For a restaurant, names. For a plumber, a platform.
Across four countries, 78.7% of answers about building and care trades send the customer to a directory. For restaurants, hotels and salons: 3.7%.
78.7%
of answers about building and care trades cite a directory (859 of 1,092)
In this article
Short answer: depending on the trade, the assistant answers either “who” or “where to look”. For building and care trades, 78.7% of answers send the customer to a directory, to Yelp, Checkatrade, GetNinjas, PagesJaunes or Google reviews. For restaurants, hotels, bakeries and salons, 3.7%. Same question, same shape, four countries: the country does not decide this, the trade does.
3.7%
of answers about table, bed and beauty cite one (21 of 564)
52 of 52
electrician answers in Brazil that point to a directory
It is always best to check current reviews and ratings on platforms like Google, Trustpilot, or Yelp before making a decision.
That sentence is not ours. It is taken word for word from one answer about plumbers in London.
What was measured
Waseit’s four national studies keep the whole TEXT of every answer, not only the names extracted from it. That matters here, because the product DROPS platforms from its list of names, and rightly so: Checkatrade is not a business you recommend. They were therefore invisible in all our earlier measurements. This time we count them in the text, against a named list per country: the global ones (Yelp, Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Google reviews and maps, Booking, OpenTable) and the national ones (Angi, Zillow, Avvo in the United States; Checkatrade, Rated People, Rightmove in the United Kingdom; PagesJaunes, Doctolib, SeLoger in France; GetNinjas, Habitissimo, Reclame Aqui in Brazil). Social networks are counted separately: an Instagram profile is not a directory.
| Country | Answers | Cite a directory | Cite a social network | Most cited directory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 872 | 43.3% | 16.6% | Yelp (291) |
| United Kingdom | 976 | 42.9% | 22% | Google Reviews (288) |
| France | 924 | 34.5% | 12.1% | Google Maps (237) |
| Brazil | 828 | 43.5% | 30.7% | Google Maps (419) |
Two worlds, and the border does not run between countries
The split is sharp and it holds in all four countries: on one side the trades you call to your home, on the other the ones you go to.
| Trade | Country | Answers citing a directory |
|---|---|---|
| Electrician | Brazil | 52/52 = 100% |
| Plumber | Brazil | 51/52 = 98% |
| Gas engineer | United Kingdom | 50/52 = 96% |
| Dentist | France | 49/52 = 94% |
| Plumber | France | 48/52 = 92% |
| Real estate agent | United States | 47/52 = 90% |
| HVAC contractor | United States | 43/52 = 83% |
| Plumber | United States | 42/52 = 81% |
| Restaurant | United States | 5/20 = 25% |
| Hairdresser | United Kingdom | 2/52 = 4% |
| Hotel | United States | 0/52 = 0% |
| Bakery | United Kingdom | 0/20 = 0% |
And the directory is not a polite afterthought at the end. For building and care trades, 58% of the answers that cite a directory cite it BEFORE the first business name: the customer meets the platform before meeting a provider. Most answers do still name businesses. What changes is where the directory sits.
What it means if you are the business
For a restaurant, being known to the assistant is enough to be named. For a plumber, the assistant delegates: it sends the customer to a platform where the decision will be made on reviews and a ranking you cannot control from your own site. Two jobs, not one. An audit that only asks "am I named?" misses half the path for these trades.
What this does not prove
- It counts WORDS in an answer, not clicks. We do not know whether the customer follows the advice, or even how often the question is asked.
- A directory we did not name is not counted. The list is explicit, per country, and necessarily incomplete.
- The split between "building and care" and "table, bed and beauty" is OURS: we grouped the studies’ trades, and another grouping would give other bounds.
- American restaurants are not at zero but at 25% (5 answers out of 20): Yelp and OpenTable are restaurant directories too. The contrast is strong, it is not absolute.
- The four studies were collected between 30 July and 13 September 2026, on different dates, and Perplexity is left out for being absent from the United States study.
- In France, only 48% of the answers citing a directory also named three or more businesses, against 84 to 95% elsewhere. French name extraction is weaker, so read that figure as a floor.