AI chatbots get the facts wrong on two in three shops. That is a Northern high street problem

Ask ChatGPT where your nearest shop is, and there is a fair chance it will send you to the wrong postcode. New research into the AI tools now shaping how people find businesses has landed with an uncomfortable finding for the high street, and it matters as much in Leeds, Sheffield and Hull as anywhere. As covered by Business Up North, roughly two in three high street businesses had at least one false fact returned about them by a leading AI chatbot.

What the research found

The study, by AI visibility platform Searchable, put more than 72,000 questions to the three most-used chatbots, ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Perplexity, and graded every answer against each retailer’s verified information. As Retail Focus reported, around 64% of businesses had at least one false fact returned, roughly one in 16 answers overall was wrong, and the single most common error was putting a shop in the wrong location, at a rate of about one in ten. Perplexity was the least accurate of the three, with ChatGPT and Gemini closer behind.

Why this hits Northern high streets hardest

Northern town centres are already fighting hard for every visitor. When the tool someone trusts to find a shop gives them the wrong address, wrong opening hours or wrong website, that is not a harmless glitch, it is a customer lost before they ever set off. The research also found that most people lose trust in a brand entirely when AI serves up wrong information about it. For an independent trader in Leeds or a family business in Hull, that is real money walking out of the door to a competitor the machine happened to describe correctly.

The new shopfront is a data record

The old advice was to keep your shop window clean. The new version is to keep your digital record clean and consistent, your name, address, hours and website spelled out identically everywhere the AI tools might read them, from your own site to the map listings and directories they pull from. This is a discipline the North’s stronger digital businesses already understand, and it is fast becoming as important as a sign above the door. AI is now the front desk for the high street. Northern businesses that make sure it has the facts straight will win the visits. Those that ignore it will quietly lose them.

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