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PARTLY

As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly compare locations for your UK business.

Most people should hand this to a purpose-built tool.

Can you do it?

15 minutesto a draft.

1 hourto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0

Skill neededchat-fluent

Who has to check ityou

What the alternative costsThe supplied tool data gives no price for a human location-comparison alternative.

If this goes wrong: you choose a site with weak demand, unsuitable access or costs your model did not capture, and the mistake can affect your lease and trading results.

What to actually do

  1. Use a tool built for this

    The route this page recommends

  2. Do it yourself

    Second choice

    A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

    How to actually do it

    1. Write down the business type, target customers, premises requirements, budget, staffing needs, opening hours and the locations you are considering.
    2. Choose and rank the decision criteria, then assign weights that add up to 100 percent, giving the highest weights to factors that would genuinely decide the location.
    3. Open current public sources for each location, such as local authority pages, transport information, property listings, competitor websites and published local data, and save the URLs and access dates.
    4. Paste the business details, criteria, weights and sourced evidence into the prompt, keeping each source attached to the claim it supports.
    5. Ask the chatbot for the weighted comparison, calculations, assumptions, unknowns, sensitivity check and provisional recommendation specified in the prompt.
    6. Compare every figure and citation in the draft with the original source, then correct the table using your own calculations where necessary.
    7. Visit the shortlisted sites and record access, footfall, parking, visibility, neighbouring businesses, noise, condition and practical staffing issues that public sources cannot establish.
    8. Send the final evidence pack to the relevant property, planning, legal or financial professional before signing a lease or committing significant capital.

    Prompt

    Compare these candidate UK business locations: [LOCATION 1], [LOCATION 2], [LOCATION 3].

Business type: [BUSINESS TYPE]
Target customers: [CUSTOMER DESCRIPTION]
Trading model: [SHOP, OFFICE, WAREHOUSE, MOBILE, ONLINE OR OTHER]
Required premises size and facilities: [REQUIREMENTS]
Budget and expected occupancy period: [BUDGET AND PERIOD]
Opening hours and staffing needs: [DETAILS]
Most important decision criteria, in order: [CRITERIA]

Use only the information and source links I provide, plus clearly identified public sources that you can access. For every factual claim, give the source URL and the source access date. Do not invent figures, fill gaps with assumptions, or present estimates as facts. Separate verified facts, calculations, assumptions and unknowns. Compare demand, customer access, transport, parking, competition, nearby businesses, staffing, premises costs, planning or operating constraints and risks only where evidence is available. Show the calculations behind any scoring. If a factor cannot be compared fairly, say so. Produce a weighted comparison table, a sensitivity check showing what changes if the most important weighting changes, the strongest case for and against each location, questions I must answer through site visits or professional checks, and a provisional recommendation that states exactly what evidence could change it. This is business research, not legal, planning, property or financial advice.

    Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

  3. Hand it to a person

    The distant third

    A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

What it gets wrong

  • AI cannot establish real footfall, visibility, noise, security or practical access from a desk-based comparison.
  • AI cannot know whether published local data is current, comparable between areas or relevant to your particular customers.
  • AI cannot inspect lease terms, planning restrictions, business rates or property condition as a responsible specialist would.
  • AI cannot decide how much an uncertain factor is worth to your business without your judgement.
  • AI cannot take responsibility for the commercial consequences of choosing the wrong site.

What caps this at PARTLY: real time truth, context depth and judgement under ambiguity.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

AxisScore (0–2)
Output2
Inputs1
Verification1
Liability2
Effort delta1
Total7 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can ChatGPT compare business locations?
Yes, it can organise evidence, apply your chosen criteria and produce a weighted comparison. It cannot replace current local research, site visits or checks of property, planning and lease details.
What information does AI need to compare business locations?
Give it your business type, target customers, premises needs, budget, staffing model, opening hours, candidate locations and ranked decision criteria. Add source links and access dates for local demand, competition, transport, premises and operating information.
Can AI tell me which UK location is best for my business?
It can make a provisional recommendation from the evidence and weightings you provide. The recommendation is only as reliable as the local data, and it cannot verify conditions such as actual footfall, property condition or lease risk without human checks.
Is AI location research accurate?
It can calculate and summarise supplied evidence accurately, but it may use stale, incomplete or non-comparable local information. Check every claim against its source and verify the shortlisted locations in person before committing.

Nearby answers

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Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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