Does ChatGPT recommend my business? Here's how to check it yourself, right now
If a customer near you typed "best plumber near me" into ChatGPT, Gemini or a Google AI Overview tonight, would your business even come up? You can find out in about five minutes. Here's exactly how, and what to do with the answer.
1. Open a fresh session
Start a brand-new chat or a private/incognito window for each assistant you test — ChatGPT, Gemini and a plain Google search that triggers an AI Overview. A fresh session matters because an assistant that already "knows" you from earlier chats, or that has your location saved, will not show you what a new customer actually sees. Log out, or use a private window, if you can.
2. Type these three prompts
Swap in your actual trade and town. Use the exact wording below so you're testing what a real customer would type, not a leading question that flatters your business.
- best <trade> near <town>
- who should I call for <urgent job> in <town>
- recommend an emergency <trade> in <town>
Example: "best electrician near Dublin", "who should I call for a burst pipe in Dublin", "recommend an emergency plumber in Dublin".
3. Write down exactly what comes back
For each prompt, note: was your business named at all, was it named first or after other businesses, and which other businesses came up. Screenshot it. This is your first data point — just one, so don't draw a conclusion yet.
4. Run the same three prompts again, at two more times of day
This is the step most people skip, and it's the one that actually matters. AI answers vary between runs — the same question, from the same person, can get a different list of businesses an hour later. One run proves nothing either way. Run the same three prompts in a fresh session again this afternoon, and once more this evening or tomorrow morning. Three separate sessions, at different times, is the minimum before you can say anything meaningful about a pattern.
Nobody — including us — can guarantee that any business will be named in any AI assistant's answer. What you're looking for isn't certainty, it's a pattern across runs.
5. Read the pattern, not any single answer
- Named consistently, near the top, across all three runs: whatever you're doing on reviews and listings is working for this query. Worth re-checking again in a month.
- Named, but after two or three competitors: you're in the conversation but losing on whatever signal the assistant is weighing — usually review volume, recency, or how complete your listing is next to theirs.
- Named in some runs and not others: treat this the same as not being named. Inconsistent presence is usually worth fixing with the same changes as outright absence.
- Never named, in any of the three runs: look at who was named instead, and compare their reviews and listings to yours. That comparison is usually where the actual fix is.
6. The five things most worth fixing
These are the fix categories we check in every AI Visibility Snapshot, each with one concrete action you can start today:
- Review volume and recency. A business with a steady trickle of recent reviews gives an assistant more current evidence to point to than one with a big pile of old ones. Action: ask your last 5 happy customers, by text or email, for a review this week.
- Listing consistency. Action: make your business name, address and phone number identical, character for character, across Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp and the two biggest local business directories in your country. Mismatched details make a listing harder to trust and compare.
- Review response coverage. Action: reply to your last 10 reviews, including the old ones with no reply. A listing that looks actively managed reads as more current.
- Service and area wording. Action: on your Google Business Profile and website, write out the specific services you offer and the towns or postcodes you serve, instead of leaving it to be inferred from your business name.
- Structured business details. Action: fill in every category, hours, and website field on your main listings, and make sure the link actually goes to your current site.
If you'd rather not do this by hand
Doing this properly — three sessions, three assistants, written down with timestamps, compared against your actual listings — takes real time, and it's easy to talk yourself into a result you want to see. Rick runs this for you: the same prompts, across three separate sessions at different times, in ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, written up as a short PDF with the three to five fixes most likely to help. See the full method or what's inside the report.
49 EUR, one-off, intro price. PDF delivered within 48 hours. Pilot capped at 10 customers.
Order the snapshot — 49 EUR