Does ChatGPT recommend you?
A growing slice of your customers doesn't Google anymore; they ask an AI who to hire. Those answers come from somewhere. This check finds out whether they come from you or your competitor.
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How big is this gap? In SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index, covering roughly 350,000 business locations, ChatGPT recommended specific businesses just 1.2% of the time, against 35.9% for Google's local three-pack. Being visible to AI assistants is a wide-open field right now, which is exactly why checking your standing costs you nothing.
What the report covers.
The prompts
I ask ChatGPT and Perplexity the exact questions your customers ask: who to hire, who's best nearby, who to trust for your service, phrased the way real people phrase it.
The verdict
Whether you appear, what the AI actually says about you, and who gets recommended in your place when you don't show up.
The why
The sources the assistants leaned on for their answer, which is exactly where your visibility gap lives: profiles, reviews, content, entity signals.
The fix list
Three moves, ranked, to make the machines start citing you. Do them yourself or have me do them; the list is yours either way.
How I run the check
Your service and town from the form become the prompts. I don't grade your brand in general. I ask what your customer asks: who should I hire for this, here?
Best [service] in [town]?
Who should I hire for [service] in [town]?
[A problem, in plain words]. Who can help in [town]?
Which [service] in [town] has the best reviews?
Is [your business] in [town] any good?
5 prompts × 2 assistants × 2 runs = 20 answers
- ChatGPT and Perplexity, through their own APIs. OpenAI's web search on GPT-6 Sol, and Perplexity's Sonar. Both search the web and link the pages they used, so I see where each answer came from. The apps may run a different model on a given day, so the report is a close look, not a screenshot of one phone.
- Your town in every prompt, never "near me." ChatGPT can estimate location from the asker's IP address, and OpenAI tells people to "include your city, neighborhood, or postal code in your question." From my desk, "near me" means near me.
- A fresh request every time. OpenAI says saved memories can shape the searches ChatGPT runs; an API request carries none.
- Every prompt twice. One run is a sample, not a verdict.
- What I record. Whether you're named and where, what's said about you, who's named instead, and which pages were linked. The report is dated: it's what the assistants said that day.
Sources: OpenAI Help Center, "Searching the web with ChatGPT," and Perplexity's crawler docs, checked Sep 2026.
A worked example
A made-up example: Acme Plumbing in Portland, OR, and "emergency plumber." The first prompt: "Best emergency plumber in Portland, OR?" Twenty answers come back.
- Acme is named in 4, all on Perplexity, which linked Acme's site and a review site.
- A competitor is named in 14, on both assistants. ChatGPT's answers kept linking a local "best plumbers" list that Acme isn't on.
- One answer gave Acme's old phone number and linked the directory listing it came from.
That's the "named in some" band below. The fix list, in order: ask that local list to consider Acme, correct the old listing, and write "24-hour emergency service in Portland" in text on the service page, where today it only appears in a photo.
The numbers are invented to show the format. Yours come from your own 20 answers.
How to read your report
Count the answers that name you, then find your band.
You're fine
You show up on both assistants, described right. Don't pay anyone to fix this, me included. Run the check again in a few months.
The gap is specific
One assistant names you and the other doesn't, or you come and go between runs. The pages behind the answers that skip you show where to start.
Fix it at the source
Old hours, an old number, a service you dropped. OpenAI warns that search results "can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect." The report names the page the mistake came from, so you fix it there.
Start where they looked
Competitors get named and you don't. The pages that named them are your first fixes. If no local business gets named, nobody owns that answer yet.
What moves AI answers
I won't promise you a spot. Neither does OpenAI: its help page says "Placement is not guaranteed." I work on what the answers draw from.
- Let the crawlers in. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot, its search crawler, won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Perplexity asks you to allow PerplexityBot. Add your website to the form and I check your robots.txt for both.
- Say it in words. Put your service and town in text on your own pages, not only in a photo. For its AI features, Google lists making sure "important content is available in textual form."
- Be where the answers look. If they keep linking a directory, a review site, or a local list, get listed there, accurately. The report names each one.
- Keep your Google profile current. Google lists that for its AI features too. The free Local Visibility Grade checks yours in two minutes.
What won't be on your fix list: special AI files or extra markup. Google says its AI features don't need them.
Try a quick version yourself with how to check if ChatGPT recommends you, and see where customers look now in AI search vs Google.
Sources: OpenAI Help Center and crawler docs, Perplexity's crawler docs, and Google Search Central, "AI features and your website," all checked Sep 2026.
Questions people ask
Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses? +
Yes, but far less often than Google's map results do. In SOCi's 2026 Local Visibility Index, covering roughly 350,000 business locations, ChatGPT recommended specific businesses 1.2% of the time, against 35.9% for Google's local three-pack.
How do I check if ChatGPT recommends my business? +
Ask it what a customer would ask, in a fresh chat, with your town in the question. Run it more than once and note who gets named. Or send the form above and I'll run the full set for you, free.
Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitor and not me? +
I can't see inside ChatGPT, but its answer can show where it looked. When it searches the web, it can link the pages it used. If those pages name your competitor and not you, start there. My report lists them for your town and service.
Do I need llms.txt or schema markup to show up in AI answers? +
Not for Google's AI features. Google's guide for site owners says: "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features." For ChatGPT and Perplexity, the step their docs spell out is letting their search crawlers in.
Is this an instant AI visibility score? +
No. It's a same-day report, not an instant score. I run your prompts through ChatGPT's and Perplexity's search and send you what they said, the pages they linked, and three ranked fixes.
Invisible to the machines?
AI visibility is buildable: clear signals about who you are and where you work, plus answer-first content. It's part of every Growth Engine month. Free call, real plan either way.
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