AI chatbots give false facts about 64% of UK retailers

TL;DR:

• Research by AI visibility platform Searchable put more than 72,000 questions about British high street retailers to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, grading answers against verified information.
• 64% of businesses had at least one false fact returned about them; one in 16 answers overall was false, with wrong postcodes the most common error.
• Smaller retailers suffer most, because a thin online footprint gives AI systems less accurate material to learn from.

If a customer asks an AI chatbot where your shop is, there is a reasonable chance it sends them to the wrong postcode. Research from Searchable tested ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity with over 72,000 questions about UK high street retailers’ locations, contact details and brand identity, grading every answer against verified information. The chatbots answered 98% of the time — but one in 16 answers was false, and 64% of businesses had at least one falsehood returned about them.

The errors are consequential. Wrong postcodes appeared in one in 10 location answers, and in 15% of wrong-location cases the address given was 20 miles or more from the shop. Roughly one in 15 website answers pointed to a dead link, a lookalike, or a different business entirely. Accuracy also varied sharply by engine: Perplexity returned false answers 10% of the time, against 4% for ChatGPT and 5% for Gemini.

This matters because AI answers increasingly sit in the purchase journey. A Rithium survey of UK and US shoppers who use AI products found 90% use them for product research and 53% to choose a retailer — and 58% lose trust in a brand when AI gives wrong product information.

The small business visibility problem

Searchable co-founder Chris Donnelly’s diagnosis should concern every UK SME, not just retailers: large brands have a deep pool of third-party sources for AI systems to learn from, while a small shop’s footprint may be one website and a Google Business listing. His practical fixes are cheap — keep the website and directory listings current, state essential services clearly, and cultivate local press mentions, trade association listings and reviews, all of which shape how AI systems describe a business.

Looking forward

As AI answers displace search results as the first point of contact, monitoring what chatbots say about your business is becoming basic hygiene — the AI-era equivalent of checking your Google listing.