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 7% of mortgages answers, typically in position 3.0. HSBC follows at 7%, Virgin Money 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 | Halifax | 7% | 3.0 | 16% | 25% |
| 2 | HSBC | 7% | 3.5 | 20% | 44% |
| 3 | Virgin Money | 5% | 1.7 | 9% | 60% |
| 4 | Nationwide | 5% | 2.0 | 13% | 25% |
| 5 | Santander | 3% | 3.5 | 0% | 0% |
| 6 | NatWest | 3% | 4.5 | 9% | 0% |
| 7 | Barclays | 3% | 5.0 | 4% | 50% |
| 8 | Yorkshire Building Society | 3% | 5.5 | 7% | 67% |
| 9 | Aldermore | 2% | 1.0 | 2% | — |
| 10 | First Direct | 2% | 1.0 | 2% | 7% |
| 11 | Lloyds Bank | 2% | 1.0 | 9% | 33% |
| 12 | Paragon Bank | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Foundation Home Loans | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Coventry Building Society | 2% | 6.0 | 4% | — |
| 15 | Leeds Building Society | 2% | 7.0 | 0% | 0% |
HSBC 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 mortgages, Monzo leads attraction at 120 against Yorkshire Bank at 75, indexed on the category at 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. 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.
Yorkshire Building Society converts reads into citations. Santander doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Yorkshire Building Society converts 67% of reads; Santander just 0%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Halifax | 7% | 3.0 | 16% | 25% |
| 2 | HSBC | 7% | 3.5 | 20% | 44% |
| 3 | Virgin Money | 5% | 1.7 | 9% | 60% |
| 4 | Nationwide | 5% | 2.0 | 13% | 25% |
| 5 | Santander | 3% | 3.5 | 0% | 0% |
| 6 | NatWest | 3% | 4.5 | 9% | 0% |
| 7 | Barclays | 3% | 5.0 | 4% | 50% |
| 8 | Yorkshire Building Society | 3% | 5.5 | 7% | 67% |
| 9 | Aldermore | 2% | 1.0 | 2% | — |
| 10 | First Direct | 2% | 1.0 | 2% | 7% |
| 11 | Lloyds Bank | 2% | 1.0 | 9% | 33% |
| 12 | Paragon Bank | 2% | 1.0 | 0% | — |
| 13 | Foundation Home Loans | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 14 | Coventry Building Society | 2% | 6.0 | 4% | — |
| 15 | Leeds Building Society | 2% | 7.0 | 0% | 0% |
Three models. Three different answers.
Ask about mortgages and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Paragon Bank, Gemini → Nationwide, ChatGPT → Virgin Money. Their top-five lists share just 11% 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 | 0% | 10% | 5% | 10pp |
| Paragon Bank | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
| Foundation Home Loans | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
| Halifax | 5% | 10% | 5% | 5pp |
| HSBC | 5% | 10% | 5% | 5pp |
| Leeds Building Society | 0% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Barclays | 0% | 5% | 5% | 5pp |
| Aldermore | 0% | 5% | 0% | 5pp |
| Metro Bank | 0% | 5% | 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 |
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. Nationwide is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| HSBC | 42 | 89% | 18 |
| Yorkshire Building Society | 42 | 33% | 6 |
| Santander | 39 | 57% | 7 |
| First Direct | 38 | 13% | 15 |
| Nationwide | 36 | 1% | 493 |
| Virgin Money | 35 | 67% | 6 |
| Accord Mortgages | 33 | 0% | 3 |
| 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 Fri, 04 Sep 2026 06:01:26 GMT.