How to Check What ChatGPT Says About Your Business
Quick answer: write ten questions your customers actually ask, half naming your business and half not, and run each one in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google from a logged-out browser. Ask each question more than once, record who is named, and repeat monthly with identical wording. One check is an anecdote; the same questions every month are a measurement.
The natural first check is to type your own business name into ChatGPT, once, out of curiosity. That tells you something, but not the thing that matters. The question that brings new customers is not "what is Smith Family Dental?" It is "who is a good family dentist in Smith's town?"
Why is one check not enough?
Three reasons.
Answers vary. Ask an assistant the same question twice and you can get different businesses named. A single run can make you look better or worse than you are.
Context leaks in. If you are signed in, the assistant may know where you are, what you have asked before, or which business you own. Use a private window and a signed-out session, and say the city in the question rather than relying on location.
Branded questions flatter you. Someone who already knows your name can usually find you. Questions that do not mention you are the ones that show whether strangers will.
How do you build a question set?
Write ten questions in the words customers use. Split them:
Five unbranded, the questions a new customer asks before they know you exist:
Who is a good family dentist in Westfield, NJ?
Which dentist in Westfield is good with nervous patients?
Best place for dental implants near Westfield NJ
Emergency dentist open Saturday in Westfield
Is there a dentist in Westfield that takes [your insurance]?
Five branded, the questions a customer asks once they have heard of you:
What do people say about [Your Practice]?
Is [Your Practice] in Westfield any good?
Does [Your Practice] do Invisalign?
What are [Your Practice]'s hours?
How does [Your Practice] compare to [Competitor]?
Swap in your own industry. A law firm's version starts with "who is a good employment lawyer in Denver". Then freeze the list. Do not edit the wording later, not even to fix a typo, or this month is no longer comparable to last month.
Which assistants should you check?
At minimum: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google itself (which may show an AI Overview). If you have time, add Claude and Grok, which we include in our own checks.
For Google, there is now first-party data. Search Console's generative AI performance report shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country and device. It does not show what the answer said, so you still need to look.
What should you record?
For each question, each assistant, each run:
- Were you named? (yes or no)
- Which businesses were named instead?
- Was anything said about you wrong: hours, services, location, a closed office?
- Did the answer link to a source? Which one?
The last two tell you what to fix. A wrong fact may trace back to a stale listing or an old page. Fix the source, then check again once it has been recrawled.
Be precise about who took the spots. Directories, review sites and publishers can appear alongside businesses. They are not your competitors, but they are worth knowing about, because a listing on the site an assistant keeps citing is a place you should be.
How do you avoid fooling yourself?
These are lessons from running these checks for our clients:
- Count only checks that worked. If an assistant errors or times out, that is missing data, not a "no". In August 2026 one engine we query returned errors silently for 12 days after its model was retired. Plotted against earlier runs, those days look like a drop in visibility when they were a drop in measurement.
- Never compare runs that asked different questions or used different assistants. Report both numbers and say why they differ, rather than subtracting one from the other.
- Report branded and unbranded separately. A total that rises only because branded answers improved looks like progress and is not.
What do you do if ChatGPT gets your business wrong or ignores you?
Work through the usual causes in order:
- Can the crawlers reach your site? OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot as the crawler that surfaces sites in ChatGPT search, and Perplexity documents PerplexityBot. Check your robots.txt and any CDN settings that block AI crawlers.
- Is your information consistent? Your website, Google Business Profile and directory listings should agree. Google's guidance for AI features specifically mentions keeping Business Profile information up to date.
- Is there a page that answers the question? If customers ask about weekend emergency appointments and no page on your site mentions them, there is nothing to cite.
- Do you have genuine reviews and mentions? These are the kind of evidence an assistant can rely on when it calls a business reputable.
Be wary of anyone selling a shortcut. Google's own guide to optimizing for generative AI search warns that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.
FAQ
How do I find out what ChatGPT says about my business?
Open ChatGPT in a private, signed-out browser window and ask the questions your customers ask, including your city. Ask about your business by name and also ask unbranded questions like "who is a good [service] in [city]". Run each question more than once and write down the results.
Why does ChatGPT give different answers each time?
AI assistants generate each answer fresh, and when they search the web the results they retrieve can change. That is why a single check is unreliable. Ask the same question several times and track the pattern over months.
Can I correct wrong information ChatGPT has about my business?
Not directly. Fix the sources it draws on: your website, Google Business Profile, directory listings and any outdated pages. Make sure AI crawlers can reach your site. Answers can change once the corrected sources are recrawled.
How often should I check AI search results for my business?
Monthly is enough for most businesses. Use exactly the same questions each time, in the same assistants, so that changes reflect your visibility and not a change in how you measured it.
Does Google Search Console show AI Overview data?
Yes. Search Console's generative AI performance report shows impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode. It reports impressions rather than the text of the answers, so pair it with your own checks.
Want a baseline before you start? The free PracticeRank audit checks what ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Grok say about your business. See also what it costs when ChatGPT recommends your competitor and what AEO is.