The NZ AI Visibility Index

When New Zealanders ask AI who to trust, one website answers for them.

We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for the best mortgage advisers, insurance brokers and accountants across New Zealand — 6 cities, 125 answers in all. The same handful of directories decide who gets recommended. Most actual firms are invisible.

ChatGPT · Perplexity · Gemini — live web-search answers, NZ geography, pooled over 2 runs.

Ask three AIs the same question, get three different gatekeepers.

ChatGPT

gpt-4o

98%

of answers cite
top5.nz

100% lean on a directory / listicle
0% cite an offshore firm a Kiwi can't use
2% cite a forum (Reddit & co.)
Best-performing NZ firm: sba.co.nz 14%

top5.nzdirectory98%

moneyhub.co.nzdirectory33%

financeadvisers.co.nzdirectory14%

sba.co.nzNZ business14%

oconnorwarren.co.nzNZ business12%

explorehamilton.co.nzdirectory10%

Perplexity

sonar

19%

of answers cite
insuranceadvisernet.co.nz

52% lean on a directory / listicle
5% cite an offshore firm a Kiwi can't use
0% cite a forum (Reddit & co.)
Best-performing NZ firm: ajg.co.nz 26%

ajg.co.nzNZ business26%

rothbury.co.nzNZ business21%

insuranceadvisernet.co.nzdirectory19%

moneyhub.co.nzdirectory14%

nzbrokers.co.nzdirectory14%

top5.nzdirectory14%

Gemini

gemini-2.5-flash

56%

of answers cite
moneyhub.co.nz

95% lean on a directory / listicle
29% cite an offshore firm a Kiwi can't use
39% cite a forum (Reddit & co.)
Best-performing NZ firm: opespartners.co.nz 24%

moneyhub.co.nzdirectory56%

reddit.comforum29%

opespartners.co.nzNZ business24%

topnzreview.comdirectory24%

squirrel.co.nzNZ business17%

globalfinance.co.nzNZ business17%

There is no single “AI answer.”

Whether a directory gatekeeps the recommendation — and which one — depends entirely on the engine. ChatGPT hands the category to top5.nz. Gemini leans on moneyhub.co.nz, Reddit, and — in 29% of answers — overseas firms a New Zealander can't even use. Perplexity is the most business-friendly, spreading its citations across actual brokers and broker networks.

Engine	Top gatekeeper	Cite a directory	Cite an NZ firm	Cite an offshore firm	Cite a forum	Best single NZ firm
ChatGPT	top5.nz 98%	100%	81%	0%	2%	sba.co.nz 14%
Perplexity	insuranceadvisernet.co.nz 19%	52%	67%	5%	0%	ajg.co.nz 26%
Gemini	moneyhub.co.nz 56%	95%	88%	29%	39%	opespartners.co.nz 24%

ChatGPT is a monopoly

top5.nz sits in 98% of answers. If you're not on that list, ChatGPT has almost no route to recommend you — however good you are.

Gemini gets it wrong

29% of Gemini's answers cite an overseas firm, and 39% lean on Reddit. Confident, cited, and often useless to a Kiwi buyer.

Nobody owns it yet

No individual NZ firm is cited in more than 26% of answers on any engine. The category is wide open.

It's a content game

The winners aren't lucky. They built the “best [X] in NZ” pages the models reach for. That's a play any business can run — and it's the whole job.

How we ran it

Honest and repeatable — no cherry-picking.

Prompts: best {category} in {location} — mortgage adviser, insurance broker, accountant for a small business × 6 NZ cities + nationwide.
Engines: ChatGPT (gpt-4o), Perplexity (sonar), Gemini (gemini-2.5-flash), each with live web search, geo set to New Zealand.
Source: DataForSEO AI Optimization (LLM responses + web search), geo=NZ. We record the sources each model actually browsed to build its answer.
Sample: pooled over 2 runs per engine to smooth out browsing variance. Domains hand-classified as directory, NZ business, offshore firm or forum.
Run date: 2026-07-17. AI answers change over time — this is a snapshot, and we re-run it.