | 10pp |
| Nationwide | 5% | 15% | 10% | 10pp |
| Halifax | 10% | 15% | 10% | 5pp |
| HSBC | 10% | 10% | 5% | 5pp |
| Handelsbanken | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
| Coutts | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
| Metro Bank | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
Editorial carry mortgages.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Editorial 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial | 205 | 6 | 97% |
| How-to guides | 200 | 4 | 98% |
| Comparisons | 38 | 0 | 100% |
| Documentation | 24 | 11 | 69% |
| News | 19 | 3 | 86% |
| Other | 13 | 4 | 76% |
| Product pages | 11 | 0 | 100% |
| spec-sheet | 10 | 0 | 100% |
Specifications 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. Specifications is worth 5 percentage points; cites its sources pages fare 5pp 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 | 41 | 100% | 553 | 95% | +5pp |
| Structured data | 261 | 97% | 333 | 94% | +3pp |
| Answer up front | 367 | 96% | 227 | 93% | +3pp |
| Comparison table | 180 | 97% | 414 | 94% | +2pp |
| Updated this year | 282 | 96% | 312 | 94% | +2pp |
| Named author | 315 | 95% | 279 | 95% | -0pp |
| Hard statistics | 362 | 94% | 232 | 97% | -3pp |
| Cites its sources | 42 | 90% | 552 | 95% | -5pp |
Yorkshire Building Society 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. Nationwide is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yorkshire Building Society | 42 | 33% | 6 |
| First Direct | 38 | 13% | 15 |
| HSBC | 36 | 46% | 35 |
| Nationwide | 36 | 1% | 493 |
| Virgin Money | 35 | 67% | 6 |
| Accord Mortgages | 33 | 0% | 3 |
| TSB | 33 | 0% | 26 |
| Barclays | 30 | 75% | 8 |
| NatWest | 30 | 55% | 11 |
| Halifax | 29 | 43% | 14 |
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 Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:59:26 GMT.