Checking What AI Says About Your Business: A Step-by-Step Guide
One of the most eye-opening things you can do today is ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini about your business. The results are often surprising, and not always in a good way. Here's how to systematically check and track your AI presence.
The basic test
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini and ask them these questions about your business:
"Tell me about [Your Business Name] in [Your City]"
"What are the best [your service] in [your city]?"
"Recommend a good [your service] near [your neighborhood]"
"What services does [Your Business Name] offer?"
"Is [Your Business Name] good? What do reviews say?"
Document exactly what each AI says. Note any inaccuracies: wrong services, wrong location, wrong hours, misleading descriptions, or simply not being mentioned at all.
Build a prompt set
Create a standardized set of 15-20 prompts that represent how your customers might use AI to find businesses like yours. Include:
Direct business name queries
- Service + location queries ("best plumber in Austin")
- Problem-based queries ("my AC stopped working, who should I call in Denver?")
- Comparison queries ("compare [your business] vs [competitor]")
- Category queries with your neighborhood
Test across platforms
Run your prompt set across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Each may give different results because they use different data sources and retrieval methods. Perplexity tends to be more citation-focused, ChatGPT relies more on training data, and Gemini integrates Google's search index.
Track over time
Run this test monthly. Create a simple spreadsheet tracking:
Whether your business was mentioned (yes/no for each prompt)
- Accuracy of information mentioned (correct/incorrect for each fact)
- Sentiment of the description (positive/neutral/negative)
- Whether sources were cited (and which ones)
What to do with the results
If you're not being mentioned: focus on building third-party mentions, improving your website's factual clarity, and ensuring your Google Business Profile is fully optimized.
If you're being mentioned inaccurately: identify where the incorrect information comes from and fix it at the source. Often, outdated directory listings or inconsistent website copy are the culprit.
If you're being mentioned accurately: great: keep monitoring. AI descriptions can drift over time as models update and sources change.
This kind of monitoring used to be something only enterprise brands did. In 2026, it's becoming essential for any small business that wants to be found in the growing number of AI-powered searches.
- References & Further Reading
- Google Search Central
- OpenAI Usage Policies
Google Business Profile
Need help putting this into practice?
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