The short version
Want to know what AI says about your business? Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews and type the exact question a stranger would type… “best [what you do] in [your city]” or “who should I hire for [your service] near me.” Read the answer. If your name isn’t in it, or the answer gets your hours, services, or reviews wrong, you have a problem a customer already saw before you did. This whole check takes five minutes. No tools, no login, no cost.
You Google yourself. Everyone does. You check your reviews, you glance at your rankings, maybe you set up an alert for your own name. None of that tells you what AI says about your business, and 60% of Google searches now end inside an AI-generated box instead of a list of blue links. Your customer isn’t always reading ten results anymore. Sometimes they’re reading ONE answer, and that answer came from a machine that either knows you or doesn’t.
You can’t out-watch and out-read yourself into success. “What does AI say about my business?” is the actual question, and it has an actual answer, five minutes from now. You have to go look. So let’s go look.
Why can’t you just Google yourself anymore?
Google used to be a list. You typed a phrase, ten businesses showed up, and you clicked around to compare. AI search doesn’t work that way. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s own AI Overviews read the web, decide who the best answer is, and hand your customer ONE recommendation, sometimes three, rarely ten. If you’re not in that short list, you didn’t lose a ranking spot. You disappeared from the conversation entirely.
That’s a different kind of invisible than a low Google ranking. A low ranking means you’re on page two. Missing from an AI answer means the customer never knew you existed at all, and never will unless they happen to ask a follow-up question you also don’t answer well.
The five-minute check: what to actually type into ChatGPT
Don’t type your business name. Nobody searching for you types your business name, they don’t know it yet. Type what your CUSTOMER would type before they know you exist. A few real examples worth running right now:
“Best [your service] in [your city].” “Who should I hire for [your service] near [your neighborhood].” “I need a [your service], any recommendations?” Ask it in plain, ordinary language, exactly how you’d ask a friend, because that’s exactly how AI is trained to be asked.
Read the full answer, not just the first line. Look for three things: is your name in it, is what it says about you accurate, and who else is it recommending instead of you. Screenshot the answer. You’ll want it later, and AI answers change without warning, so today’s answer isn’t guaranteed to be tomorrow’s.
Do the same check in Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
ChatGPT is one AI symphony player, not the whole orchestra. Run the identical question in Perplexity.ai, and again in a regular Google search where an AI Overview shows up at the top of the results. Three different engines, same question, three different answers is completely normal. What matters is the PATTERN across all three, not any single one. If you’re missing everywhere, that’s a real signal. If you’re missing in one and named in two, that tells you something different, and it’s worth knowing which is which before you assume you have a full-blown problem.
See What ChatGPT Says About Your Business
Right now, someone in your city is asking ChatGPT who’s the best at what you do. I’ll go ask that exact question myself… and hand you back the real answer, word for word, with live screenshots. Not a guess. Not a summary. The actual sentence AI is already saying about you, or about someone else instead of you. Before your next customer reads it first. Custom to your business. Free.
No cost. Zero credit card. No pushy sequence.
What does a good answer actually look like?
You can also ask Claude the same question, and it’s worth doing because different AI models pull from different sources and update on different schedules. AI literacy means using the right tool for the job, not eating steak with a spoon because ChatGPT is the only name you know.
A good answer names you specifically, by your real business name, gets your city or service area right, and doesn’t confuse you with a competitor or a business that closed two years ago. It might mention a specific detail, a review phrase, a specialty, something that shows the AI actually has real information about you and isn’t guessing from a thin website. That specificity is the whole game. Generic is invisible. Specific gets cited.
Receipts: what this actually looks like when it works
One of my Mastermind members, Becky Lea of Paws Around Motown, published a new city page for Birmingham in July 2026. Within days, ChatGPT, Perplexity, AND Claude were all naming her business first for Birmingham dog walking. Her overall AI visibility score climbed from 20% to 33% in one month, and she started showing up in nearby cities she hadn’t even written a single word of content for yet.
And this month, TWO different business owners booked a call with me after telling me they found me through ChatGPT, by name, mid-conversation. That’s what happens when the answer is accurate and specific instead of empty or wrong.
What a bad or missing answer looks like
Three patterns show up over and over. One: you’re not mentioned at all, and three competitors are. Two: you’re mentioned, but the details are wrong, wrong hours, wrong services, a price that hasn’t been true in a year. Three: the AI hedges, “I don’t have specific information about this business,” which usually means your website never plainly states what you do in a way a machine can read and repeat.
None of those three are the same fix, which is exactly why this check matters before you touch anything. You wouldn’t start a renovation without walking through the house first.
What to do the moment you spot a problem
This check tells you WHAT is wrong. It doesn’t fix it, and trying to fix five things at once off one screenshot is how people burn a weekend and change nothing. If you’re missing entirely, start with How to Get Your Business Found on ChatGPT for the specific moves. If you keep coming up empty and want the full reasoning behind why, read Why Doesn’t My Business Show Up in ChatGPT?. If the AI is naming you but getting details wrong, that’s a different animal entirely, worth its own read on Is ChatGPT Making Things Up About Your Business. And if you want the full roadmap from zero to actually AI-ready, the AI for Small Business Owners hub lays out the whole order of operations.
How often to run this check
Monthly, minimum, and after any big change, a new service, a new city page, a rebrand, a review push. AI answers shift as the web shifts underneath them, and Search Engine Land has covered how generative engines pull and re-rank sources on their own schedule, not Google’s old crawl calendar (see their explainer on generative engine optimization). An answer that was accurate in June can be stale by September if nothing on your site tells the AI otherwise.
Google’s own guidance on structured business data confirms the same underlying idea from their side of the fence, plain, consistent information is what machines actually trust (their local business structured data documentation is worth a skim even if you never touch the code yourself).
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check what ChatGPT says about my business?
Open ChatGPT and type the question a customer would ask, something like “best [service] in [city],” not your business name. Read the full answer for accuracy, not just whether you’re mentioned, since a wrong detail is its own kind of miss.
Is there a free tool to check what AI says about my business?
You don’t need a tool. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are all free to use directly, and running the same question across all three in five minutes gives you a real pattern to work from.
Why does ChatGPT say something different than Google about my business?
Different AI engines pull from different sources and update on different schedules. That’s normal, and it’s exactly why checking more than one matters instead of trusting a single answer as the full picture.
What if AI doesn’t mention my business at all?
If AI doesn’t mention your business at all, you’re dealing with an absence problem, and it has its own specific fix. Start with Why Doesn’t My Business Show Up in ChatGPT? for the four most common reasons.
What if AI mentions my business but gets the details wrong?
That’s a different problem than being invisible, and it gets its own full breakdown in Is ChatGPT Making Things Up About Your Business.
How often should I check what AI actually says about my business, beyond just whether I show up?
Monthly at minimum, and again after any real change to your site, services, or reviews. This check covers accuracy, whether AI gets your name, hours, and services right, beyond simply showing up.
Want a free chat with Bella to see how you can improve?
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About the Author
Bella Vasta built and sold a service company before becoming an AI implementation specialist, keynote speaker, and host of the Bella In Your Business and AI For The Busy Human podcasts. She’s the founder of Jump Consulting and Marketing With Bella, where she teaches small business owners nationwide how to use AI without the overwhelm. Free AI visibility check: bellavasta.com/audit. Speaking inquiries: bellavasta.com/speak.
Always keep jumping.