You can find out whether AI recommends your business in about ten minutes, or in about sixty seconds with a tool. Here's the honest, do-it-yourself method first, then the shortcut.
Why this is worth measuring
When a buyer asks an AI assistant "who's the best [your trade] near me," the AI names a few businesses. If you're not one of them, you're losing the customer before they ever see your website, and you probably don't know it's happening. Measuring it is the first step to fixing it.
The step-by-step method
- Write down your real customer questions. Not "my business name", customers who already know you aren't the point. Write the questions of someone who *doesn't* know you yet: "best emergency plumber in [city]," "top-rated med spa near me," "who should I hire to remodel a kitchen in [city]." Five to ten of these.
- Ask each question in each AI assistant. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Paste each question. Read the answer carefully.
- Record two things per answer: are you named, and who is? Make a simple table. For each question and each engine, mark whether your business appears, and write down the competitor names the AI *did* name. Those competitor names are the most useful thing you'll collect, they're who AI currently trusts over you.
- Repeat across engines, because they disagree. ChatGPT might name you and Perplexity might not. That's normal. Your real picture is the average across the engines that answered, not a single lucky (or unlucky) result.
- Track it over time. Run the same questions again in a month. The number by itself is a snapshot; the *trend* is the signal. If you've been cleaning up your Google Business Profile, gathering reviews, and getting cited on local sites, you want to see yourself named more often, and see the trend move.
What the results tell you
- You're rarely named, and it's always the same competitors. The AI doesn't have enough clear, corroborated information to confidently name you. The fix is white-hat fundamentals: consistent business name/address/phone everywhere, real recent reviews, and mentions on trusted third-party sites.
- You're named on some engines but not others. You're on the edge, present enough for one engine to name you. More corroboration usually tips the rest.
- You're named consistently. Good. Keep the fundamentals fresh and watch that a rising competitor doesn't displace you.
The honest caveats
Nobody controls what an AI says, and the answers vary run to run. That's why you average across several questions and several engines, and why you track the trend instead of obsessing over one result. And no honest tool can guarantee AI will name you, anyone promising "guaranteed ChatGPT placement" is selling something that doesn't exist. What you can do is measure where you stand and improve your odds.
The shortcut
Doing this by hand works but takes time, and it's hard to keep the method identical each month. A free instant check runs a disclosed set of your category questions across the engines, counts how often you're named versus competitors, and hands back an inspectable receipt, the exact prompt, the engines, and the verbatim answer, so the number is auditable, not marketing. That's the fastest honest way to see where you stand.