Just two of 465 Google results led to pages about named solicitors, Manchester study finds
Just two of the 465 Google results examined in a new study of Greater Manchester law firms led to a page centred on an individual solicitor. By contrast, 404 results pointed to a law firm’s own website. The figures reveal a gap between how visible legal practices are online and how readily a prospective client can find the people behind them.
The findings come from Findwell’s Manchester Law Firm Visibility Index 2026, which assessed 378 active law firms registered in Greater Manchester. Rather than search for firms by name, researchers used queries based on the legal work someone might need, recording which firms and individuals appeared in Google results and AI-generated answers.
Across the Google searches and AI answers it measured, 78% of the eligible firms did not appear at all. That does not mean those practices cannot be found online; it describes a defined sample of non-brand searches carried out in September 2026.
A concentrated market
Ten firms occupied 30% of the Google positions recorded across the 18 firm-level searches. Slater Heelis led the overall index, followed by Olliers Solicitors and Clifford Johnston & Co. Maguire Family Law and Slater and Gordon UK completed the top five.
The index scores firms on Google position, how many practice areas they reach page one for, and how often they are named in the AI sample. Slater Heelis set the benchmark score of 100 after appearing on page one across five practice areas and being named 11 times in the AI responses. A score of 100 is relative to the other firms in the study, not a measure of the standard of its legal work.
The results also show that doing well on Google does not necessarily mean being recommended by AI. Clifford Johnston & Co reached page one across four practice areas but was not named in the study’s firm-level AI answers. Olliers reached page one in two areas and was named four times by AI.
There were differences between practice areas, too. In employment law, the firms appearing highest were Martin & Co Solicitors, Myerson, Gorvins, Kuit Steinart Levy and Slater Heelis. Neither of the first two featured in the overall top five, underlining how much can be lost in a single league table.
The solicitors behind the firm
Firm websites accounted for 87% of the 465 Google results reviewed. A further 59 positions went to directories, legal rankings, news and other third-party pages. Just two featured a page focused on a named individual. A practice might therefore rank for the work it does without making it equally easy to identify the solicitor responsible for that work.
The AI part of the research narrowed the field further. Findwell put questions about which firms to instruct to two web-enabled Claude models, Haiku 4.5 and Sonnet 5. Across 36 answers, the systems named 32 firms registered in Greater Manchester. In 19% of those answers, no firm from the study’s register was named.
A separate set of prompts asked for individual solicitors. Across 68 answers, the models named 114 different people, but only 41 worked at firms registered in Greater Manchester. Some worked at firms with Manchester offices but registered addresses elsewhere, putting them outside the index’s eligibility rules.
Those boundaries matter. To qualify for the index, a practice needed an active Companies House record and a registered office in Greater Manchester. The AI findings are also a snapshot from two particular models with web search enabled, not a forecast of how every AI service will answer in future.
Beyond the team biography
“Publishing more under the firm’s name changes nothing,” said Jordan Greenaway, founder of Findwell. “The month a partner’s name goes on the work is the month the numbers move.”
That distinction has practical consequences for business development. A departmental page may establish that a firm handles commercial disputes or employment claims. It may tell a reader much less about which partner has dealt with a similar problem, what they have written on the subject or where their expertise has been recognised beyond the firm’s own website.
For practices without the reach of a large national brand, the more useful question may be which specialist subjects they can make their lawyers known for, rather than how to rank for every legal service at once. The study does not prove that publishing more individual content will secure an AI recommendation. It does identify a part of search in which relatively few named solicitors appeared.
Findwell, which develops expert profiles and content for professional services firms, says the index measures discoverability rather than technical competence or client care. Its full report sets out the top 50 firms, rankings across eight practice areas, individual visibility findings and the methodology behind the results.
Contributed content: this article was written by a third-party contributor and does not necessarily reflect the views of Law News. Editorial and Advertising Policy
