How ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overview Pick Different Accountants and Solicitors

Someone types find me a solicitor for a house purchase in Leeds into ChatGPT, asks Perplexity the same question, and searches accountant for a small business near me on Google. Three different engines, three different answers, and most accounting and law firms build one page and hope it works for all three.

AI Search Is Not One Search Engine

ZENETERA sees firms treat AI search as a single target, when ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overview do not read a site the same way or pull from the same sources. Optimizing for one usually means staying invisible to the other two. Here is what each engine actually checks before it names an accountant or solicitor, and the one page format that works across all three.

1. What ZENETERA Found Across 50 Firm Websites

ZENETERA ran the same set of real client questions, such as best probate solicitor near me and accountant for a limited company set up, through ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overview against 50 accounting and law firm websites across the markets we work in. A firm named by one engine was named by a second engine for the same question only 34 percent of the time.

2. How ChatGPT Chooses

ChatGPT increasingly browses live pages rather than relying only on training data, and it favors service pages that state a specific service, a specific client type, and a specific fee in plain text near the top of the page. A firm that lists conveyancing as one line inside a long services list rarely gets named. A firm with a dedicated page titled residential conveyancing for first time buyers, with a fixed fee stated in pounds, gets quoted directly.

3. How Perplexity Chooses

Perplexity leans harder on citations it can show the user, so it favors pages that read like an answer rather than a brochure. A client type line answered in a full sentence, such as we act for company directors going through a contested divorce, gets pulled into an answer with a working link attached. A generic services we offer list gives Perplexity nothing worth citing.

4. How Google's AI Overview Chooses

Google's AI Overview draws from the same index as ordinary search results, so a firm that is not already ranking for a query rarely appears in the AI generated answer either. Structured data matters most here. Firms that mark up their services, fees, and reviews as schema so Google can read them as facts, not just paragraphs, are named noticeably more often than firms with the same information written only in prose.

A services list tells all three engines nothing. A stated client type, a stated fee, and a marked up fact tell all three something different.

5. The One Fix That Works For All Three

The overlap between what ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overview each look for is not zero. All three respond to the same underlying fix, a page for each real client question, written as a direct answer, naming the exact service, the exact client type, and the exact fee, then marked up with schema so Google can read it as a fact too. Firms in our test with even one page built this way for their most searched service appeared in two or more engines instead of just one 61 percent of the time.

The Takeaway

Chasing one AI engine at a time is why most accounting and law firm websites are invisible to two out of three. The fix is not three different strategies, it is one page format built around a real client question, answered directly, with the facts marked up so every engine can read them.