Studies / Personal injury law
We asked AI and Google for the best injury lawyer in 20 Ontario cities, 2,400 times. Each city got its own answer, and a firm named in most Toronto answers can be a rare name in Ottawa.
What we found
A big name in Toronto can be a small one in Ottawa.
56% vs 7%
The same firm was named in 56% of Toronto answers and 7% of Ottawa's.
Finding 04 ↓Few firms are named across the province.
10
Only 10 firms were named in 12 or more of the 20 cities. Most showed up only in their own city or region.
Finding 03 ↓ChatGPT rarely cites firms' own websites. Claude, Gemini and Perplexity often do.
14–20 of 400
ChatGPT cited a big firm's own website in only 14–20 of 400 answers. Claude, Gemini and Perplexity each cited one firm's site in more than half.
Finding 06 ↓What the study delivered
The study's job was a picture each firm could act on: how often AI and Google name it when someone asks for an injury lawyer, city by city, across the province. Every firm named in any city is counted, and each firm can get its own private results.
City by city
How often the firm is named in each of the 20 cities, on each platform.
Against the rest of each city
The firms named most in each city, and whether they're named across Ontario or only locally.
Where the answers come from
The pages the AIs cited most in each city, whether each one lists the firm, and what it says.
And every source along the way. We also recorded every website the AIs cited, so a firm can see which pages sit behind its answers and which ones it's missing from.
Two everyday questions, in each city:
This study ran before we made the question-setting step standard. The two questions are common search phrasings, used without the evidence check and wording pilot we now run first. Future rounds will go through that step.
Along the way
Measuring a whole province also shows how the platforms behave. These are the patterns we saw, not the rankings.
01
Outside Toronto, the firm named most often was usually a local or regional firm, not a Toronto one: in 16 of the 19 other cities, with a tie for first in one more.
16 of 19
cities where a local or regional firm was named most (plus one tie)
02
In Toronto, 99% of answers named at least one of the seven firms named most there. In Barrie, 80% did. In Sudbury, 75%. In Ottawa and London, about 1 in 5.
03
Just 10 firms were named in 12 or more of the 20 cities. Most firms the AIs named showed up only in their own city or region.
10
firms named in 12 or more of the 20 cities
04
One firm was named in all 20 cities. It was named in 56% of answers in Toronto and 7% in Ottawa. A single provincial number would hide most of that.
56%
Toronto · 66 of 118 answers
7%
Ottawa · 8 of 111 answers
05
For three of the province-wide firms, we checked the three outside pages each city's answers cited most. In each firm's strongest city, it was on all or most of them. In its weakest cities, it was usually missing. But being listed wasn't enough: each of the three firms was on at least one of those pages in a city where it was named in 12% of answers or fewer.
12%
of answers named one firm in a city where it was on 2 of the 3 most-cited pages
06
Across the 20 cities, three province-wide firms had their own website cited in 20–39% of all AI answers. ChatGPT almost never cited them: in 14–20 of its 400 answers. For one firm, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity each cited its site in more than half of their answers.
214–248
of 400 answers each, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity cited one firm's own site
14–20
of 400 ChatGPT answers cited each firm's own site
07
When we asked Claude again nine days later, with full-length answers, its most-named firm changed outright in 4 of the 20 cities. Across all six platforms together, the most-named firm didn't change in any city. One answer, or one platform, is an anecdote.
4 of 20
cities where Claude's most-named firm changed
0 of 20
cities where the most-named firm changed across all six platforms
Which firms were named, and how often, in each city goes to each firm in its own results. We don't publish it, and we don't sell placements.
The same method works for any city, any practice area, and any question where it matters who gets named.
These are patterns we observed, not causes. For "named in 12 or more cities", a firm counts in a city when it appears in at least 3 answers there. Each question was asked 10 times per platform in each city, so city-level figures are a first read, not a final word. The AI answers and the map results were collected from a Canada-wide location. A firm counts when its own name appears in an answer; answers that name only a lawyer aren't counted for the firm, and different names for the same firm are counted together. Google's AI answer is counted only when Google showed one (269 of 400 searches).