Opticians & Eyecare,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about opticians & eyecare — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Specsavers owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Specsavers is the default answer.
Named in 33% of opticians & eyecare answers, typically in position 1.8. Boots Opticians follows at 27%, Tesco Opticians at 20%.
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 | Specsavers | 33% | 1.8 | 38% | 26% |
| 2 | Boots Opticians | 27% | 2.8 | 9% | 12% |
| 3 | Tesco Opticians | 20% | 3.3 | 0% | — |
| 4 | Vision Express | 20% | 3.3 | 7% | 18% |
| 5 | GlassesDirect | 8% | 2.8 | 9% | 60% |
| 6 | Asda Opticians | 8% | 3.8 | 4% | 33% |
| 7 | SelectSpecs | 7% | 2.8 | 3% | 100% |
| 8 | Direct Sight | 5% | 3.0 | 4% | 75% |
| 9 | Specscart | 5% | 3.0 | 7% | 100% |
| 10 | Ace & Tate | 3% | 1.0 | 1% | — |
| 11 | Glasses2You | 3% | 4.5 | 3% | 100% |
| 12 | Next Day Spex | 2% | 2.0 | 1% | 100% |
| 13 | Firmoo | 2% | 3.0 | 1% | — |
| 14 | Low Cost Glasses Online | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Optical King | 2% | 5.0 | 1% | 100% |
Opticians & Eyecare is decided on affinity.
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 opticians & eyecare, David Clulow leads affinity at 109 against Mister Spex at 71, indexed on the category at 100.
Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared. See the full opticians & eyecare desire edition →
The referees of opticians & eyecare.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering opticians & eyecare questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Direct Sight converts reads into citations. Boots Opticians doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Direct Sight converts 75% of reads; Boots Opticians just 12%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Specsavers | 33% | 1.8 | 38% | 26% |
| 2 | Boots Opticians | 27% | 2.8 | 9% | 12% |
| 3 | Tesco Opticians | 20% | 3.3 | 0% | — |
| 4 | Vision Express | 20% | 3.3 | 7% | 18% |
| 5 | GlassesDirect | 8% | 2.8 | 9% | 60% |
| 6 | Asda Opticians | 8% | 3.8 | 4% | 33% |
| 7 | SelectSpecs | 7% | 2.8 | 3% | 100% |
| 8 | Direct Sight | 5% | 3.0 | 4% | 75% |
| 9 | Specscart | 5% | 3.0 | 7% | 100% |
| 10 | Ace & Tate | 3% | 1.0 | 1% | — |
| 11 | Glasses2You | 3% | 4.5 | 3% | 100% |
| 12 | Next Day Spex | 2% | 2.0 | 1% | 100% |
| 13 | Firmoo | 2% | 3.0 | 1% | — |
| 14 | Low Cost Glasses Online | 2% | 3.0 | 0% | — |
| 15 | Optical King | 2% | 5.0 | 1% | 100% |
The models do not agree on who leads.
Ask about opticians & eyecare and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Specsavers, Gemini → Boots Opticians, ChatGPT → Specsavers. Their top-five lists share just 67% 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boots Opticians | 15% | 40% | 25% | 25pp |
| Specsavers | 20% | 40% | 40% | 20pp |
| GlassesDirect | 0% | 15% | 10% | 15pp |
| Vision Express | 15% | 25% | 20% | 10pp |
| Tesco Opticians | 15% | 25% | 20% | 10pp |
| Direct Sight | 10% | 0% | 5% | 10pp |
| Specscart | 5% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Ace & Tate | 0% | 10% | 0% | 10pp |
| Asda Opticians | 10% | 10% | 5% | 5pp |
| Next Day Spex | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
How-to guides carry opticians & eyecare.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; Comparisons convert best — 83% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 45 | 11 | 80% |
| Editorial | 43 | 28 | 61% |
| Product pages | 20 | 7 | 74% |
| pricing | 12 | 4 | 75% |
| Comparisons | 10 | 2 | 83% |
| Documentation | 7 | 17 | 29% |
| faq | 7 | 3 | 70% |
| category-page | 6 | 4 | 60% |
Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the opticians & eyecare pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 20 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 31pp 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structured data | 164 | 71% | 114 | 51% | +20pp |
| Answer up front | 132 | 71% | 146 | 55% | +16pp |
| Named author | 95 | 65% | 183 | 62% | +4pp |
| Updated this year | 79 | 61% | 199 | 64% | -3pp |
| Comparison table | 46 | 57% | 232 | 64% | -8pp |
| Hard statistics | 74 | 41% | 204 | 71% | -31pp |
Scrivens 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. Zenni Optical is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scrivens | 40 | 20% | 5 |
| Zenni Optical | 35 | 0% | 5 |
| Optical Express | 29 | 33% | 3 |
| Leightons | 28 | 22% | 9 |
| Boots Opticians | 26 | 5% | 111 |
| GlassesDirect | 25 | 29% | 17 |
| Burghley & Co | 25 | 33% | 3 |
| Specscart | 24 | 31% | 13 |
| Specsavers | 23 | 11% | 145 |
| Ace & Tate | 20 | 20% | 5 |
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 opticians & eyecare 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, 02 Sep 2026 09:48:07 GMT.