How a law firm gets named in Gemini
Written by
Odin Lund
Category
Law firms
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What does Gemini read before it names a lawyer?
Being named in Gemini means that when a person asks Google's assistant who to call after a crash, the written answer includes the firm by name, usually as one of a short list, with a line on what it does and a citation to the page that line came from.
Gemini does not answer a question like this from memory. When the question needs current local facts, it searches, fetches a small set of pages, reads them, and writes an answer from what they say. We see the same three steps in every Gemini answer our tracker records. Retrieval is the engine fetching pages. Selection is the engine deciding which of the firms on those pages to name. Synthesis is the engine writing the description and attaching citations to it. What sets Gemini apart is how tightly steps one and two are tied together. In our data Gemini goes straight to law firm websites and skips most third parties, and when it retrieves a page it cites that page two to four times in the answer. A firm whose own pages are retrieved gets most of the credit in the answer, and a firm whose pages are not retrieved has almost no other route in.
Between 18 September and 17 October 2026 our tracker ran 111 New York car accident questions every day on ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews for William Mattar Law Offices, the firm we manage in that category, against 13 competing firms. That produced 9,049 answers, 3,330 of them from Gemini, and for each one we recorded every page the engine retrieved and cited. Gemini's diet is the shortest of the three, and it is almost entirely made of firm websites. The sources below are ranked by the share of Gemini answers in which each one was retrieved. One note on the words. Retrieved means the engine fetched the page while writing the answer. Cited means it attached that page to a line of the answer. The two are not the same, and we record both. The shares below are retrieval shares, because retrieval is the step a firm has to clear first.
The firm's own site, 15% of answers. William Mattar's practice pages and process answers led every other source on this engine. These are the pages Gemini reads for the firm's cities, case types, fee model and published results.
Super Lawyers, 6%. The only directory with a meaningful share on Gemini. Attorney profiles with practice areas, offices and selections, read as a second opinion on the firm's own claims.
Individual firm websites, 3% to 6% each. A long tail of competitor sites, each retrieved for its own city and its own case type. This is where the other names in the answer come from.
Everything else. The state and court pages that ChatGPT reads first, the directories that give ChatGPT its names, and the video and social sources that build AI Overviews all sit below the long tail on Gemini.
What this means is that Gemini's shortlist is a reading of firm websites, and the firm's own practice pages are the source that decides whether it is on that list. The work for this engine is mostly work on the site itself, and because Gemini cites heavily, the firm whose pages it reads is the firm the answer is about.
Which questions put a firm in the answer?
The 111 questions we run fall into five groups, published in full in our companion post. Fifty-one ask the engine to find or recommend a lawyer. Twenty-six ask how a claim works in New York. Ten ask whether hiring a lawyer is worth it and what it costs. Eight ask the engine to compare firms. Sixteen name one firm and ask about it. On Gemini the line between a process answer and a named-firm answer is thinner than on ChatGPT, because the same kind of page carries both.
The finding questions return named firms, and most of them carry a city. Gemini answers them with the firms whose practice pages it retrieved for that city and that case type, and the description of each firm is lifted from those pages. A firm without a page that states its Buffalo office and its truck accident work is not named for a Buffalo truck accident question, however strong its directory profiles are. The cities in our set are Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Long Island and New York City, and the case types run from car and truck to motorcycle, pedestrian, bus and rideshare, so the page set a firm needs is the product of the two. In the most recent 30 days William Mattar was named in 19.6% of Gemini answers and held 57.3% of all firm mentions, the highest share it holds on any engine, and the reason is that the pages Gemini reads are the pages we rewrote first.
The process questions on Gemini are answered from the firm pages that explain the rule plainly, because Gemini's diet leaves little room for the state sources. An explanation of no-fault, serious injury or the filing deadline is drawn from whichever firm page says it most clearly, and that firm is cited two to four times beside the explanation. On this engine a process page is a naming opportunity, not a public service. The whether-to-hire questions are answered the same way, from the practice pages that state the fee model and the consultation terms, so a firm whose pages leave those out is skipped. The comparison questions are the one group where Super Lawyers carries weight alongside the results pages firms have published, and the answers tend to list firms with a line each rather than pick one. The firm-name questions are answered from the firm's own site almost entirely, which means what the site says is what Gemini says.
In the customer's words, the questions sound like this.
Find me a car accident attorney in Rochester New York
I was a passenger in a rideshare that crashed in Queens. Who pays my medical bills and do I need my own lawyer?
What counts as a serious injury under New York's no-fault law?
Can I still get anything if the accident was partly my fault in New York?
Which Buffalo car accident firm has the best settlement record?
Is William Mattar a good firm for a truck accident case?
Two of those six come from our published list. The rest are the kind of phrasing that arrives in intake calls and in the follow-up questions the engine itself suggests, and they are what we add to a firm's question set alongside the published ones. On Gemini, each of them is answered from a practice page somewhere, and the only question is whose.
What a firm changes to get named
The work for Gemini is concentrated on the firm's own site, because that is what the engine reads. Each item below is a change to a source Gemini retrieves, in the order it has paid off for us.
Rewrite each practice page so it answers one customer question. This is the Gemini lever. The firm's own site was the most retrieved source on this engine at 15% of answers. A page that answers one question in plain language, with the statute, the numbers, the office city and the case type, is the page Gemini retrieves and cites. For William Mattar we rewrote the main practice pages in month one, and share of voice reached 29.5% that month.
State the same facts on every page. Gemini cites a retrieved page two to four times, so a site that says one thing on the practice page and another on the office page gives the engine a contradiction to repeat. We agreed 16 facts with the firm and made them identical across the site and the listings.
Publish pages for the questions where no firm is named yet. Our tracker shows which of the 111 questions Gemini answers without naming anyone. In month two we published 31 new pages against those questions, and share of voice reached 43.8%. On Gemini, an unclaimed question is a page nobody has written yet.
Publish results that can be checked. The comparison questions are answered from the results pages firms have published. A results page that lists settlements and verdicts the firm has already made public, stated the same way as everywhere else, gives Gemini something to cite. Every page we publish carries attorney approval and stays inside the advertising rules of the firm's state.
Keep Super Lawyers current and matching. It is the one directory Gemini retrieves with any regularity. Practice areas, offices, selections and the attorney list should read the same as the site.
Watch the long tail of competitor pages. Competitor sites were retrieved in 3% to 6% of answers each. When a competitor page overtakes one of yours for a question, the daily run shows it, and the fix is a better page on the same question. In month three for William Mattar that was most of the work.
Benchmark where you stand before any of this. Take twenty of the questions your clients ask, in their words and with your cities, and run them on Gemini from a logged-out browser. For each answer, note which firms are named, in what order, and which pages are cited, and count how many times your own pages appear. After a week you will know which of your practice pages Gemini reads, which it ignores, and which questions it answers from a competitor's site. If you would rather we did it, request a free preview audit at audit.sourcenode.co and we will send back what Gemini says about your firm today and where it comes from.
This is what the work looked like for William Mattar Law Offices, across all three engines. When we started, the firm held 4.6% share of voice and was named in 2.4% of relevant answers, fourth of 14 firms. Month one, the practice pages and the agreed facts, took share of voice to 29.5%. Month two, 31 new pages and the directories and publications the engines cited most, took it to 43.8%. Month three was spent holding the position, and share of voice closed at 47.2% with visibility at 23.3%, first of 14. On Gemini specifically, in the most recent 30 days the firm holds 57.3% share of voice, is named in 19.6% of answers, and sits at an average position of 1.9 when named, the earliest of the three engines. The full method and its limits are on our results page, and our law firm page describes how an engagement runs week by week.
Common questions
Is Gemini the same as Google AI Overviews? No. They come from the same company and read different sources. In our data Gemini went to law firm websites and skipped most third parties, while AI Overviews went to YouTube, firm sites and social profiles. The same firm held 57.3% share of voice on Gemini and 20.8% on AI Overviews for the same questions in the same 30 days, which is why we report them on separate lines.
Will the pages our SEO agency already wrote work for Gemini? Some will. The pages that do well in our tracking answer one customer question plainly, with the statute, the numbers and the city, and state the same facts as the rest of the site. Pages built around a keyword list, with the answer spread across several sections, are retrieved less often and cited less. We keep what works, rewrite what does not, and hand the changes to whoever maintains the site.
Why does Gemini cite one firm several times in the same answer? Because it cites each retrieved page two to four times, and it retrieves few pages per question. When a firm's practice page is the one Gemini read for the question, that firm is cited beside the explanation, beside the fee line and beside the recommendation. The effect is that a single well-made page carries most of the answer, which is good news for a firm willing to write that page.
Can you guarantee that Gemini recommends us? No, and anyone who does is selling something else. We do not control the engine. What we commit to is the measurement, the work on the pages Gemini reads, and a published account of what moved and what did not. One documented engagement is one engagement, and categories differ in how many firms contest the same answers and how much page work it takes to move share of voice.
How many pages does a firm need? It depends on the question set. For William Mattar the main practice pages were rewritten in month one and 31 new pages were published in month two, against the questions where no firm was yet named. A firm with fewer offices or one case type needs fewer. The daily run tells us which questions are still answered without a name, and that list, not a content calendar, sets the number.
Sources. SourceNode, Who do AI engines trust when someone asks for a car accident lawyer in New York? 9,049 answers, three source diets, October 18, 2026. SourceNode, 111 questions people ask AI before they call a car accident lawyer in New York, October 18, 2026. SourceNode, Measured results, sourcenode.co/results, data to 17 September 2026. Our tracker, 14 New York motor vehicle accident firms, 30 days to mid-October 2026.
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