20 answers · reviewed September 1, 2026
The questions owners actually type
Nobody wakes up wanting to buy AI visibility monitoring. They wake up because a customer said ChatGPT recommended someone else. These are those questions, answered in the first paragraph, each with one thing you can use without buying anything.
Diagnosing
05Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my business?
The direct answer, the five things that actually cause it, and a six-prompt script you can paste into ChatGPT right now to see where you stand.
Prompt script
AI recommends my competitors but not me. Why?
Usually the competitor is not better, they are better covered. A side-by-side coverage audit you can fill in for one competitor in about twenty minutes.
Worksheet
My business shows in Google but not in AI answers. What is different?
Google ranks pages. Assistants name entities. A side-by-side table of what each system needs, and which of your signals feeds which.
Worksheet
Why does AI keep recommending national chains instead of local businesses?
Because one nationally-covered name is cheaper for a model to be confident about than a thousand local ones. Live data on how many metros name the same franchises.
Checklist· with our own data
AI is describing my business wrong. How do I fix it?
You cannot edit the model, so you fix the sources it read. A correction playbook mapping each wrong fact to its source of record and a realistic refresh window.
Worksheet
Getting recommended
05How do I get my business cited in AI answers?
A citation happens when a page an assistant already trusts contains a checkable claim about you. The source-coverage checklist, plus which kinds of sources actually get cited.
Checklist· with our own data
Does Google Business Profile affect what ChatGPT says?
Indirectly, and more than almost anything else you control. A field-by-field profile checklist showing which AI-readable source each field feeds.
Worksheet
Do reviews change whether AI recommends me?
Yes, but the star average is the least important part. A review-text audit worksheet that shows you what an assistant can actually quote about your business.
Worksheet
Can I pay to get my business recommended by ChatGPT?
No. There is no ad slot and no submission form inside an assistant's recommendations. What you can pay for, what it actually moves, and the vendor claims that are red flags.
Worksheet
Do I need schema markup for AI to recommend my business?
Not a requirement and not a ranking lever, but the cheapest way to make your facts unambiguous. A copy-and-adapt LocalBusiness block and how to validate it.
Code you can paste
Where answers come from
03Where does ChatGPT get its local recommendations from?
Two sources: what the model absorbed in training, and pages it fetches while answering. Plus the live table of which domains our scan corpus recorded assistants citing.
Checklist· with our own data
Which websites do AI assistants trust for best-in-town answers?
Measured, not guessed: the source domains the assistants actually cited across our scan corpus, broken out by trade, with the practical read for each.
Checklist· with our own data
Does Reddit decide what AI recommends?
It is loud in some categories and absent in others. Our own citation corpus, showing exactly where community sources rank against everything else.
Worksheet· with our own data
Measuring
07Is AI search actually sending customers to local businesses yet?
Some, and less than the noise suggests, but the click is the wrong thing to measure. Published click data, plus how to detect AI-sourced customers with tools you already have.
Worksheet
How do I check what ChatGPT says about my company?
A two-minute protocol you can run right now: six prompts, a scoring grid, and the three mistakes that make people trust a false result.
Prompt script
I fixed my website. How long until AI answers change?
Two clocks run at different speeds. What updates in days, what waits for a model release, and a re-check schedule that makes the difference visible.
Worksheet
My SEO agency says they handle AI search. How do I check?
Eight questions to ask on your next call, what a real answer sounds like, and the four non-answers that mean the work is not happening.
Worksheet
Local Falcon vs MentionedOn: which one do I actually need?
They measure two different surfaces. A side-by-side table of what each one can and cannot tell you, and the one question that decides it.
Worksheet
BrightLocal already includes AI visibility. When is a second tool still worth $99?
Usually it is not worth it. A ten-minute checklist for deciding, including the three reasons that justify a second subscription and the three that do not.
Checklist
Is an API sample the same as what the ChatGPT app says about my business?
No, and no tool can reproduce the consumer app. What a dated API sample does prove, what it cannot, and how to sanity check it by hand.
Worksheet
Or skip ahead and just look
Run the free scan and see which of these questions applies to you. It asks the buyer questions for your trade and city across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and Copilot, and shows you who gets named instead.
Run my free scanEvery page last reviewed September 1, 2026 (2026-09-01)