When a business owner types “find me a good accountant in Suffolk” into ChatGPT or Perplexity, which local firms get recommended — and why?
We ran 18 accountancy practices across the East of England through GEO Scanner, our AI visibility analysis tool, to find out. The results are stark: the average score was 49.8 out of 100, not a single firm cracked 70, and two universal gaps appeared on every site we tested.
If you're an accountant and you're not thinking about AI search visibility yet, this is your wake-up call.
What is a GEO Score?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation — the practice of making your website more likely to be cited by AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
Traditional SEO gets you found on Google's blue links. GEO gets you mentioned in AI-generated answers. As more people use AI to find local services, these are increasingly different things — and most businesses are only optimising for one of them.
GEO Scanner analyses your website across six scored dimensions, each weighted by its known impact on AI citation probability:
| Dimension | Max | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Content Extractability | 25 pts | Can AI tools read and quote your content? Checks for clear summaries, concise paragraphs, a descriptive page title, and fresh content. |
| Entity & Authority | 20 pts | Does your site clearly say who you are? Named team members, founding year, location, H1 heading, and LinkedIn presence. |
| Technical & Bot Access | 20 pts | Can AI crawlers actually reach your site? Schema markup (JSON-LD), sitemap.xml, robots.txt permissions, page speed, and HTML-accessible content. |
| Social Proof & Credibility | 20 pts | Do real clients vouch for you? Attributed testimonials, case studies with measurable outcomes, and sector-specific language. |
| Query-Answer Structure | 10 pts | Is your content formatted the way AI expects? FAQ sections, question-phrased headings, and bulleted lists. |
| E-E-A-T Signals | 5 pts | Do you demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust? About page, contact page, privacy policy, awards or memberships. |
The Results
We tested 18 practices listed as serving the East of England. Here's how they ranked:
| # | Score | Band |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 66/100 | Good |
| 2 | 65/100 | Good |
| 3 | 60/100 | Good |
| 4 | 60/100 | Good |
| 5 | 59/100 | Fair |
| 6 | 58/100 | Fair |
| 7 | 57/100 | Fair |
| 8 | 53/100 | Fair |
| 9 | 53/100 | Fair |
| 10 | 52/100 | Fair |
| 11 | 52/100 | Fair |
| 12 | 51/100 | Fair |
| 13 | 49/100 | Fair |
| 14 | 44/100 | Fair |
| 15 | 40/100 | Fair |
| 16 | 40/100 | Fair |
| 17 | 25/100 | Poor |
| 18 | 13/100 | Critical |
Firms are not named — this analysis is intended to illustrate sector-wide patterns, not to rank individual practices.
The Dimension Breakdown
Average scores by dimension reveal where the real problems lie:
| Dimension | Average | Out of | % achieved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content Extractability | 19.3 | 25 | 77% |
| Entity & Authority | 9.4 | 20 | 47% |
| Technical & Bot Access | 10.7 | 20 | 54% |
| Social Proof & Credibility | 5.8 | 20 | 29% |
| Query-Answer Structure | 2.4 | 10 | 24% |
| E-E-A-T Signals | 1.9 | 5 | 38% |
The Two Gaps That Appeared on Every Single Site
1. No schema markup — 18/18 firms
Schema markup is JSON-LD code in your page's <head> that tells AI crawlers structured facts about your business: your name, location, services, reviews, and FAQs. It takes a developer an hour to add. It is the single highest-impact change any accountancy website can make for AI visibility — worth up to 7 points on its own.
Without it, AI tools have to infer who you are from your text alone. With it, they can confidently extract and attribute specific claims to your firm.
2. No case studies with measurable outcomes — 18/18 firms
Not one site we tested had a proper case study: client industry, their problem, what the accountant did, and a measurable result (“saved £12,000 in tax,” “filed six months of backlog in two weeks”).
This is the single most powerful GEO signal for any service business. AI tools are dramatically more likely to cite a source that contains specific, verifiable outcomes. Generic text like “we help small businesses with their accounts” tells an AI nothing it can use.
The Other Near-Universal Gaps
- Attributed testimonials — 17/18 firmsMany sites had testimonials, but they were anonymous ("— J.S., Essex") or unattributed entirely. AI tools weight named testimonials — "Jane Smith, Director, Smith Logistics Ltd" — far more heavily.
- Named team members with credentials — 16/18 firmsMost sites had an About page, but few named their accountants with actual qualifications (ACA, ACCA, CIMA). AI tools look for named expertise to establish authority.
- FAQPage schema — 15/18 firmsMany sites had FAQ-style content, but none had it structured as proper FAQPage JSON-LD schema. This is the schema that most directly feeds AI-generated answers.
- LinkedIn company page linked — 14/18 firmsA simple signal that costs nothing — but missing on 14 of the 18 sites.
What the Best-Performing Sites Did Right
The four firms that scored “Good” (60–66/100) shared a few common traits:
- ✓Clear, well-structured copy near the top of the page — AI tools extract 44% of their citations from the first 30% of page text.
- ✓Fast page load and correctly configured robots.txt — basic technical hygiene that many lower-scoring sites had neglected.
- ✓Some testimonial content — not perfect, but more than the firms at the bottom of the table.
Even the highest scorer (66/100) has significant headroom. The gaps flagged for the top firms — case studies, named team members, schema markup — are all quick wins. A few hours of work could realistically push any of them past 80.
What Accountants Should Do Next
Here's the priority order for improving AI visibility:
Do these first (highest impact, lowest effort):
- Add Organization and FAQPage JSON-LD schema to your homepage. Your web developer can do this in an afternoon, or use a plugin if you're on WordPress.
- Write two or three case studies with real outcomes. Real numbers, real client types (anonymised is fine), real results.
- Name your team on your About page with their full qualifications. ACCA, ACA, CIMA — spell it out. AI tools read credentials.
Then do these:
- Make testimonials specific and attributed: "Jane Smith, Director, Smith Logistics Ltd — saved us £8,000 on our year-end."
- Add a visible H1 to every page describing what you do and who for.
- Link your LinkedIn company page from your website footer.
- Write FAQ content with question-phrased headings (H2 or H3). "How much do your accountancy services cost?" not "Pricing."
Run Your Own Site
GEO Scanner is free. Enter your URL at geoscanner.co.uk and you'll get a full score across all six dimensions, with a prioritised list of improvements specific to your site, in under 60 seconds.
The full AI simulation — where we run your site through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama to see exactly how each one describes your business and who it ranks above you — is £3.50.
Want hands-on help?
Stour Valley AI helps UK businesses improve their AI search visibility — from schema implementation to full GEO strategy.
About this analysis:18 accountancy practices serving the East of England were identified from a UK accountancy directory and analysed in June 2026. Firms are not named — this analysis is intended to illustrate sector-wide patterns, not to rank individual practices. Scores reflect the state of each website at the time of analysis. GEO Scanner's methodology is based on published research into AI citation signals and is updated as new evidence emerges. Scores are heuristic indicators — not guarantees of AI citation.