Ask Three AI Engines for a Vancouver Mover, Get Three Different Lists (2026 Study)

If you ask an AI engine to find you a mover in Vancouver, the names you get depend a lot on which engine you ask. We put the same questions to ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and Perplexity and compared their answers side by side.

Study date: October 20, 2026 · Engines: ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Perplexity (one separate run each) · Location: Vancouver, British Columbia · Questions: 25 per engine (23 shared by all three) · Moving companies named: 29

At a glance

• No moving company was named by all three engines. Of the 29 movers that came up, 24 were named by only one engine. Five were named by two.
• ChatGPT gave the longest lists: 157 mentions of 18 movers. BOSS Moving led with 34 (21.7%), then Simple Moves (23), You Move Me (18) and Cactus Moving (13).
• Perplexity had a different leader: Ferguson Moving & Storage, with 11 of its 56 mover mentions (19.6%), and it was named first 6 times. Ferguson was not in ChatGPT’s results at all, and Simple Moves, ChatGPT’s #2, was not in Perplexity’s.
• Google AI Overview said the least. The audit recorded an AI Overview for only 4 of 29 queries, and those answers named 2 movers, 6 times in total.
• One website was cited by all three engines: securemoving.ca. Secure Moving was mentioned 15 times across ChatGPT and Perplexity but was never named first.
• Perplexity cited the most sources: 412, against 92 for ChatGPT and 28 for Google AI Overview. In the 100 Perplexity citations we could export, 12 pointed to pages about movers in Vancouver, Washington, a different city south of the border.

This is the data the AI engines returned on October 20, 2026. It is not Beket AI’s opinion, and it is not a ranking of moving companies. AI answers change over time, so read this as a snapshot.

Contents

1. At a glance
2. Three engines, three shortlists
3. Where the engines agreed, and where they split
4. All three engines added together
5. What each engine read
6. Why this matters: independent data
7. How we ran the study
8. What Vancouver movers can take from this
9. Caveats
10. The questions we asked
11. Ask for a re-run

Three engines, three shortlists

Our earlier studies of Seattle plumbers and Seattle house cleaners added the three engines together. This time we gave each engine its own run, so we can show what each one said on its own. The answers were far apart.

Source: Beket AI audits, October 20, 2026. One run per engine.

ChatGPT: long lists, one clear leader

ChatGPT named 18 moving companies, 157 times in all. One name stood well ahead.

Rank	Moving company	Mentions	Share of ChatGPT mover mentions	Times named first
1	BOSS Moving	34	21.7%	5
2	Simple Moves	23	14.6%	1
3	You Move Me	18	11.5%	2
4	Cactus Moving	13	8.3%	2
	14 other moving companies	69	43.9%	7
	All 18 moving companies	157	100%	17

The top four took 88 of the 157 mentions (56.1%). The other 14 movers had between 2 and 9 mentions each. ChatGPT also named a business review and ranking site 3 times; we left it out of the mover counts.

Perplexity: shorter answers, a different top four

Perplexity named 14 moving companies, 56 times in all. Its leader was not in ChatGPT’s results at all.

Rank	Moving company	Mentions	Share of Perplexity mover mentions	Times named first
1	Ferguson Moving & Storage	11	19.6%	6
2	President Movers	7	12.5%	0
3 (tie)	BOSS Moving	6	10.7%	2
3 (tie)	Secure Moving	6	10.7%	0
	10 other moving companies	26	46.4%	7
	All 14 moving companies	56	100%	15

Ferguson Moving & Storage was named first in 6 of the 15 answers where Perplexity put a mover first. A name outside Perplexity’s top four was named first 3 times, more than any of the other three top names.

Google AI Overview: mostly no answer at all

Google returned an AI Overview the audit could record for 4 of the 29 queries. Those 4 answers named 2 moving companies:

Moving company	Mentions	Times named first
Two Small Men with Big Hearts	4	1
Get Movers	2	0

For the other 25 queries, the audit recorded no AI Overview. That is a finding in its own right: in this run, Google rarely showed an AI Overview for these local moving searches.

Source: Beket AI audits, October 20, 2026. One run per engine.

Where the engines agreed, and where they split

Where they agreed. Five movers were named by two engines:

• BOSS Moving: 34 times on ChatGPT, 6 on Perplexity.
• You Move Me: 18 on ChatGPT, 4 on Perplexity.
• Secure Moving: 9 on ChatGPT, 6 on Perplexity.
• Cactus Moving: 13 on ChatGPT, 3 on Perplexity.
• Two Small Men with Big Hearts: 4 on Google AI Overview, 2 on Perplexity.

BOSS Moving is the closest thing to a consensus pick. It was ChatGPT’s #1 and tied for #3 on Perplexity. But Google AI Overview did not name it.

Where they split.

• Simple Moves was ChatGPT’s #2, with 23 mentions. Perplexity and Google AI Overview did not name it.
• Ferguson Moving & Storage was Perplexity’s #1, with 11 mentions and 6 first places. ChatGPT and Google AI Overview did not name it.
• President Movers, Perplexity’s #2, did not come up on the other two engines.
• Two Small Men with Big Hearts, the name Google AI Overview gave most, did not come up on ChatGPT.
• Of ChatGPT’s 18 movers, 14 came up only on ChatGPT. Of Perplexity’s 14, 9 came up only on Perplexity.

The point is not that one engine is right. Each engine pulls from different sources, and a mover can be a leader on one and absent on another. We have written before about how Google’s own AI products disagree on which brands to name. This study shows the same kind of split across three different engines.

All three engines added together

If you add the three runs together, there are 219 mentions of 29 moving companies.

Rank	Moving company	Mentions	Share of all mover mentions	Times named first	Engines that named it
1	BOSS Moving	40	18.3%	7	ChatGPT, Perplexity
2	Simple Moves	23	10.5%	1	ChatGPT
3	You Move Me	22	10.0%	3	ChatGPT, Perplexity
4	Cactus Moving	16	7.3%	3	ChatGPT, Perplexity
	25 other moving companies	118	53.9%	19
	All 29 moving companies	219	100%	33

Source: Beket AI audits, October 20, 2026. One run per engine, added together.

Read this table with care. ChatGPT gave 157 of the 219 mentions, so the combined list mostly reflects ChatGPT. Ferguson Moving & Storage, Perplexity’s leader, ranks only #6 here (11 mentions), and Secure Moving ranks #5 (15). The top four together took 101 mentions (46.1%). The other 25 movers had between 2 and 15 each.

What each engine read

Each engine cited a different set of websites, and that matches how differently they answered.

Engine	Sources cited	Most-cited domains (times cited)
ChatGPT	92	bossmoving.ca (11), securemoving.ca (6), simplemoves.ca (6), cactusmoving.ca (5), vancouver.prestigemoving.ca (4)
Perplexity	412	fergusonmoving.com (27), presidentmovers.ca (21), bbb.org (20), securemoving.ca (20), 4youmoving.com (15)
Google AI Overview	28	getmovers.ca (3), google.com (3), securemoving.ca (2), twosmallmen.com (2)

Four patterns stand out:

1. Movers’ own websites led the citations. On ChatGPT, 9 of the 10 most-cited domains were moving companies’ own sites. The tenth was a local “best of” list site.
2. Citations and mentions moved together. Each engine’s most-cited moving-company site belonged to a name that engine gave: bossmoving.ca on ChatGPT (its #1 name), fergusonmoving.com on Perplexity (its #1 name) and getmovers.ca on Google AI Overview.
3. Perplexity leaned on third-party and official sources too. Its ten most-cited domains included bbb.org (20), a truck-rental company’s site (12), a mover review site (11), a freight-industry news site (9) and the BC government’s laws site, bclaws.gov.bc.ca (7). One of our questions asked what insurance a BC moving company should have.
4. Some answers drifted across the border. In the 100 Perplexity citations the audit let us export, 12 pointed to pages about movers in Vancouver, Washington, even though the audit’s location was set to Vancouver, BC. Several of our questions said only “Vancouver.” It is a live example of the question we asked in does AI search even know your business is Canadian?

Why this matters: independent data

The figures in this section come from independent public sources, not from our audits. The two BrightLocal surveys are of U.S. consumers.

• Many people now ask AI for local businesses. In BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey of 1,002 U.S. adults, 45% said they had used AI tools for local business recommendations in the past 12 months, up from 6% the year before. ChatGPT was used for this by 31%, and Google’s AI Mode by 23%.
• But people check AI before they call. In BrightLocal’s July 2026 consumer search behavior research, based on 1,227 U.S. consumers, only 18% of AI users felt ready to contact the business an AI tool recommended. Of consumers whose latest local search started on an AI tool, 43% went on to check Google and just 2% used the AI tool alone.
• Moves out of BC are part of the picture. Statistics Canada reported on September 23, 2026 that Alberta had the fastest population growth of any province from July 1, 2025 to July 1, 2026 (+1.5%), while British Columbia grew 0.1%. Two of our questions asked about moves from Vancouver to Calgary and Toronto.

Put together: people are using more than one AI tool and then checking what it says. If each engine gives a different shortlist, a mover that shows up on only one of them reaches only part of the people asking.

How we ran the study

We ran three market audits with Beket AI on October 20, 2026, one per engine, between about 9:07 and 9:19 AM PT. Each audit’s location was set to Vancouver, BC, Canada, and its language to English.

• One engine per run. ChatGPT, Google AI Overview and Perplexity each had their own audit. This is how we can report each engine’s numbers separately, without estimating.
• Questions. We wrote 23 questions that someone looking for a mover in Vancouver might type, such as “affordable movers Vancouver BC,” “movers in Burnaby” and “piano movers Vancouver BC.” All three engines got these 23. Each audit also picked 2 more questions on its own, which were different for each engine. None of the questions named a business. All of them are listed below.
• Extra discovery queries. Each run logged 29 queries: the 25 questions plus 4 discovery queries that the market audit adds on its own. Those 4 were not in the question list we could export, so we cannot list them here.
• What we counted. A mention is a moving company named in an answer. Share is that company’s mentions divided by all mover mentions on the same engine (or across all three, in the combined table). Times named first counts answers where that company came first. When we say an engine “did not name” a company, we mean the company was not in that engine’s audit results. Every name in those results had at least 2 mentions, so a company named only once may not show up.
• Combining name variants. We combined names that are clearly the same company written differently: “BOSS Moving” and “BOSS Moving Vancouver”; “You Move Me,” “You Move Me Vancouver” and “You Move Me Vancouver Burnaby”; “Simple Moves” and “Simple Moves & Storage”; “Great Canadian Van Lines” with and without “Ltd”; and two spellings of “Two Small Men with Big Hearts.” That takes 35 different spellings down to 29 moving companies across all three engines.
• One name left out. ChatGPT named a business review and ranking site 3 times (once first). It is not a mover, so we left it out of the counts.
• Sources. We also logged the websites each engine cited. The domain totals cover every citation. Our export of individual Perplexity citations covered 100 of its 412.

We report what the engines returned. We did not rate, verify or rank the moving companies ourselves.

What Vancouver movers can take from this

• Check every engine, not just one. A mover can lead on ChatGPT and be absent on Perplexity, or the other way round. A single check on a single engine tells you very little.
• Make your own website the clear source. Movers’ own sites were among the most-cited sources on all three engines. Give each service its own page: local moves, long-distance routes, office moves, piano moves, packing, storage and senior moves each had their own question here.
• Say “Vancouver, BC” plainly. Some answers pulled in pages about Vancouver, Washington. Put the province, your service areas (Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, North Vancouver) and your address where they are easy to read.
• Publish prices and how quotes work. Three of the shared questions were about cost or affordability. Clear, current pricing gives an engine something concrete to repeat.
• Show your insurance and coverage. One question asked what insurance a BC moving company should have, and Perplexity cited the BC government’s laws site 7 times.
• Keep your profiles current where engines look. Perplexity cited bbb.org 20 times. Keep your business name the same everywhere; five companies in this study were named in more than one way.
• Check again. Answers change. One check is a snapshot, not a verdict.

Caveats

• One run per engine, one day. These are the answers returned on October 20, 2026. Answers can differ from day to day and from user to user.
• Not quite the same question set on each engine. The 23 core questions were the same, but each engine’s audit added 2 different questions of its own, plus 4 discovery queries we could not export. The per-engine counts include all of them.
• Google AI Overview answered rarely. With an AI Overview recorded for only 4 of 29 queries, Google’s numbers are very small and should not be compared share for share with the other two engines.
• Small numbers. One or two mentions can change a rank, especially on Perplexity (56 mover mentions) and Google AI Overview (6).
• Combined names. We combined variants that are clearly the same company. If a variant actually refers to a different business, its count would be lower. Every name in the audit results had at least 2 mentions, so companies named only once may be missing from these counts.
• Three engines only. Other AI tools were not included.
• Mentions, not quality. A mention means the engine gave a name. It says nothing about service, licensing, insurance or price, and it is not a recommendation from Beket AI.

The questions we asked

Asked on all three engines (23):

1. best moving companies in Vancouver BC
2. affordable movers Vancouver BC
3. how much do movers cost in Vancouver BC
4. movers for a one bedroom apartment in Vancouver
5. movers for a downtown Vancouver condo with an elevator booking
6. movers in Burnaby
7. movers in North Vancouver
8. movers in Richmond BC
9. movers in Surrey BC
10. movers in Kitsilano Vancouver
11. same day movers Vancouver
12. cheap movers for students in Vancouver
13. long distance movers from Vancouver to Calgary
14. movers from Vancouver to Toronto
15. movers from Vancouver to Seattle
16. piano movers Vancouver BC
17. office movers Vancouver BC
18. senior moving services Vancouver BC
19. packing services Vancouver BC
20. moving and storage Vancouver BC
21. how to choose a moving company in Vancouver
22. what insurance should a moving company in BC have
23. highly rated movers in Vancouver with good reviews

Added by each engine’s audit (2 each):

• ChatGPT: “best local moving companies in Vancouver BC” and “average cost of movers in Vancouver”
• Google AI Overview: “best moving services in Vancouver BC” and “relo service for residential moving in Vancouver”
• Perplexity: “How to find reliable local movers in Vancouver” and “Best residential moving services in Vancouver BC”

Ask for a re-run

AI answers move, and we plan to repeat this study to see what changes.

Run a moving company in Vancouver, or another local business? You can request your own run at beket.ai. A free Beket AI audit covers 25 prompts across 3 engines. Beket AI Pro is $49/month and re-audits daily, starting at 50 prompts across 3 engines.