How to check whether ChatGPT recommends your business
Ask the question your customer would ask, not your own name. Then ask again, in a few places, and count.
1. Write down the questions customers really ask
Nobody types your business name when they're looking for something new. They ask for what they need, where they are:
- “Best bakery in Leslieville for a birthday cake”
- “Emergency plumber near Kitsilano open on Sunday”
- “Physio in Halifax that does direct billing”
Pick five. Mix broad ones (“best coffee in Ottawa”) with specific ones that match what you're good at (“quiet café in Ottawa with good wifi”). The specific ones are often where a small business has its best chance.
2. Ask in a fresh chat
ChatGPT and the others remember things about you. If you've asked about your own business before, a new answer may lean on that. Use a temporary chat, a private window while signed out, or a friend's phone. Ask each question once per chat, in plain words, and don't follow up with hints.
3. Ask more than once, and in more than one place
AI answers change from one try to the next. One answer that names you, or skips you, tells you very little. Ask each question two or three times, then ask the same questions in Claude, Gemini, Meta AI and Perplexity. Customers use all of them.
4. Count, don't score
Keep a small table: the question, the tool, the date, whether you were named, who was named instead, and which websites the answer linked to. At the end you'll have something like “named in 3 of 15 answers”. That count is more honest than any score, and you can check it again next month.
The other columns matter as much as the count. The businesses named instead of you are the ones AI sees as the answer. The linked sites, such as review sites, local lists and news stories, show where it looked.
5. Then ask about yourself
Now ask by name: “What do you know about Butter & Rye in Leslieville?” Check the hours, the address, what it says you sell. Wrong facts are common, especially for businesses that have moved, changed hours or added services. Note where they seem to come from. An old listing is usually the culprit.
What one check can and can't tell you
A check like this is a snapshot. It shows roughly where you stand today on a handful of questions. It won't tell you why, and a small change from one month to the next may just be the answers moving around. Look for patterns that hold across tools and across weeks.
That's the part that takes time, and it's why we built Mentioned: it asks your questions on several AI tools every week, counts the answers that name you, and shows who was named instead and which sites were cited. You can do all of it by hand with the steps above. It's worth doing at least once.