AI Visibility Check: Does ChatGPT Name Your Business?

Your customers now ask AI assistants who to buy from. OpenAI says 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week.¹ Most owners have never checked what those assistants say about them. This AI visibility check takes about 30 minutes. You finish with a one-page baseline: whether you are named, how you are described, and which sources the AI leans on.

What you need

• Five questions a buyer would ask before contacting a business like yours.
• A logged-out or temporary ChatGPT window, plus Perplexity and Gemini.
• A spreadsheet with one row per answer.
• Claude or ChatGPT to draft the questions (the prompt is below).
• Optional: HubSpot’s free AI Search Grader. It gives a one-time check of how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini describe your brand, and it needs no account.³

Step by step: run your AI visibility check

1. Write the buyer questions. Use the prompt below to draft them. Mix a “best option” question, a comparison, a price question and a problem question. Use the words a customer would say, not your internal jargon.
2. Start a clean session. Open a temporary or logged-out ChatGPT chat. If you are logged in, the model may draw on memory of earlier chats, including ones about your own business, so you would see results no other user sees.⁵
3. Ask without naming yourself. Naming your business primes the answer and tells you nothing about unprompted visibility.⁵ Test at least ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, because each uses slightly different sources.⁷ Run every question three times. AI answers vary between runs, so one try tells you little.⁴
4. Log four things per answer. Record whether you were named, where you appeared in the answer, which competitors were named, and which sources were cited.⁵
5. Ask the brand question. Type “Is [your business] any good?” This shows what the model already knows about you, or wrongly believes.⁴
6. Work out your share. Divide the times you were named by the total runs. If you appeared in 4 of 15 runs, your share is about 27%.⁵ That is your baseline.
7. Fix one thing. Look at the cited sources. That list shows which pages the model trusts for your market.⁴ If the AI repeats old details, find where they come from, such as your Google Business Profile, a directory listing or an old article, and correct them there.⁷ Then check whether you can claim your business in ChatGPT’s Business Hub. It lets you add business details and see how people engage with you.²

The prompt

Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT to get your question list and a ready-made log table.

You are a market researcher helping a small business test how AI assistants recommend it. Business type: [BUSINESS TYPE]. Location: [CITY OR REGION]. Ideal customer: [IDEAL CUSTOMER]. Top services: [TOP 3 SERVICES]. Typical price range: [PRICE RANGE]. Main competitors: [2-3 COMPETITOR NAMES]. Task 1: Write 8 questions a real buyer would type into an AI assistant before choosing a provider. Cover best options, comparisons, price, a specific problem and trust. Use plain, conversational wording. Do not include my business name, [BUSINESS NAME], in any of them. Task 2: Add 2 brand questions that do include [BUSINESS NAME], such as whether it is any good. Task 3: Put all 10 questions in a table with these columns: question, type, named in ChatGPT (Y/N), named in Perplexity (Y/N), named in Gemini (Y/N), competitors named, sources cited. Leave the last five columns empty so I can fill them in.

Make it better

• Add a cross-check. Run HubSpot’s AI Search Grader and compare its picture with your manual log.³ It is a snapshot, so keep your own record of the questions you tested.
• Track the right number. In Business Hub, a mention counts when ChatGPT references your website, not when it only says your name.² Insights also need identity verification first.² Your manual log still covers every assistant, so keep it going.
• Re-run on a schedule. Repeat the same questions every month or two with the same wording. Change one thing between runs, such as a rewritten services page, so you know what moved the result.

Claiming a profile is a way to correct details. Do not expect it to buy you a recommendation. The fastest early wins are usually plain: a clear sentence on your site saying what you do, and consistent details across directories.