US vs UK: ChatGPT Recommends a Different Top Product 69.3% of the Time

A shopper in Manchester and a shopper in Chicago ask ChatGPT for the best car insurance provider on the same morning. The American is pointed to Geico, the Briton to Aviva. The answer changes for everyday products too: blenders, coffee makers, car seats and baby monitors.

For a brand selling in several English-speaking markets, this decides where its AI visibility actually is. A top spot in ChatGPT's US answer says little about the UK, Canadian or Australian answer to the same question, and a check run from the home country shows the home market alone.

ChatGPT leads with a different product in the UK than in the US 69.3% of the time. Its answers vary even without a change of country: the US question asked twice changes its top pick 52.5% of the time. Moving the question abroad adds about 17 points to that, and the swaps are often to local brands and UK model names.

On September 23, 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Gemini 250 English "best product" questions, each with the location set to the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, in two rounds. The questions are part of a larger 14,000-answer study of how AI answers vary by country and language.

We compared the top pick, the first product the answer recommends, in the US version with each other country's version from the same round. Because AI engines do not give identical answers to identical questions, we also compared the US question with itself across the two rounds. That baseline is how often the top pick changes by chance; the effect of location is the gap above it.

ChatGPT's answers move around even at home: asking the same US question twice changes the top pick 52.5% of the time. Moving the question to another country pushes that to between 67.6% and 71.7%. Australia differs from the US most often at 71.7%, then the UK at 69.3% and Canada at 67.6%, so even Canada gets a different leader two times in three.

The 17-point gap is the part ChatGPT adds because of where the buyer is. It uses the location to search for what is sold, reviewed and recommended in that country, and the evidence it finds points to different products.

Many UK swaps are local brands. For the best car insurance providers, ChatGPT's US answer led with Geico and its UK answer with Aviva. For a business bank account, Chase gave way to Starling Business. For the car with the cheapest insurance, the Toyota Corolla gave way to the Hyundai i10.

Products change too, sometimes to UK model names. The Vitamix E310 blender became the Nutribullet 900 Series. The Fellow Aiden coffee maker became the Sage Bambino Plus, sold under Sage, Breville's brand name in the UK. A brand that is known by a different name abroad needs that name to be clear for ChatGPT to recommend it.

Gemini localizes less clearly than ChatGPT. It changes its top pick 82.7% of the time between two identical US questions, and its country differences run from 83.1% for the UK to 86.6% for Australia. With four in five answers already leading with a different product on a simple repeat, the country adds a few points at most.

For brands, that makes Gemini visibility a question of how often you appear across many answers, not of holding the top spot in one. On ChatGPT, where the answer is steadier, the country you ask from makes a clear difference.

Track AI visibility by market. A brand that leads ChatGPT's US answer can be absent from the UK version of the same question. Check each country you sell in with the location set to that country, several times, and record how often you lead there.

Make your local presence easy to find. The UK picks favored brands and model names sold in the UK, so publish country-specific pages with local product names, prices and availability, and build review coverage on the sites buyers in each market use. As an international seo agency, Suff Digital tracks AI recommendations country by country.

Embed this research

Cite this study