Gemini says which brands you work with. ChatGPT did it 8 times

Short answer: ask Gemini for the best garages, accountants or dentists in a city, and in 648 of its 1,466 answers it cites a supplier's brand - BMW, Xero, Invisalign, Daikin - most often as something a named business does: "If you drive a BMW, this is widely considered the best independent shop in the city." ChatGPT cites one in 77 of 1,468 answers, and in 72 of its 85 mentions the brand is the business's own name, such as "Garage Renault Lyon". As a trait of a business it names, ChatGPT gave a brand 8 times.

For a business, the brands it works with are a fact a customer can use: the cars a garage knows, the software an accountant is certified on, the aligners a dentist fits. One assistant repeats that fact; the other almost never does.

Gemini describes a business by the brands it works with. ChatGPT names the brand instead of the business.

What was measured

Our eight studies - United States, United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, collected between July 30 and October 16, 2026 - put the same buyer questions ("What are the best garages in Leeds? Give me a list with your recommendations.") to ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini) and Gemini through their APIs, without web search and without any location, and to Perplexity, which searches the web by design, in France, the United Kingdom and Brazil. We kept the trades where a supplier's brand can matter: garages, heating and air conditioning, accountants, dentists, hair and beauty salons, locksmiths, marketing agencies and wedding photographers - 3,604 non-empty answers. We searched them for a closed list of 224 brand names, each counted only in its own trade (car makes and Bosch Car Service for garages, Daikin or Worcester Bosch for heating, Xero or QuickBooks for accountants, Invisalign or CEREC for dentists, Kérastase or Elemis for salons, Mul-T-Lock or Fichet for locksmiths, Google Partner or HubSpot for agencies, camera makers for photographers). Ambiguous words were taken out after a first reading ("Total", "Ideal", "Continental"). We then read every passage that names a business and cites a brand: all 85 from ChatGPT, and 100 of Gemini's 427, drawn at random. On October 10 we measured the same gap for equipment: ChatGPT says look for digital X-rays, never who has them.

How does each assistant use a brand?

Gemini uses it to say what a business is good at. In the 100 Gemini passages we read, 58 give the brand as a trait of a business: a specialism (the San Diego garage above, for BMW drivers), a partner status ("They are Xero Platinum Partners and specialize in cloud accounting integration.", of an accounting firm in Wellington; "They are a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer", of a heating firm in Los Angeles), or the products it uses. 22 name the brand's own network, such as Bosch Car Service in Brazil or the Guinot institutes in France, and 20 are advice ("ensure they are certified partners"). Across its 427 passages, that is about 250 businesses described by a brand. Gemini even sends the reader to the brand's own list: it tells a business owner in Bristol to check the "Xero Advisor Directory". ChatGPT works the other way round. When it cites a brand, it is the name of what it recommends: a dealership ("Halifax Honda"), a brand institute ("Sothys Nice"), or, in 23 French passages, a brand followed by a city - "Garage Renault Lyon", recommended as the brand's official agent. It names more businesses than Gemini (8,103 passages against 4,590), but gives a brand as a trait of a business 8 times, all garages, four of them authorized dealers in Singapore. For dentists it never cites a brand; for accountants, twice. Wedding photographers are the exception on both sides: one camera brand in 351 answers. Perplexity, which reads the web, cites a brand in 63 of its 670 answers.

What it means if you are the business

If you specialize in a make, hold a partner status or work with a known product range, write it on your site as a plain sentence, next to your city: the make you service, the status and its level, the products you use. That is the vocabulary Gemini uses to tell your customer why you, and the place it sends them to check is the brand's own directory, so make sure you are listed there when one exists. Expect less from ChatGPT answering from memory: in this measure, it put a brand on the business's name, not on its skills. That is a reasonable step, not a lever with a known effect: we did not measure whether stating a brand makes a business more likely to be named. On September 15 we saw another side of the same split: ChatGPT leans to chains, Gemini to independents.

What this does not prove

• These are the models' answers through their APIs, without the user's location; ChatGPT and Gemini answered without web search, Perplexity searched by design, and only in three countries.
• Each question was asked once, between July 30 and October 16, 2026; ChatGPT is gpt-4o-mini, not necessarily the model behind the ChatGPT app.
• The list of brands is closed: a brand that is not on it is not counted, so the counts are minimums.
• Gemini's answers are about twice as long (604 words on average, against 310), which leaves more room for detail; ChatGPT nonetheless names more businesses.
• The split of Gemini's passages comes from 100 of 427 read by hand: an order of magnitude, not an exact count.
• We did not check the partner statuses Gemini attributes, nor whether the names made of a brand and a city exist.