AI search names 6% of Essex tradespeople. The other 4,283 do not exist to it.

What it means: if you are not on Checkatrade, you are not on the page two of the three engines read first.

Website or not: 10% of the 2,449 firms with their own site were named, 1% of the 2,095 with none or only a Facebook or directory page. A site does not get you named on its own (the chart above says so); it is what the engine reads to check you, and where the customer lands. If you have none, start there.

In or near: 89% of the firms named for a town are listed in it or within 15 km of its centre. The town answer is a local answer.

The firms change too: For plumbers, only 36% of the firms named either way were named both ways (the overlap on each row). Put the problem in the question and you meet a different shortlist.

• Review volume, not rating. Named Essex trade firms have a median of 26 Google reviews; the rest, 1. Kitchen fitters show it plainly: 24 against 3.
• A listing on the directory that engine reads. For ChatGPT and Google AI Mode that is Checkatrade, cited in 85% and 78% of their Essex answers. For Gemini it is MyBuilder, TrustATrader, Houzz or the firm’s own site.
• A site the engine can check. 10% of Essex trade firms with their own website were named; 1% of those without one. A site that says the trade and the town in its first lines gives the engine something to match the question to.

Those three things are the job. Reviews, the right listing, and a site with the town in its first sentence are what SEO and GEO work goes on, and none of them needs a bigger firm.

How I counted, and what it cannot tell you.

• The denominatorEvery Google Maps listing in each trade’s categories within Essex, pulled through DataForSEO’s Business Listings data and filtered to the county’s postcodes. A listing counts on its primary Google label: drainage firms only if Google also lists them as a plumber, “Construction Company” only when the name says builder, kitchen shops only when the name says kitchen. Merchants, DIY chains and volume housebuilders are dropped by name; closed listings are removed and firms with more than one listing are grouped.
• The county prompts“Best X in Essex”, “recommend an X in Essex”, “X near Chelmsford” and “who are the top X in Essex”, each run 10 times per engine, logged out, UK location: 720 answers.
• The town promptsFor Chelmsford, Colchester and Southend-on-Sea: a plain question (“plumber in Chelmsford”) and a problem-led one (“emergency plumber Chelmsford boiler not working”), each run 5 times per engine: 540 answers. “In or near” means a listing in that postal town or within 15 km of its centre.
• The enginesChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode, collected through DataForSEO’s scrapers on 2 October 2026. ChatGPT with web search on.
• A mentionThe firm’s name, or its website, in the answer. Trade names are generic, so place words and trade words never match on their own; matching was automatic, then checked by hand at the top and bottom of every table. Being cited as a source is counted separately. The directory measure is the share of answers whose cited sources or links include Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People, TrustATrader, Yell or Bark.
• What it cannot tell youIt is one day’s snapshot and the engines move. Trade firms with no Google listing at all, and sole traders listed only on Checkatrade, are not in the count. That is also the point. The list of firms that were not named is deliberately not published.

The per-firm data is available to journalists and trade bodies on request: [email protected]. If you cite the study, link to this page. I will re-run it quarterly and keep the URL.

The same trades study for Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, and East Anglia as a whole. The same study for solicitors, accountants, estate agents, recruiters, architects and IT firms in Essex.