Used Cars,
according to AI
Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about used cars — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Auto Trader owns the conversation.
0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated
Auto Trader is the default answer.
Named in 7% of used cars answers, typically in position 1.0. Motors follows at 7%, eBay Motors at 2%.
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 | Auto Trader | 7% | 1.0 | 33% | 0% |
| 2 | Motors | 7% | 1.5 | 0% | — |
| 3 | eBay Motors | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 4 | CarGurus | 0% | — | 7% | 100% |
| 5 | Carwow | 0% | — | 47% | 17% |
| 6 | Cinch | 0% | — | 7% | 100% |
| 7 | Parkers | 0% | — | 0% | 0% |
| 8 | PistonHeads | 0% | — | 7% | — |
Before it answers, it goes looking for Auto Trader.
An assistant does not answer from memory alone. It runs its own web searches first, and whoever it searches for is the shortlist it then chooses from. Across 62 searches in used cars, Auto Trader is named in 100% of the ones that name a brand at all. ChatGPT Web does not report its searches, so these shares are measured against the ones that do.
These are the assistants' own searches, read from their answers — not what anyone typed into a search engine.
The referees of used cars.
The independent sources AI models cite when answering used cars questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.
Carwow converts reads into citations. Auto Trader doesn't.
When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Carwow converts 17% of reads; Auto Trader just 0%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.
Full data table
| # | Brand | Visibility | Avg. position | Citation share | Read→cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Auto Trader | 7% | 1.0 | 33% | 0% |
| 2 | Motors | 7% | 1.5 | 0% | — |
| 3 | eBay Motors | 2% | 2.0 | 0% | — |
| 4 | CarGurus | 0% | — | 7% | 100% |
| 5 | Carwow | 0% | — | 47% | 17% |
| 6 | Cinch | 0% | — | 7% | 100% |
| 7 | Parkers | 0% | — | 0% | 0% |
| 8 | PistonHeads | 0% | — | 7% | — |
The models do not agree on who leads.
Ask about used cars and the brand you are shown depends on the assistant: Claude → Motors, Gemini → Auto Trader, ChatGPT → Motors. Their top-five lists share just 33% 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Auto Trader | 5% | 15% | 0% | 15pp |
| Motors | 10% | 5% | 5% | 5pp |
| eBay Motors | 5% | 0% | 0% | 5pp |
How-to guides carry used cars.
Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. How-to guides supply the most citations; Comparisons convert best — 96% of the ones models opened were actually cited.
The data behind this chart
| Page type | Cited | Read but not cited | Conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| How-to guides | 65 | 5 | 93% |
| Editorial | 47 | 7 | 87% |
| Comparisons | 25 | 1 | 96% |
| Listicles | 25 | 5 | 83% |
| News | 14 | 2 | 88% |
| Product pages | 10 | 1 | 91% |
| Documentation | 9 | 2 | 82% |
| Other | 8 | 10 | 44% |
Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.
Of the used cars pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 14 percentage points; updated this year pages fare 18pp 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 | 222 | 88% | 49 | 73% | +14pp |
| Named author | 131 | 86% | 140 | 84% | +2pp |
| Answer up front | 154 | 84% | 117 | 86% | -2pp |
| Specifications | 46 | 80% | 225 | 86% | -6pp |
| Comparison table | 69 | 77% | 202 | 88% | -11pp |
| Hard statistics | 84 | 76% | 187 | 89% | -13pp |
| Updated this year | 85 | 73% | 186 | 91% | -18pp |
Carwow 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. Auto Village is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.
| Brand | Readiness | Pages cited | Pages profiled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carwow | 30 | 28% | 25 |
| CarGurus | 30 | 13% | 8 |
| Auto Village | 29 | 0% | 3 |
| Parkers | 25 | 0% | 14 |
| Cazoo | 23 | 13% | 8 |
| Auto Trader | 22 | 6% | 122 |
| Cinch | 21 | 7% | 14 |
| eBay Motors | 17 | 0% | 91 |
| Evans Halshaw | 13 | 0% | 5 |
| Lookers | 13 | 0% | 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 used cars 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, 05 Sep 2026 07:04:20 GMT.