Bakuri Inc. and Dr.AISEO Inc. asked ChatGPT and Gemini 522 questions about bank loans, twice each, and tallied the websites consulted as the basis for their answers. The findings were published on PR TIMES on October 15, 2026.
Grouping the sources by type of site, financial institutions' official sites were the most common on both AIs. Their share, however, differed sharply: 89% for ChatGPT and 47% for Gemini. Gemini read much of the rest from media and other-industry articles (37%) and loan comparison sites (10%).
| Rank | ChatGPT | Gemini |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Financial institutions' official sites 89% | Financial institutions' official sites 47% |
| 2 | Public and government bodies 7% | Media and other-industry articles 37% |
| 3 | Media and other-industry articles 1% | Loan comparison sites 10% |
| 4 | Loan comparison sites 0% | Public and government bodies 2% |
When asked "Which bank do you recommend?", ChatGPT reads 2.9 sites per answer. For the 104 questions on interest rate levels, screening, how to choose, and problems, that falls to 0.4, and for 71 questions no sources were recorded in either run. Even when it does read sites, 88% of sources for problem-related questions are public and government bodies. Gemini read 11 to 13 sites for every type of question, and 59% of its sources for problem-related questions were media and other-industry articles.
81% of the pages ChatGPT consulted were financial institutions' product pages, such as "mortgage" or "car loan" pages, rising to 89% when interest rate tables and Q&A pages are included. For Gemini, financial institutions' pages accounted for only 39%, while explainer articles made up 42% and pages listing multiple institutions, such as rate tables and rankings on comparison sites, made up 14%.
Comparing the 20 most-consulted sites, the two AIs shared 9, mostly nationwide institutions such as megabanks and online banks. The loan comparison sites and money media that rank high for Gemini are rarely read by ChatGPT. 50% of Gemini's consultations went to sites that ChatGPT never read.
When the same question was asked twice, only 11% of pages were opened both times on ChatGPT and 32% on Gemini. At the site level, 25% of sites on ChatGPT and 45% on Gemini were consulted two or more times for the same question. Checking once is not enough to tell whether you are being consulted.
For questions without a prefecture name, regional financial institutions accounted for 29% of sources on ChatGPT and 13% on Gemini. Adding a prefecture name, as in "Which bank do you recommend for a mortgage in (prefecture)?", raised this to 74% on ChatGPT and 52% on Gemini. On Gemini, however, loan comparison sites ranked first in seven prefectures: Tochigi, Saitama, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Osaka, and Wakayama.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Study | What Sets Banks Chosen by AI Apart? Loans (ChatGPT and Gemini AIO / AISEO Domain Research: Banking, Loans) |
| AIs covered | ChatGPT, Gemini |
| Measurement date | October 9, 2026 |
| Questions | 522 (twice on each AI, 2,088 answers in total) |
| Total consultations | ChatGPT 2,490, Gemini 12,765 |
| Domains detected | ChatGPT 387, Gemini 1,446 (1,597 in total) |
| Method | Consulted URLs classified by type of site and type of page |
| Conducted by | Bakuri Inc., Dr.AISEO Inc. |
The full report (66 pages, in Japanese), including the top consulted sites for each of 47 prefectures × 6 loan types, a ranking of all 1,597 source domains, and the 522 questions used, is available free on Bakuri Inc.'s website.
View the full report (66 pages, Japanese) → View the press release on PR TIMES (Japanese) →FREE TRIAL
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