The short answer
Ask ChatGPT 10 questions your customers ask, with your city in each one but not your business name, in a Temporary Chat so your own memories don’t steer the answer. Write down whether you’re named, who’s named instead and which sites are cited, then ask again on another day. The share of answers that name you is your AI visibility.
Can’t I just ask ChatGPT once?
You can, but one answer tells you very little. ChatGPT writes every answer fresh from a new web search, so the businesses it names change with the wording of the question and from one run to the next. In an October 2026 field test of 12 local questions, about one business in five dropped out of the answer when the same questions were asked again.
So a real check is a small, repeatable test: the same set of customer questions, asked the same way, with the results written down. It takes about half an hour and costs nothing.
Why “What do you know about my business?” is the wrong test
Asking ChatGPT about your business by name tells you whether it knows you. Your customers don’t ask that. They ask “best physiotherapist in Manchester for a sports injury”, and the question is whether you’re one of the few businesses named in the answer.
Plenty of businesses are known to ChatGPT and still never recommended. Test with the questions customers ask, without your name in them.
Which questions should I ask?
Write 10 questions a new customer might type. Mix these five kinds, and put your city or neighbourhood in each one:
| Kind of question | Example | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Best in town | Who is the best family dentist in Austin? | Whether you’re among the businesses AI names by default |
| A specific service | Where can I get dental implants in Austin? | Whether AI connects you with the services you sell |
| A problem | I chipped a tooth and it hurts, where can I go in Austin today? | Whether you’re named when someone needs help now |
| A detail that matters | Dentist in South Austin open on Saturdays | Whether AI knows your hours, area and details |
| A comparison | Which Austin dental clinics are good for nervous patients? | Who AI sees as your competitors, and why |
Use your customers’ own words: the phrases they use on the phone, in emails and in reviews. Our full check writes these for you from your website, in the languages your customers use.
How to check if ChatGPT recommends your business, step by step
- Open a Temporary Chat. By default, a Temporary Chat in ChatGPT doesn’t use your memories or custom instructions, so it’s closer to what a new customer sees. Being logged out works too. Don’t test in your usual chats: if ChatGPT remembers your business, it can mention it more often for you than for anyone else.
- Put the place in the question. For local questions, ChatGPT works out an approximate location from your IP address. A VPN or an office network can put you somewhere else, so write the city or neighbourhood into every question, as OpenAI suggests.
- Make sure it searches the web. A good answer about local businesses shows its sources. If an answer has no sources, ask again with “search the web” at the start; an answer from memory alone says little about today.
- Ask one question per chat, and write down what you see. Were you named? In what position? Was it a recommendation or just a mention, perhaps with a downside? Who was named instead? Which websites were cited?
- Ask everything again on another day. Same questions, same way. A business that’s named in both runs is a much safer result than one that appears once.
- Count. Divide the answers that named you by all the answers. With 10 questions asked twice, 7 out of 20 means you’re named in 35% of answers. That’s your mention rate, the number to watch over time.
What should I write down?
One row per answer is enough. A spreadsheet with these columns works well:
| Question | Named? | Position | Named instead | Sources cited |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best family dentist in Austin | Yes | 2 of 4 | Two clinics nearby | Yelp, a local “best of” list |
| Dental implants in Austin | No | – | Three implant clinics | Clinic websites, a dental directory |
| Chipped tooth, where today in Austin | No | – | An emergency clinic | Google Maps data |
| Dentist in South Austin open on Saturdays | Yes | 1 of 3 | – | Your website |
The last two columns are the most useful. The businesses named instead are your competitors in AI answers, and they’re often not the ones you’d expect. The cited sites are where AI gets its picture of your city: getting listed there is usually the quickest fix.
What do my results mean?
| Named in… | What it means | What to do next |
|---|---|---|
| Most answers | AI already sees you as a strong choice for these questions | Keep your listings and reviews current, and test harder questions: specific services and other neighbourhoods |
| Some answers | AI knows you, but not for everything you do | Compare the questions where you’re missing with your website: does it say, in words, that you offer that? |
| Few or none | AI doesn’t find you, or doesn’t trust what it finds | Start with the 7 usual reasons in How to rank in ChatGPT, beginning with whether AI can read your website |
Most businesses are in the bottom two rows, and that’s normal for now: in our research, 48% scored under 40 out of 100.
Is there a faster way to check?
Yes. stuckUP’s free check does the steps above for you. It reads your website, writes the questions your customers ask, puts 5 of them to ChatGPT with web search, and shows whether you were named, who was named instead and which sites were cited, with an UP Score and the first fixes. No signup is needed for the first check.
Doing it by hand is still worth it once: you’ll read the answers yourself and see how your customers see you. Paid plans check more questions and more AI assistants, and repeat the same questions every week or month so you can see the trend. How we measure it.
Should I check other AI assistants too?
Yes, if your customers use them. The same method works in Perplexity, Google’s AI Mode, Gemini, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Expect different answers: in the same October 2026 field test, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity never once put the same business first.
- Check the assistant your customers use most first. For most local businesses today, that’s ChatGPT or Google.
- Keep the questions identical across assistants, so the difference you see comes from the assistant and not the wording.
- Note the sources each one cites. Copilot relies on Bing, and Google’s AI answers on Google’s own index and Maps, so the fixes can differ.
Questions
Does ChatGPT give everyone the same answer?
No. Each answer is written fresh from a new web search, and it can change with the wording, the person's approximate location and, in regular chats, what ChatGPT remembers about them. That's why you should test in a Temporary Chat, with the city in the question, and repeat the test.
Can I check if ChatGPT recommends my business for free?
Yes. You can do it by hand in ChatGPT in about 30 minutes, or run stuckUP's free check, which asks ChatGPT 5 of your customers' questions with web search and shows whether you're named, who's named instead and which sites were cited.
Will asking ChatGPT about my business make it recommend me more?
Not to other people. Your questions don't change what ChatGPT recommends to others. In your own regular chats, memory can make it mention your business more often, which is another reason to test in a Temporary Chat.
How often should I check?
Once a month is enough for most businesses. Changes to your website and listings need to be crawled again before answers change, so compare the same questions every 4 to 6 weeks and look at the trend, not a single answer.
What if ChatGPT names my business but says something wrong about it?
Look at the sources it cites for that answer. Wrong hours, prices or addresses usually come from an outdated listing or directory page. Correct it there and on your own website, then check again after a few weeks.
Sources
- stuckUP: AI Visibility Index, October 2026, our data: 97 businesses, 959 answers
- stuckUP: How we measure AI visibility, what the UP Score measures, and its limits
- OpenAI Help Center: Searching the web with ChatGPT, approximate location, and adding the city to local questions
- OpenAI Help Center: Temporary Chat, no memories or custom instructions by default
- Ryan Doser: Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses? Field test (October 2026), 250 recommendations, 4 assistants
Narek Nikoghosyan · Founder and CEO
Narek Nikoghosyan is the founder and CEO of stuckUP, the AI visibility checker for local businesses.