Does AI recommend your business? How to check for yourself

When someone asks an AI assistant who to hire, it gives them a short list. You can see that list for yourself without a tool or a subscription. Five questions in one assistant takes about ten minutes, and it’s worth doing in all three.

I’ve run a longer version on my own business once a month since August, and I run the same check for clients. Here’s the do-it-yourself version, with my own results from this month as the worked example.

What do you need before you start?

Three assistants, a private browser window, and somewhere to write things down.

• ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Mode. They read different parts of the web, so one of them can name you while the others don’t. None of them needs a paid plan for this.
• A private or incognito window, signed out where the assistant lets you. Being signed in can colour the answer with your own history, and you want the answer a stranger gets. If ChatGPT stops and asks you to log in, log in, and keep in mind that the answer can lean on what it already knows about you.
• A note or a spreadsheet. Most of the value is in comparing this week to next week, and you won’t remember the details.

Which questions should you ask?

Five, and your business name only appears in the last one. The first four are what a stranger types when they don’t know you exist.

1. The broad question. “Who’s the best [your trade or profession] in [your town]?”
2. The way people talk. Describe the problem your client has, in their words, and ask who to call. “My water heater is leaking, who do I call in Oakville?”
3. The specific service. “Who can help with [the one thing you do best] near [your area]?”
4. Your specialty. “Who does [your narrowest service] for [the kind of client you serve] in [your area]?” For a plumber, that might be “Who installs tankless water heaters in older homes in Burlington?” It’s the question you have the best chance of coming up for, because fewer businesses fit it.
5. Your name. “What does [your business name] in [your town] do?”

If you do come up in any of the first four, ask a follow-up: “Where did you find that?” The sites it lists point you to where your reputation lives.

What should you write down?

One line per question, per assistant, with four things on it:

• Were you named, and where in the list. That’s your result for the day.
• Who was named instead. All of them, in the order they came up.
• Which sites it cited. That’s where the assistant went to read about your field.
• For the name question, whether it’s right. Check the services, the town, and the prices if you publish them.

How do you read what comes back?

If other firms are named and you aren’t, start with them. Open the sites the assistant cited and look for what those firms have that you don’t. Google’s AI Mode often answers with a set of Business Profile cards, star ratings included. In my 26 September check, asked for the best AI marketing consultants in Burlington, it showed four firms, and each of them had reviews, between 4 and 73.

If one assistant names you and another doesn’t, that happens in my checks too. On 26 September, Perplexity named me for two of the seven questions that didn’t include my name. ChatGPT and Google named me for none of them. Each assistant cited a mostly different set of sites, which is why the “where did you find that” question is worth asking.

If the name question comes back vague or wrong, start there. Of everything in this test, it’s the part you have the most control over. In my check, all three assistants cited my own site for what I sell, and ChatGPT cited nothing else. So the fix starts on your home page: a clear line saying what you do and who you do it for, and your listings saying the same thing. All three described my services correctly. Read the answer for additions too, anything it says about you that your own site doesn’t.

If the answer gives advice instead of names, reword the question. Asked how to check whether a business shows up in ChatGPT, all three assistants explained how to test it yourself first, then pointed to other services and directories. None of them named me, even though that’s the service I sell. Ask it the way someone asks for a recommendation.

Why run it twice?

Because the answers move, and one run only tells you about one day.

My check uses eight questions on the same three assistants, so 24 answers. On 1 September, 7 of the 24 named me. On 26 September, with the same questions and the same method, it was 5 of 24. ChatGPT had named me for the broad question on the first date and didn’t on the second. For my specialty question, Perplexity had put me first, and this time it named four other firms.

The name question didn’t change. All three got my services right on both dates.

Re-running it the same day showed nothing new. A second pass through Perplexity and ChatGPT on 26 September, about two and a half hours after the first, named me on exactly the same questions. The changes showed up between dates weeks apart.

So run the test again in a week, with the same questions, in the same kind of window. Act on what shows up both times.

(If you want to repeat my numbers exactly: Perplexity and ChatGPT were asked through their developer access, which has no login and no history. Google’s AI Mode was read in a signed-in browser, with personalisation switched off by a setting in the address. A chat window on the same day can give you a different answer.)

Where does the quick version stop?

One run tells you where you stand today, on the questions you thought to ask. Three things take longer. Whether an answer holds only shows up over a few weeks of runs. Why a firm is named ahead of you means opening the sites the assistant cited and reading what they say about that firm. And whether your own site is easy for these tools to read is a separate question from what they say about you.

The longer explanation of how an assistant decides who to name is in what it means to show up when someone asks AI for a recommendation.