There is a conversation happening about your trade right now inside ChatGPT, and you may not be part of it. When a customer asks an AI assistant who to call, it answers with a few names from what it finds on the web. If yours is not one of them, the call goes to someone else. Here is how to find out what the assistants say about your business and your competitors. If GEO is a new term to you, start with the plain-English guide.
The Problem with Checking Once
The most common way owners check is to open ChatGPT and type, "Who's the best [your trade] in [your town]?"
That is a good start, but one check can mislead you.
First, answers can be personal. If you are logged in, your chat history may shape the reply. Second, the assistants don't agree with each other. When Insites ran 10,000 US local businesses through ChatGPT and Perplexity, 40.88% were never recommended by ChatGPT and 68.79% were never recommended by Perplexity [1]. A business one assistant names, another may not.
If you only check ChatGPT, you miss what Claude, Gemini and Perplexity tell your customers. For a fair picture, ask the same questions on all four, logged out or in a private window, and write down who was named and when.
The 3 Questions to Ask
Ask these the way a customer would, without your business name in the first two:
- The "who's best" question: "Who's the best [your trade] in [your town]?" This shows who the assistant names when a customer is choosing.
- The job question: "I need [a specific job] in [your town] this week. Who should I call?" Customers describe the job, not the business. This shows who gets matched to that job.
- The name question: "What do people say about [your business name] in [your town]?" This shows what the assistant knows about you, and whether your phone number, hours and services are right.
If competitors show up in the first two answers and you do not, the assistant is finding more about them than about you. If the third answer gets your details wrong, check that your website, Google Business Profile and directory listings all say the same thing.
Why Are Your Competitors Being Named?
If a competitor is named while you are not, it usually comes down to three things:
- Clear facts: Their website says plainly what they do and where, while yours leaves the assistant to guess.
- Other people talking about them: They have more reviews and mentions on sites customers trust. Assistants weigh what others say over what a business says about itself.
- Access: Your server or
robots.txtfile may be blocking AI crawlers from reading your site.
Let Us Ask for You
Asking four assistants the same questions every month, the same way, is tedious.
Run the free AI visibility check. We ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini one question your customers ask and show you who they named. It doesn't include a fix list. If you want it every month, the $49 plan asks the same 8 customer questions on all 4 assistants and emails you what changed.
References
[1] Insites. "The AI visibility benchmark: how 10,000 local businesses actually perform in ChatGPT and Perplexity." July 2026. Insites sells AI visibility audits. insites.com