Across 216 answers you were named 41 times — 19% of the time. Bickerton Plumbing & Heating was named 138 times, 64%.
You do best on questions about trust and small jobs, and worst on questions about emergencies and price. In Marple you were named once in 54 answers.
Google reviews: Bickerton 214, you 26.
Every business named ahead of you in these 216 answers had more reviews than you, not just a higher rating. It's the one difference between you and Bickerton that is both measurable and inside your control.
Eighteen questions, written the way a customer writes them, were put to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Each question was asked once per assistant in a fresh session with no history, for each of your four areas.
18 questions × 3 assistants × 4 areas = 216 answers. Every business named in every answer was recorded, in the order given.
What this cannot tell you. Assistants personalise answers and change over time. Someone in Stockport asking the same question tomorrow may get different names.
Treat this as a reading taken on a date, like a pressure test — accurate when it was taken, not a permanent state.
Counts are out of 54 answers per area (18 questions, three assistants).
| AREA | YOU NAMED | BICKERTON | MARPLE HTG | READING |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stockport centre, SK1–SK4 | 24 / 54 | 39 / 54 | 11 / 54 | Your strongest patch. Named in most trust-led questions. |
| Cheadle & Gatley, SK8 | 12 / 54 | 36 / 54 | 8 / 54 | Named only when the question mentions boilers. |
| Heaton Moor & Reddish | 4 / 54 | 31 / 54 | 6 / 54 | Local firms with newer reviews take these answers. |
| Marple, SK6 | 1 / 54 | 32 / 54 | 44 / 54 | Effectively invisible. Marple Heating owns this area. |
You are not invisible everywhere — in Stockport centre you are on the shortlist about half the time. The drop-off is by area, not across the board. Marple is the outlier: one mention in fifty-four answers, against a rival named in forty-four.
Every question below returned an answer naming Bickerton or Marple Heating, and not you. Names are listed in the order the assistant gave them. Stockport centre shown in full; other areas follow the same format in the pages behind.
| QUESTION ASKED | ASSISTANT | NAMED, IN ORDER | YOU |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Who’s a good plumber in Stockport?” | ChatGPT | Bickerton · Marple Heating · Cheadle Gas | NOT NAMED |
| “Emergency plumber near me SK4, no callout fee” | Gemini | Bickerton · Reddish Drainage | NOT NAMED |
| “Cheapest plumber Stockport reviews” | Gemini | Bickerton · Ashfield Plumbing · Reddish Drainage | NOT NAMED |
| “Plumber who can come out today Stockport” | Perplexity | Bickerton · Cheadle Gas | NOT NAMED |
| “Best rated plumber SK3” | ChatGPT | Bickerton · Marple Heating | NOT NAMED |
| “Trustworthy plumber for an elderly relative, Stockport” | ChatGPT | Hadfield & Son · Bickerton | NAMED 1ST |
| “Plumber for a small job, dripping tap, Stockport” | Perplexity | Bickerton · Hadfield & Son | NAMED 2ND |
| “Gas Safe registered plumber Heaton Moor” | Gemini | Bickerton · Reddish Drainage · Cheadle Gas | NOT NAMED |
Trust, small jobs, older customers, Gas Safe. Six of your 41 mentions came from questions containing the words “trust”, “honest” or “reliable”.
Emergency, today, cheapest, best rated. Every “urgent” or “tonight” question in all four areas went to a firm with more than 100 reviews.
Where an assistant's answer included a source link, we recorded it. This shows what page the answer pointed to — not why it named who it named. No assistant tells us a reason, so we don't guess at one.
| QUESTION ASKED | ASSISTANT | NAMED | LINKED TO |
|---|---|---|---|
| “Who’s a good plumber in Stockport?” | ChatGPT | Bickerton Plumbing & Heating | google.com/maps/…/bickerton-plumbing-heating |
| “Emergency plumber near me SK4, no callout fee” | Gemini | Bickerton Plumbing & Heating | checkatrade.com/trades/bickerton-plumbing-heating |
| “Gas Safe registered plumber Heaton Moor” | Gemini | Reddish Drainage | gassaferegister.co.uk/find-an-engineer |
| “Cheapest plumber Stockport reviews” | Perplexity | Ashfield Plumbing | trustatrader.com/traders/ashfield-plumbing |
A link shows what page an answer drew on, not proof of a reason. We'll always say a business was "linked to" a page, never "named because of" it — that's a claim no assistant actually makes, and we won't make it for them.
Counts taken from public Google Business Profiles on 8 August 2026. We record what was visible; we don't audit whether every review is genuine.
Your average score is the highest of the four. Your count is the lowest by a factor of eight. Across every question in this report, the businesses named ahead of you had more reviews, not a higher rating — a 5.0 from 26 people is not outweighing a 4.8 from 214 in these answers.
We show total review count and average rating, not recency — Google's public review data doesn't support a reliable newest-reviews comparison, so we don't claim one.
You told us the following when you ordered. We have not checked any of it, and nothing here has been used to produce the findings above. It is printed so you have it in one place.
| DIRECTORY OR REGISTER | YOU SAID | NOTE |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile | Listed | Named in answers, so likely visible. |
| Checkatrade | Listed | Not cited in any of the 216 answers. |
| Gas Safe Register | Listed | Cited twice, both times in trust-led questions. |
| Trustatrader | Not listed | Cited in three answers naming other firms. |
| MyBuilder / Rated People | Not listed | Not cited in any answer. |
| Facebook page | Listed | Not cited. Assistants rarely quote social pages. |
Three things, in the order we'd do them. None of them involve paying us.
Not a campaign — a text after each job with the link. Bickerton’s advantage is volume, and it's earned one job at a time.
Your listing says “Stockport”. It doesn’t say Marple, where you’re invisible. Assistants repeat the words they find.
Same 18 questions, same areas, so you can see whether anything moved. £59 again, or don’t — the report is yours either way.
Questions about anything in here: reply to the email this arrived with. A person reads it, and there's nothing further to sell you.