Jacob Whitmore · Research on search and AII test how AI is changing the way we find things online.
Ask Google or ChatGPT a question today and you’ll often get a ready-made answer instead of a list of websites. So which sources does that answer trust? Does it tell you where its facts came from, or how old they are? I run small experiments to find out, publish all the data, and make predictions you can check me against.
By Jacob Whitmore. Around 12 years in SEO, the job of getting websites found on Google.
Why it matters
Ten links are turning into one answer.
How search used to work
You got a list. You chose.
You typed a question, Google showed you ten websites, and you decided which one to believe.
How it works more and more
You get an answer. It chose.
An AI reads the web for you and writes one reply. It picks the sources, and you often never see them.
That affects everyone who looks things up. It decides which businesses get recommended, which writers and publishers get credit for their work, and whether the figures you’re given are out of date.
Most of what’s written about this is sales pitch or guesswork. I’d rather measure it, show the working, and let you check it.
What I’ve found
Four things I’ve found so far.
Recommendations
ChatGPT’s “best” depends on who it thinks you are.
I asked ChatGPT and Gemini for the best accounting software in the UK. With no other detail, every answer named Xero and QuickBooks. When I said I was the finance director of a manufacturer with 250 staff, three of the four answers named none of the products from the first list.
Why it mattersThere’s no single “top three” any more. Each person can get their own shortlist.
Read the studyTested 9 Oct 2026
Out-of-date facts
AI answers quote old figures as if they’re current.
Asked what the “purple pound” (the spending power of disabled people) is worth, both AI tools that answered said £274bn. Neither mentioned it was an estimate from 2020. In a wider test, 7 of 40 answers to “right now” questions about UK figures didn’t say when the figure was from.
Why it mattersIf an answer doesn’t say when a fact was true, you can’t tell whether it still is.
Read the studyTested 9 Oct 2026
News and AI
9 of the UK’s 10 biggest news sites block at least one AI robot.
AI companies send automated programs, called crawlers, to read websites. Some collect pages to train AI. Others fetch a page when someone asks a question. Most big UK news sites block the training kind far more often than the kind that fetches pages for answers.
Why it mattersPublishers are deciding who can use their journalism, and for what. I recheck all ten sites on the 2nd of every month.
Read the studyMonthly since 2 Oct 2026
Statistics
The AI search statistics everyone repeats don’t hold up.
I traced the 32 statistics about AI search that appear most often in online roundups back to where they came from. None passed five basic checks: when it was measured, how many were measured, where, how, and whether the data is published. None was about the UK.
Why it mattersCheck a figure before you repeat it. Here are the five questions to ask.
Read the studyChecked 29 Oct 2026
Every study comes with the full data as a spreadsheet you can download. See all the research
How I work
Show the working.
Test it
I run each experiment myself, on a stated date, and say exactly what I did so anyone can repeat it.
Publish it
The answer goes in the first line. The full data goes up as a download, limits included.
Predict
I say what I think happens next, by when, and what would prove me wrong. All before the result is in.
Get marked
On the date, I check. Right or wrong, it goes on the scoreboard. Wrong calls stay up, in red.
Predictions
Called early, scored in public.
Anyone can say where things are heading. I write each prediction down with a date and a test for right or wrong, before the result is in.
- Open 32
None has been checked yet. The first, P37, is checked on 6 Nov 2026. Wrong calls stay up, marked in red. How scoring works
Due next
- P3724 hours after the announcement, at least one of the four engines will give a stale answer in at least one of its two runs.Checked 6 Nov 2026
- P19After the follow-up ‘When is that figure from? Give the month or period and the official source.’, at least 95% of AI answers will state a period for the figure.Checked 30 Nov 2026
- P20At least one period an engine gives on request doesn’t match the official period.Checked 30 Nov 2026
- P17GPTBot is blocked by 16 or fewer of the 24 Russell Group universities.Checked 2 Dec 2026
Latest writing
New on the site.
What happens after the AI slop?
AI made publishing almost free. It didn’t make trust cheap. Why proof, original data and open methods are the next edge in search and AI answers.
How to check a statistic before you use it: five questions
None of the 32 most-repeated AI search statistics passed five basic checks. Ask any statistic these five questions before you paste it.
Gartner said search volume would drop 25% by 2026. Can it be scored?
Gartner’s 2024 call that search volume would fall 25% by 2026, checked in October 2026. It can’t be scored as written. On the closest public data, it looks like a miss.
Do backlinks get you cited in AI answers? What 16 studies actually measured
Checked 30 October 2026. 16 studies on links, authority and rankings vs AI citations. All correlational, none with raw data, one naming a country. Brand mentions beat links.
Who’s behind this
I’m Jacob Whitmore. I’ve worked in SEO for around 12 years, in-house, at agencies and freelance. This site is where I test my own ideas about where search is going, in public.
More about meFollow along.
New results go up on the 2nd of every month, and predictions get marked on their due dates. I post both on LinkedIn first.