How to check what ChatGPT says about your business

A growing number of people skip the list of blue links and ask an AI tool instead. "Who's a good physio near Subiaco?" "Which accountants in Perth work with tradies?" ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers will reply with a short list of names and a reason for each.

If your business isn't in that list, you never get the chance to compete. The good news is that checking where you stand takes about ten minutes, and the fixes are mostly things a well-run business should be doing anyway.

Step 1: Ask the questions your customers ask

Open a private or logged-out browser window, so your own history doesn't colour the results. Then ask a handful of questions the way a customer would phrase them:

• "Who are the best [what you do] in [your area]?"
• "I need a [what you do] in [your area]. Who would you recommend, and why?"
• "What do you know about [your business name] in [your area]?"
• "What do customers say about [your business name]?"
• "How does [your business name] compare with other [what you do] in [your area]?"

Run them in more than one tool. Each uses different sources, and the answers can differ a lot. Our free AI visibility check builds these questions for you and opens them in each tool.

Step 2: Look for five things

1. Were you named in the recommendation questions?
2. Was the description accurate: what you do, who you serve, what makes you different?
3. Were the details right: location, contact information, services?
4. Did reviews or reputation come up, and was the tone positive?
5. Was your own website cited as a source, where the tool shows sources?

Note which competitors appear and how they're described. That's often the most useful part, because it shows you what the AI tools have found about them that they haven't found about you.

Step 3: Understand where the answers come from

AI tools don't have a special list of businesses. They build answers from what's available on the web and in the search indexes they use. In practice, five things carry a lot of weight:

• Your website content. Clear pages that say what you do, for whom and where. A homepage that only says "Excellence in every detail" gives a machine nothing to work with.
• Reviews. Recent, detailed reviews on Google and industry sites. AI answers often summarise them.
• Consistent listings. The same business name, address, phone number and services on your Google Business Profile and in directories.
• Structured data. Schema markup on your website that labels your business type, location, services and opening hours in a format machines read easily.
• Mentions elsewhere. Local news, industry associations, suppliers and partners that mention or link to you.

Step 4: Fix the basics first

If you weren't named at all, start here:

1. Make sure your Google Business Profile is complete, with the right categories, services, hours and photos.
2. Give each main service its own page on your website, written in the words customers use, with your location on it.
3. Ask happy customers for reviews, and ask them to mention what you did for them.
4. Check your business details match everywhere they appear online.
5. Add schema markup to your website, or ask whoever manages it to.

None of this is a trick. It's the same work that helps you show up on Google Maps and in normal search results, which is exactly why it's worth doing.

Step 5: Check again in a few months

AI answers change as the tools update and as new information about you appears. Put a reminder in your calendar to run the same questions each quarter and note what's changed.

If you'd rather have someone run it properly, with real customer questions across every major tool and a side-by-side with your competitors, ask for the free full check.