How to check if ChatGPT recommends your business

To check whether ChatGPT recommends your business, write three to five questions a real customer would ask, such as "best plumber in Portsmouth". Ask each one several times in a fresh chat with search switched on. Count how many answers name you, and note who is named instead and which websites the answers cite.

That is the whole method. The rest of this post explains why a single test misleads, how to run the manual version properly, and what you can do about the result.

Why does ChatGPT give a different answer each time?

ChatGPT does not hold a fixed list of "the best plumber in Portsmouth". It writes a fresh answer each time, and when it searches the web it may pull from different pages on different attempts. Ask the same question twice, a minute apart, and you can get two different sets of businesses.

Wording matters as well. "Best hairdresser in Southsea" and "who's good for balayage near Southsea" are different questions to ChatGPT, and they can produce different names.

Location plays a part too. OpenAI's help page on ChatGPT search says it may use an approximate location based on your IP address to give relevant local results. So a question asked from your shop may not get the same answer as one asked from the other side of town.

A manual check you can do today

You need half an hour and a notebook or spreadsheet.

1. Write 3 to 5 customer questions

Use the service and the area, in the words a customer would use. For a salon that might be:

• best lash extensions in Southsea
• where can I get my nails done near Fratton
• recommend a hairdresser in Portsmouth for curly hair

Pick the services that actually bring in money.

2. Ask each question several times

Start a fresh chat for each attempt, so the earlier conversation doesn't steer the answer. Make sure search is on: ChatGPT may search on its own when a question needs current information, but you can also turn it on yourself. Ask each question three or more times.

3. Write down what you see

For every answer, note:

• whether you were named
• which other businesses were named
• which websites were cited (the citations open the source, and there is a sources panel)

The citations are the part most people skip, and they are often the most useful. If ChatGPT keeps citing Treatwell or Checkatrade for your kind of business, that tells you where it is reading.

4. Repeat monthly

Keep the same questions each month so the results can be compared. If you change the wording, you are starting a new test.

Manual check versus Kerbrank's ChatGPT check

What tends to influence whether ChatGPT names you?

OpenAI has not published a list of ranking factors for local recommendations. Its publisher FAQ says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search and that pages are surfaced when there are signals they are relevant to the question. These are the practical levers that follow from what OpenAI does say.

Let OAI-SearchBot crawl your site

OpenAI runs separate crawlers. OAI-SearchBot is the one used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. GPTBot is the one used for training its models. They are controlled separately in your robots.txt file, so you can block GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot.

If your site blocks OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI's FAQ says it may show just a link and page title rather than a summary. Some security plugins and hosting firewalls block unfamiliar bots by default, so ask whoever looks after your website to check. OpenAI notes that robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to be picked up.

Keep your directory listings accurate

When ChatGPT answers a local question it tends to lean on directories and review sites. Which ones depends on the trade: Fresha or Treatwell for salons and clinics, Yell or Checkatrade for trades. Make sure you are listed on the ones it cites for your kind of business, with the same name, address and phone as your Google profile. Our post on NAP consistency covers how to find and fix mismatches.

Reviews that mention the service

A review that says "great lip filler appointment" carries more information than one that says "lovely". It is reasonable to expect that wording customers use about specific services helps both Google and ChatGPT connect you with those services, though neither company spells out how. You can't ask customers to mention it, though: Google's rules say businesses shouldn't request specific content in a review. What you can do is send the review link to every customer who had the service. Our guide to getting more Google reviews has wording you can use.

A website that says plainly what you do and where

Make the important things easy to read on the page itself: the services you offer, the town and areas you cover, your address and opening hours. A homepage that only says "Welcome to our world of beauty" gives a reader, human or otherwise, nothing to quote. The same applies to your Google listing, which is covered in Google Business Profile optimisation.

Google ranks its own local results on relevance, distance and prominence. ChatGPT has no published equivalent.

How Kerbrank's ChatGPT check works

Kerbrank runs the manual method for you, on a schedule. It builds customer-style questions from your Google category, your town and the services you track, asks ChatGPT each one 3 times, and counts how many answers recommend you by name.

Dashboard · ChatGPTExample

The headline figure comes with a 95% range, because a handful of answers can only tell you so much. A wide range means the answers were mixed, so a small change from one week to the next isn't worth worrying about. Below it you'll see which businesses were recommended instead, and The websites ChatGPT was reading, with a count next to each. When a directory it cites is one you're missing from, it turns up on your job list with the steps written out.

The ChatGPT visibility guide explains how to read each part of the report. If you'd like to see your Google Maps position first, the free rank check takes a couple of minutes, and the ChatGPT check is included on every plan on the pricing page.

If you're not showing on ChatGPT and not on the map either, start with the map. Our post on why a business is not showing on Google Maps goes through the likely causes.

Common questions