Gemini says which tradesperson leaves your home clean, ChatGPT rarely does

Short answer: ask Gemini for a good plumber or electrician and it will often tell you which one leaves your home clean. ChatGPT almost never does. In 712 answers from each, for four trades that come into the customer's home, in 89 cities across eight countries, Gemini credits a named business with tidy work 278 times. ChatGPT does so 3 times. Perplexity, which searches the web, does so 5 times in 312.

Picture an electrician drilling through your living room wall. The work is good, but there is dust left on the tiles. That is often the detail a customer repeats afterwards, and Gemini seems to have absorbed it: 25 times it calls this a sore point in the trade, as in "a common complaint with tradespeople is the mess left behind". In 151 answers it attributes the praise to customers or reviews, although it was answering without web search. For one engine, tidiness is a reason to recommend. For the other, it barely exists.

The customer remembers the dust. So does Gemini.

What was measured

Eight Waseit studies asked two buyer questions - the best providers of a trade in a city, then the most recommended ones and why - in 89 cities: 13 each in France (30 July 2026), the United Kingdom (31 July), Brazil (6 August) and the United States (13 September), then 11 in Canada, 10 in Australia, 6 in New Zealand and 10 in Singapore (16 October), each time in the local language. We kept the four trades that enter the home: electrical, heating and air conditioning, plumbing, locksmiths. That gives 712 answers from ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini) and 712 from Gemini, through their programming interfaces, without web search, plus 312 from Perplexity, which searches the web, in France, the UK and Brazil. We pulled every sentence about cleanliness - clean, tidy, shoe covers, propre, limpeza - and read all 340 passages. We set aside 29: business names, cleaning sold as a service, a "clean" licence. Each remaining answer was then classed: does it credit a business it names, or give general advice?

Which assistant says who works tidily?

Gemini treats it as a reason to recommend. It praises a named business in 278 answers and stays at general advice in 20 more, along the lines of: look for this word in the reviews. In 29 answers it goes into detail: shoe covers, dust sheets, floor protection. ChatGPT almost never does. It names 3 businesses for tidiness and gives 2 pieces of advice in 712 answers. The word also turns up in a near-identical business name, cited in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Canberra. Perplexity shows where this may come from. It reads pages and names only 5 businesses, but what it reports is concrete: in Brighton, a separate tidiness score of 9.87 next to timekeeping and courtesy, across 126 reviews. So customers really do rate this. The country matters a lot. Gemini gives the compliment 72 times in 104 in the UK and 2 times in 104 in France. In Brazil it prefers advice: 15 tips for 6 named businesses. This gap between what an assistant claims and what it has read recalls ChatGPT, which says it cannot see reviews and then says what customers love.

What it means if you are the business

If you work in people's homes, tidiness may be a selling point you never mention. Write down on your site what you really do: floor protection, shoe covers, dust extraction, taking the rubble away. After the job, ask customers for an honest review without feeding them the words: those sentences are where this criterion shows up. Do not claim what you do not do. When an assistant searches the web, as Gemini does in our audit, a precise page and detailed reviews are what it can read. These are reasonable steps, not levers with a known effect: we have not measured whether they make a business named more often. And if Gemini says a competitor leaves the site clean, what does it say about you? The audit shows you, question by question.

And your business, what do the assistants say?

The free Waseit audit asks ChatGPT and Gemini the questions your customers type, in their language and for your city. In about 60 seconds you get a score out of 100, the competitors named instead of you, the questions where you do not appear, the tone of the sentences that mention you and, when Gemini searched Google, the pages it actually read. It is free, with no account and no card; an email address only unlocks competitor names and the action plan. It is a dated snapshot, not a ranking: answers change from one day to the next, and we promise no position.

What this does not prove

• These are the models' answers through their programming interfaces, with no user location; ChatGPT and Gemini answered without web search, Perplexity searched and was asked in three countries only.
• Each question was asked once, between 30 July and 16 October 2026; ChatGPT here is gpt-4o-mini, not necessarily the model in the app, and the models may have changed since.
• We did not check whether the named businesses really work tidily, or whether their customers say so. Gemini was answering from memory: this may be a learned formula. We measure what the assistants say, not whether it is true.
• The gaps between countries also depend on language: the English word "tidy" has no exact equivalent in French or Portuguese.
• The count rests on a list of words, read sentence by sentence. A wider list (careful work, neat, meticulous) adds 19 Gemini answers that name a business, 11 of them in France, and 3 from ChatGPT, all in France. The French "soigné" says careful more than clean, so it stays out of the main figure.