Key facts
UK buyer questions where AI names ID-Pal
| May 2026 | 0 |
|---|---|
| August 2026 | 2 |
| September 2026 | 4 |
AI answers still recommending NorthRow as a rival
| May 2026 | 6 |
|---|---|
| September 2026 | 1 |
correct answers to "what does ID-Pal do?", every engine, every run
Recognised everywhere. Shortlisted nowhere.
ID-Pal verifies identities for fund administrators, wealth managers, law firms and accountants across Ireland, the UK and the US. It had recently bought NorthRow, a UK business verification platform, and folded it into id-pal.com.
Dan Brooksbank, Marketing Director, came to us with a live problem: traffic to the pages that bring in enquiries had fallen by around 40 per cent since the NorthRow move, and nobody could say why.
What the Paid Discovery found, in a week
The redirect from northrow.com was technically correct, but nothing on either site told Google or the AI engines that NorthRow and ID-Pal were the same company. NorthRow's years of authority sat outside the merger, and AI was still recommending NorthRow as a separate platform.
The bigger finding was structural. Across 36 recorded AI answers to the questions ID-Pal's buyers actually ask, ID-Pal was named three times, and only for its brand or its Salesforce integration. AI knew who it was, and had no reason to recommend it.
Fix the leak first. Then build the authority.
The NorthRow fix
About four hours of structured data work declaring NorthRow part of ID-Pal on both domains. Live in week one, with no copy changes and no risk to the redirect.
Five industry pages rebuilt
Fund administration, wealth management, legal, accountancy and estate agency. Each opens with the question a compliance lead types, names the regulator, and answers inside the first ninety words.
Content that gets cited
Six expert pieces a month, a KYB guide and pages for the UK sectors where specialists were winning, every piece signed off in batches and built ready to publish.
The rest of the web
Every directory and list the AI engines cite for identity verification mapped, with ID-Pal claimed and corrected on each.
Measured in the open
The same buyer questions run every month in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, in a fresh chat. A win only counts when it repeats, and losses are reported too.
12The page Gemini now cites for UK wealth managers
- 1Rebuilt around the question a UK compliance lead types
- 2The answer inside the first ninety words
First UK wins, and the leak closed.
Gemini now names ID-Pal for UK wealth managers. Claude names it for UK fund administrators, on a page rebuilt in August, and links NorthRow to ID-Pal in the same answer.
The engines that were recommending NorthRow as a rival now attribute it to ID-Pal. Where a page has been rebuilt, ID-Pal appears. Where it has not yet, it does not, which tells us exactly what to build next.
We had a need to resolve visibility for categories where AI was not mentioned our brand. Fortitude undertook specialist research and identified the primary cause within the first week of working together and had the fix live in the first month. In terms of the longer-term growth outlook, Fortitude have been honest with timelines and the clear success criteria they would judge themselves by, already delivering visibility across geo shortlists we had never previously appeared on. They work like founders: they get on with it, and they tell you the truth.
If this sounds like your firm.
Three more founders. Three more numbers.
Can AI describe you but never recommend you? Book a Growth Review.
Thirty minutes with a founder. We look at your site, two competitors and what Google and ChatGPT say about all three beforehand. You leave with three fixes in writing.