Which IT support companies in Guildford do AI assistants actually recommend?

We put the 14 questions a person in Guildford asks before choosing an IT support company — cost, specialism, who to use, how to check them — to Claude, 5 times each, 70 answers in all, and recorded every firm the answers named. 30 firms in Guildford were checked against those answers. 4 of them were named at least once. The rest were not recommended in a single answer. Below are the 4 firms named most often; the others are told their result privately.

The top of the table

Firms are ranked by the number of answers that named them, then by how many different questions. The top 10 of the 30 firms checked are listed (the top ten, or the top third, whichever is smaller), plus any firm level with the last one in; a rank number that is skipped belongs to a firm that is not named here: it asked not to be, or the name the assistants used is a trade body, a national chain or a description rather than a local firm. The assistants do not give identical answers twice, so a difference of one or two mentions is noise; being named on questions a rival is absent from is not.

A further 26 firms were checked and are not listed here: 0 named in at least one answer but below the cut, 26 not named at all. Each has a private report, sent to the firm on request and to nobody else.

Is this your firm? If anything here is wrong, or you would rather your firm were not listed, email hello@aether-agency.co.uk or use the contact form. We acknowledge within two working days, correct a factual error as soon as it is confirmed, and take a firm off the public page on request; the measurement itself is not changed, because it records what the assistants said on the day.

The questions we asked

1. Should my small business get an ongoing IT support contract or just pay for ad hoc fixes when something breaks?
2. How much does monthly IT support typically cost for a 10-person office in Guildford?
3. Which independent IT support company near Guildford actually has good reviews and not just a nice website?
4. Is it better to hire an in-house IT person or use a local IT support firm near Woking?
5. We're moving offices from Farnham to a new site and need someone to handle the network setup — who should we use?
6. What's a fair hourly rate for emergency IT callouts in the Guildford area?
7. Are there any Cyber Essentials accredited IT support providers based near Godalming?
8. Do small accountancy firms usually need a full managed IT service or just occasional support?
9. What's the difference between a local independent IT support firm and a national provider covering Surrey?
10. Our server crashed overnight and we're based just off the A3 near Guildford — which local company could come out fast?
11. How can I check if an IT support company near Aldershot is actually reliable before signing a contract?
12. What should I look for when choosing between different IT support packages for a growing startup?
13. Which independent IT support company would you recommend for a law firm based in Guildford town centre?
14. Should I use a freelance IT contractor or a proper local support company for a small office near Cranleigh?

How this was measured

• Date: 25 September 2026, the day the answers were collected. This is one day, not a trend; the index is re-measured monthly and each month’s date is shown.
• Sample: 14 questions × 1 assistant × 5 runs = 70 answers. 30 firms checked.
• Assistants used: Claude (Anthropic’s Sonnet model, through its API, with web search). Answers from these programming interfaces can differ from what the consumer apps show.
• Counting: a firm is counted when its name appears in an answer. Names are picked out of the answer text automatically, then matched to the firm list.
• What is public: the 4 firms named most often, by name. Every other firm’s result is private to that firm. A firm can have itself taken off this page on request (see above).
• Limits: the assistants vary between runs, so small gaps are noise. Firms that were not named may still be recommended by an assistant or a question we did not ask. National chains are left off the list. This measures what the assistants said; it is not a judgement of the quality of any firm’s work.