Newcastle: one Gemini answer in three is about Australia

Short answer: sometimes the other one. We asked ChatGPT and Gemini, through their APIs, for the best plumbers, dentists, accountants and up to seventeen other trades in thirteen British cities, without naming the country. For "Newcastle", Gemini answered 13 times out of 36 about Newcastle, New South Wales: plumbers licensed by "NSW Fair Trading", dentists with "a HICAPS terminal", accountants in Charlestown and Lake Macquarie. For "Birmingham", it answered 4 times out of 40 about Birmingham, Alabama. In those 17 answers it makes 88 recommendations, of 73 different businesses, on the wrong side of the world. ChatGPT, asked the same questions, set none of its 76 answers for the two cities abroad. In the eleven other cities, we found no answer from either engine that left Britain.

The question named the city. Nothing in it named the country.

What was measured

Our British study, re-read on October 12, 2026: two buyer questions per trade and city ("What are the best plumbers in Newcastle? Give me a list with your recommendations." and "List the most recommended plumbers in Newcastle and explain why."), put on July 31, 2026 to ChatGPT (gpt-4o-mini) and Gemini through their APIs, without web search and without any location, in 13 British cities and up to 20 trades: 976 answers, 488 per engine. The questions name the city as a Briton would type it, never the country. In every answer we looked for signs of another country, proper names that do not exist in Britain ("NSW Fair Trading", "AHPRA", "Lake Macquarie", "Alabama", "Vestavia Hills"), and for signs of Britain ("Gas Safe", "NICEIC", "Jesmond", "Edgbaston", prices in pounds). The detectors were first tested on phrasings they must catch and phrasings they must not: a plumber in Edinburgh is called Homewood, "license number" is how Gemini describes the British Gas Safe ID, and an HMO is British shared housing. Then we read all 152 answers for Newcastle and Birmingham, from both engines, and every answer from another city that carried a foreign sign: two did, both false alarms ("modern Australian" cooking in London, American insurance advice in Bristol). Each answer was judged on what it says itself, and we counted by hand the businesses named in those set abroad: 88 recommendations, 73 different businesses.

The same five trades went to Australia twice

The errors are not scattered. For Newcastle, accountants, insurance brokers, plumbers, electricians and dentists went to Australia in both questions; estate and letting agents, hotels, recruiters, marketing agencies, locksmiths, gas engineers, garages, hairdressers and beauty salons never did. The trades with a British name, "gas engineer", "letting agent", "garage", stayed home every time. Every trade that left has the same name in Australia, though so do hotels and hairdressers, which stayed. What the reader gets is advice for another country: a patient in Newcastle upon Tyne is told to check whether the dentist is a "preferred provider" for a health fund such as Medibank, a homeowner that plumbers must be licensed by New South Wales, and five of the eight wedding photographers link to addresses ending in .com.au. In Birmingham, the two dentist answers set in Alabama tell patients to check that the practice is "in-network" with their insurance, an American notion. ChatGPT never left Britain for either city; one of its electrician lists for Newcastle names "Aussie Electrical" and "Civic Electrical" without saying where, and we counted it as doubtful rather than foreign. Gemini can also get it right on purpose: one of its electrician answers opens on "Birmingham, UK", the other on "Birmingham, Alabama".

Google asks for the whole address

Google's documentation on local business structured data (Search Central, last updated September 8, 2026, read on October 12, 2026) describes a business's address as "The physical location of the business. Include as many properties as possible." Its example spells the address out down to the region, the postal code and the country. A city name alone is exactly what our questions gave the assistants, and for Newcastle it was not enough. We once measured how many small-business sites never write their city at all: the address a machine cannot read.

What it means if you are the business

If your town shares its name with another, write the whole place everywhere a machine reads it: "Newcastle upon Tyne" rather than "Newcastle", with the county or region, the postcode and the country, on your contact page, in your page titles, on your map listing and in your structured data. Newcastle and Birmingham are not the only British towns with a namesake abroad; Perth, Richmond, Hamilton and Cambridge have several, and we did not measure them. You cannot change the question a customer types; you can make sure your own pages leave no doubt about which city you are in. Nothing here guarantees being named.

What this does not prove

• These are the models' answers through their APIs, without web search and without the user's location: the way our audit asks. A Briton using the Gemini app may be located by it and get British answers; we did not measure the apps.
• The questions named the city without the country, as a person might type them. Adding "UK" or "upon Tyne" would probably change the answers; we did not test it.
• One pass per question, collected on July 31, 2026. The models have moved since, and a second pass might send other trades abroad.
• Outside Newcastle and Birmingham, an answer counts as British when it carries no foreign sign: one set abroad without naming any foreign place, institution or currency would escape us.
• We judged where each answer places its businesses, not whether those businesses exist: that was another measurement.