Which web design agencies does ChatGPT recommend in Manchester?

Ask ChatGPT to recommend a web design agency in Manchester, UK and the same two names come back on every run: CTI Digital and MadeByShape. We asked five times on 3 September 2026 and both were named in 5 of 5 answers, with eight other agencies sharing the rest of the slots.

Who came up, and how often?

CTI Digital and MadeByShape were in all five answers. Code Computerlove, PushON and Pixel Kicks came up in three answers each, DEPT and Reason Digital in two, and Cantarus, Create8 and Soap Media in one apiece. Ten agencies in total, from five asks of the same question. The prompt names the country because a buyer's own ChatGPT knows where they are, and an API call does not.

None of the five answers ranked its picks. Each name arrived attached to a job type, and in answer 1 alone that meant e-commerce to CTI Digital, Adobe Commerce to PushON, brand-led sites to MadeByShape, enterprise product work to Code, and charities to Reason Digital. That is how the thinner names got a slot: Cantarus appeared once for Umbraco membership sites, Create8 once for Shopify.

The descriptions are specific enough to check against a website. Answer 2 called Create8 "Manchester Shopify specialists combining web design, branding and paid marketing" and Pixel Kicks a "city-centre agency delivering design, development and SEO". Answer 3 called Code Computerlove "Manchester-based with strategy, design and engineering under one roof" and DEPT a "Full-service, global agency with a sizable Manchester office". Answer 4 called Cantarus a "Manchester agency and Umbraco Platinum Partner". Every one of those reads like a claim already written down somewhere.

Why these ten, and where did ChatGPT get them?

One answer explained itself in a single line:

Why these? They’re consistently visible in current Manchester agency roundups and maintain active, recent case work.

The citations bear that out. Every answer footnoted its picks with links, and every agency link ended in ?utm_source=openai, the tag ChatGPT adds to pages it fetched while answering. The most cited URL across the whole run was the MadeByShape homepage, in all five answers.

Now compare that passage with how ChatGPT described the same firm. Answer 1 called it a "boutique studio just outside the city centre"; answer 3 called it a "Boutique Manchester studio focused on design/branding with Craft CMS and Shopify expertise". Craft CMS and Shopify are the page's own words about itself. ChatGPT handed the buyer the positioning the homepage already states in plain sentences.

Two of the five answers also sent the buyer elsewhere for a longer list. Answer 5 offered "current Manchester rankings on Clutch (updated September 2, 2026) and DesignRush (updated September 1, 2026) are solid shortlists", and answer 4 said "see September 2026 rankings on Clutch and DesignRush". Clutch and DesignRush are directories rather than agencies, so they are not in the count above, but they are part of what decides who is.

The raw answers also spell two of the agencies more than one way. Answer 1 wrote "Code (formerly Code Computerlove)" while answers 3 and 4 wrote "Code Computerlove", and DEPT turned up once as "DEPT (Manchester)" and once as "DEPT". Our extraction step filed those as four separate businesses, and we merged them by hand before publishing the counts here. Counted naively, one agency named in 3 of 5 answers looks like two smaller agencies, one on 1 and one on 2.

What can a Manchester agency do about this today?

1. Put the city in body text. Name your city and the areas you actually serve in an ordinary sentence on your homepage and your contact page, not only inside an embedded map. Text is the part an engine can read.
2. Spell the name one way everywhere. Check your site footer, your Google Business Profile and your top three directories all use exactly the same business name, so mentions of you land on one company rather than two.
3. Get described by somebody other than you. Count the pages online that describe your business in the third person and grow that number, and ask the two best-of lists that cover your niche and city to consider you. The answers above leaned on directories, a Trustpilot page and agency roundups as well as the agencies' own sites.
4. Ask the engine yourself, five times. Put your buyer's question to ChatGPT in five fresh chats and tally the names that come back. One run is an anecdote; five runs show the pattern.

That is five answers about one city on one day. Run the same check for your own business.