How to get your garage recommended by AI

To get a garage recommended by AI, you need your Google listing and website right for ChatGPT, and a presence on the comparison and booking sites that Claude and Gemini read. Those sites are Preferred Mechanic, Three Best Rated, BookMyGarage, ClickMechanic and Fixter. When we asked all three assistants for a mechanic in 5 UK towns, Claude barely looked at garages' own websites at all. It linked them 9 times out of 108.

Here's what each assistant did, and what I'd change if I ran the garage.

What we tested

On 2 October 2026 WhereInAI asked ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the 3 questions our scan generates for a mechanic, in 5 towns: Bath, Leeds, Norwich, Swindon and Exeter.

• best mechanic in [town], UK
• recommend a good mechanic in [town], UK
• who is the top rated mechanic in [town], UK

That's 45 answers, 15 from each assistant, all with web search switched on. We added "UK" so the assistants couldn't drift to an American Bath or Norwich, which Gemini did in an earlier test. Every answer is stored, so these figures can be rechecked.

One limit up front. We used the versions developers get (GPT-4.1 mini, Claude Haiku 4.5 and Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, each with its own web search). The ChatGPT app on a driver's phone runs a bigger model and knows roughly where they are, so its exact list will differ. What follows is the pattern WhereInAI measures.

Where each assistant looked

Of the 3 trades we tested, garages had the widest gap. ChatGPT read garages. Claude read the sites that sit between a driver and a garage.

ChatGPT reads your Google listing and your website

In 13 of 15 answers ChatGPT printed a card for each garage with a category, star rating, review count and address, which is the layout of a Google Business Profile. Its other links went to garages' own websites, including 5 Halfords Autocentre branch pages.

For ChatGPT, then, the work is your Google listing and your site. More on the Google side in Does your Google Business Profile affect ChatGPT?.

Claude and Gemini read comparison and booking sites

Preferred Mechanic was the most-cited site in the whole test, with 38 links across the two assistants.

The RAC links are worth reading closely. They went to the RAC's own car servicing and mobile mechanic pages, like rac.co.uk/car-care/car-service/full-interim-service/bath. Fixter and ClickMechanic take bookings online too. So when someone asked Claude for the best mechanic in their town, a good share of the answer pointed them at a national booking service rather than a local garage.

Two oddities, for completeness. Claude linked 6 job adverts on the government's Find a Job site, presumably because they mention garages in the town. Gemini linked 5 Reddit threads where locals swap mechanic recommendations, such as one from r/Bath.

Claude sometimes won't answer

Claude refused 3 of the 5 "recommend a good mechanic" questions without searching. It said it had no access to local listings and suggested Google reviews and the RAC instead. Asked "best mechanic" or "who is the top rated mechanic", the same Claude searched and named garages.

The three assistants almost never agree

Across the 5 towns the assistants linked to 59 garage websites.

• 52 were linked by only one assistant.
• 2 were linked by all three: Combe Down Garage in Bath and Mr Mechanic in Leeds.

Being named by ChatGPT tells you next to nothing about Claude or Gemini.

What I'd do as a garage

This comes from one day in 5 towns, so treat it as an order of work with no guarantee attached.

1. Get your Google Business Profile complete. Category, hours, MOT and servicing listed as services, phone, website link, and real reviews. That's the card ChatGPT printed in 13 of 15 answers.
2. Say what you do and where on your website, in plain words. "MOTs, servicing and diagnostics in Heavitree, Exeter. Open Saturdays." ChatGPT linked garages' own sites 59 times.
3. Don't block the AI crawlers. ChatGPT's search crawler is OAI-SearchBot. A robots.txt or firewall that blocks it keeps ChatGPT off your site.
4. Get onto the sites Claude and Gemini read. Preferred Mechanic may already list you, and you can claim the listing. BookMyGarage has a standard listing for independent garages. WhoCanFixMyCar, now trading as FixMyCar, charges a joining fee and a fee per booking. Check the terms before you join any of them, and keep your name, address and phone identical on all of them.
5. Ask happy customers to review you there. The garages at the top of those town pages are the ones that got named.

For the general UK directories, TownDirectory gives you a free listing, and CitationHQ will submit you to the main directories for you. Both are run by the same company as WhereInAI.

The limits of this

One day, 5 towns, one answer per question, and we asked for a "mechanic" rather than a "garage", which may change the answers. Assistants change without notice, and the consumer apps run different models from the ones tested here. The sources were steadier than the names: Preferred Mechanic, Three Best Rated and the booking sites turned up in every town.

To see who each assistant names for your garage, run a free scan. We ran the same test for plumbers and dentists. For why a rival keeps getting named and you don't, see Why AI recommends your competitors and not you.