Does ChatGPT know your business? How to check, and what to fix

Why this matters

People now ask AI tools questions like "who's a good plumber near me" or "is this dentist any good." The tool writes one answer and names a few businesses. If you're not in that answer, the customer may never see your name.

These tools don't make things up from nothing when they search. They look up pages on the web and summarize them. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode pull from its regular Search index and show links to the pages they used. OpenAI says ChatGPT search answers with links to sources, and can use the asker's approximate location for local results.

That's good news for you. It means the answer is built from places you can check and fix: your website, your Google Business Profile, your listings, your reviews and what local sites say about you. For the deeper why, read How local businesses get found in Google and AI answers.

1. Pick the five tools to check

Your customers don't all use the same tool. Check these five, and bookmark them in one folder so the monthly check is fast:

• ChatGPT at chatgpt.com. Make sure it's searching the web. You'll see links or a Sources button under the answer. If you don't, open the tools menu and choose Search, then ask again.
• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Search on google.com as usual. An AI Overview appears at the top for some questions, not all. AI Mode is a separate mode inside Google Search for longer, back-and-forth questions.
• Gemini at gemini.google.com, Google's chat assistant.
• Perplexity at perplexity.ai, which usually lists the sources it used.
• Microsoft Copilot at copilot.microsoft.com. Copilot draws on Bing, which is why Bing matters more than most owners think.

2. Use a clean, logged-out window

If you ask while logged in, the tool may use your history, your saved memories or your location settings. OpenAI says ChatGPT can use saved memories when it rewrites a search, so if it knows you own the business, you'll get a flattering answer your customers won't see.

• Open a private or incognito window in your browser.
• Don't sign in where you don't have to. OpenAI says people who aren't signed in can still use ChatGPT web search. Some tools limit what you can do logged out; if one asks you to sign in, use an account that has never talked about your business.
• Turn off any VPN. These tools guess your location from your internet connection, and a VPN can make them think you're in another city.
• Put the town or neighborhood in the prompt itself, so the answer doesn't depend on where you happen to be sitting.

3. Run the same 10 prompts every month

The trick is consistency. Write your prompts once, save them in a note, and paste them the same way every time. Change one word and you can't compare months. Fill in the brackets with your own details:

1. best [service] in [town]
2. who should I call for [problem] near [neighborhood]
3. [service] near [landmark or cross street] open on Saturday
4. [business name] reviews
5. [business name] hours and phone number
6. where is [business name] located and is there parking
7. is [business name] good for [specific need]
8. compare [business name] and [competitor name]
9. affordable [service] in [town] that takes [insurance or payment type]
10. [service] in [town] that speaks [language] (if that fits your business)

Prompts 1 to 3 test whether you get recommended when someone doesn't know you yet. Prompts 4 to 8 test whether the tool has correct facts about you. Prompts 9 and 10 test whether it knows what makes you different.

Use the words your customers use, not industry terms. A customer types "back hurts after car accident," not your service menu name. If you're not sure, look at the Queries tab in Google Search Console. The Search Console checkup guide shows you where.

You don't have to run all 10 in all five tools every month. A good split: all 10 in ChatGPT and Google, and prompts 1, 4 and 5 in the other three.

4. Log the results in a simple table

A spreadsheet is enough. One row per prompt per tool, with the same columns every month:

Keep the column choices simple: Yes, No or Partly. Note anything wrong in a few words. Copy the source names, or paste the links.

Don't panic over one bad answer. AI tools write a new answer every time. What matters is the pattern across a few months. If Copilot has your hours wrong three months in a row, that's a real problem with a real source.

5. Read the sources each answer cites

This is the most useful part of the check. The cited sources show you where each tool gets its information about you. In ChatGPT, click a citation or the Sources button. In Google, open the links shown beside the AI answer. Perplexity and Copilot usually list theirs with the answer.

As you read them, sort each source into one of four groups:

• Your own pages. Your website, your Google Business Profile. You control these fully.
• Listings. Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, industry directories. You can claim and correct most of them.
• Lists and articles. "Best of" lists, local news, neighborhood blogs, chamber of commerce pages. You can't edit these, but you can ask to be included or corrected.
• Discussions. Reddit threads, forums, review text. You can't control these, but they tell you what people actually say about you.

Two patterns to watch for. First, if a wrong detail shows up, one of the cited sources almost always has that same wrong detail. Find it. Second, if a competitor keeps getting named and you don't, look at which sources mention them. Those are the places you're missing from.

OpenAI itself says search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or wrong. So open the source before you assume the AI invented something. Usually it didn't; it copied an old page.

6. Fix what's missing or wrong

Work from the top of this list down. The early fixes take minutes and affect every tool at once.

Your Google Business Profile

Google's own guide to its AI features tells site owners to keep their Business Profile information up to date. Check your name, address, phone, hours, holiday hours, categories, services and website link. Add photos and answer questions. The Google Business Profile guide walks through each field.

Consistent listings everywhere

Your name, address and phone should read exactly the same on every listing: Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook and the directories for your industry. Old addresses and old phone numbers are the most common reason AI tools get details wrong. Microsoft's Bing team specifically points local businesses to Bing Places to keep address, hours and contact details current for AI answers. See the business listings guide.

Clear service pages on your website

If the tool doesn't know you offer something, your website probably doesn't say it clearly. Give each main service its own page that says what it is, who it's for, where you offer it and how to book. Put your hours, address and phone in plain text, not only in an image. The service pages guide has a template.

Reviews

Prompts like "[business name] reviews" and "is [business name] good for..." lean on what customers have written. Ask happy customers for honest reviews, in their own words, and reply to the ones you get. Never buy or script them. The Google reviews guide covers how to ask.

Mentions on trusted local sites

The "best of" lists and local pages that keep showing up in your sources are worth pursuing. Join your chamber of commerce or neighborhood business association. Sponsor a local event that lists sponsors. Ask partners to list you on their pages. Google warns that chasing fake or paid "mentions" doesn't help, so aim for real ones.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing feeds Copilot, so make sure Bing can read your site. Add it to Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap. The getting indexed guide shows the 10-minute setup. Once you're in, open the AI Performance report. Bing says it shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing's AI answers, and which pages. Google Search Console has a similar report for Google's AI features.

Let the AI crawlers in

Ask whoever runs your site to confirm your robots.txt and hosting don't block search crawlers. OpenAI says your site must allow its OAI-SearchBot crawler to be eligible for ChatGPT search results. Google says pages must be indexed and allowed to show a snippet to appear in its AI features.

After you fix something, give it time. AI answers update when their sources are crawled again, which can take days or weeks. Keep running the same prompts and watch the log.

What not to do

• Don't look for a secret file or trick. Google's guide on AI search lists "hacks" you can ignore, including special AI text files, extra markup, "chunking" content into tiny pieces and rewriting pages just for AI.
• Don't count on llms.txt. It's a proposal from 2024, now in a second version, mostly used for software documentation. Google says Google Search, including its AI features, doesn't use it. No major AI search tool has said it uses the file to pick which businesses to recommend. Adding one won't hurt, but it won't fix a wrong phone number or a missing listing.
• Don't fake mentions or reviews. Planting comments, buying list placements or posting fake reviews breaks platform rules and puts your listings at risk.
• Don't build dozens of near-copy pages for every way someone might phrase a question. Google says doing this to manipulate rankings or AI answers violates its spam policy.
• Don't judge from one answer. Answers vary. Trust the monthly pattern.