Insights · Every business

How to check what AI assistants say about your business

More customers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or Claude before they choose a business. You can't see those answers unless you ask yourself. This guide shows how to test them, score them, trace wrong facts back to their source and fix them, in about an hour a month.

Dirk LaudonFounder, SproutMedia · 29 September 2026 · 10 minute read
An AI assistant's answer · illustration
Best physio in Dublin 6 for a sports massage?

Harbour Physio Named is a well-reviewed physiotherapy clinic in Ranelagh, Dublin 6 Right area. A sports massage costs about €50 Wrong: it's €65, and it's open until 6pm on weekdays Out of date. You'll need to call to book an appointment Wrong: online booking exists.

2 right2 wrong1 out of dateNamed, but a customer would get the wrong price and think they can't book online.

No one can make an AI assistant recommend your business, and anyone who promises that is guessing. What you can do is make sure that what it says about you is right.

Why check at all

When someone asks an assistant for a business like yours, it searches the web, combines what it finds and writes one confident answer. That answer is often a customer's first impression of you, and you never see it.

Most problems aren't dramatic. A price from an old listing, holiday hours nobody updated, an address from before you moved, or a service you offer that never gets mentioned. Each one can cost you a customer who never gets in touch. The good news: most wrong answers trace back to facts you can correct.

Step 1

Ask what your customers ask

Not just your business name, but the questions a customer types when they don't know you yet: who's good, what it costs, whether you can book.

Try it

Ten questions your customers ask

Pick your type of business and fill in your area and name. Then ask each question, word for word.

Type of business
Find
  1. What's the best physio in Ranelagh, Dublin?
  2. I need a physio who can see me this week in Ranelagh, Dublin. Who can help?
  3. Which physios in Ranelagh, Dublin are good for running injuries?
Understand
  1. How much does a sports massage cost at physios in Ranelagh, Dublin?
  2. Does your business offer back pain treatment?
  3. What are your business's opening hours this week?
Trust
  1. Is your business in Ranelagh, Dublin any good? What do reviews say?
  2. Compare your business with other physios in Ranelagh, Dublin.
Book
  1. Can I book a sports massage with your business online?
  2. Book a sports massage with a physio in Ranelagh, Dublin for next week.
Step 2

Set up a fair test

Assistants tailor answers to the person asking. Six habits make your results reliable, and comparable from month to month.

Use a clean chat

Memory and past chats change answers. Use Temporary Chat in ChatGPT and Gemini, an incognito chat in Claude, or sign out.

Name your area

Assistants guess where you are from your internet connection. Saying the town in the question keeps every test comparable.

Turn on web search

Where there's a choice, let the assistant search. Otherwise you're testing what a model learned months ago.

Same words, every assistant

Paste the exact same question into each one, so differences come from the assistant, not the wording.

Ask twice

Answers vary from one day to the next. Two runs on different days show what's stable.

Keep a record

Note the date and assistant, take a screenshot, and copy the links it cites. You'll need them to trace wrong facts.

Where each assistant looksAnd the one technical check that can stop you appearing at all
AssistantWhere it finds business informationCheck this
ChatGPTIts own web search, which uses third-party search providers, and your approximate location from your internet connection.Sites that block OAI-SearchBot aren't shown in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot is only about training, a separate decision.
GeminiGoogle Search, and Google Business Profile for local answers. Google's AI Overviews work the same way.Blocking Google-Extended doesn't remove you from Google Search or its AI features. It only concerns Gemini training and grounding.
CopilotBing search, which Microsoft uses to ground its web answers, and Bing Places for local details.Check that Bing has indexed your site and that your Bing Places listing is claimed and current.
ClaudeWeb search, with its own crawler for search results and another for pages users ask about.Don't block Claude-SearchBot or Claude-User if you want to appear. ClaudeBot is only about training.
Step 3

Score every answer

For each question and assistant: were you named, and was everything it said about you right? Here's an example you can play with.

QuestionChatGPTGeminiCopilotClaude
Best physio in my area
Price of a sports massage
Opening hours this week
Book online for Thursday
Compare with other clinics
Your share of answers
60%
  • Named and right 9
  • Named, wrong fact 3
  • Not named 8

Click any square to change it. Wrong facts are the ones to fix first: they send customers away with bad information.

Practice round

Spot the problem

Wrong facts sound just as confident as right ones. Compare each answer with what's true, and see if you can catch the problem.

Question 1 of 3
How much is a sports massage at Harbour Physio?

Harbour Physio charges €50 for a sports massage, and it's open until 8pm on Thursdays.

What's actually true
  • Sports massage: €65
  • Thursdays: open until 8pm
What's wrong with this answer?
Step 4

Trace where the facts come from

An answer is built from what the assistant can find. Pick a source to see what it feeds, and what you can do about it.

The AI answerBuilt from what it can find
Your websiteFull control
What it feeds
Services, prices, hours, booking and your own description of the business.
What to do
State prices, hours and services as text, add structured data, and keep one page per important service.
Step 5

Fix it at the source

Correcting the answer in a chat changes nothing. Correcting the page or listing it came from does.

What the assistant got wrongWhere it usually comes fromThe fix
Wrong priceAn old listing, or a price only shown in an image or PDFPut prices on your site as text, add structured data, and correct the old listing
Wrong opening or holiday hoursGoogle Business Profile or Bing Places not updatedUpdate every profile, holiday hours included, on the same day
Old address or phone numberA directory or a duplicate map listingCorrect or remove it, and merge duplicate listings
“Phone bookings only”The booking page is hard to find or can't be readLink the booking page from your main pages and use a proper booking link
Not named for a service you offerNo page about it, and reviews don't mention itOne clear page per important service, and ask reviewers to mention what they had
Wrong about what you doVague or old descriptions in different placesOne clear description, used everywhere
Not named at allYour site blocks AI search crawlers, or little is written about youCheck your robots.txt, then get listed where your customers look
up to 40%more visible in AI answers
What the research says

In a 2024 study by researchers at Princeton and IIT Delhi, adding sources, statistics and quotations to content made it up to about 40% more visible in AI-generated answers. Stuffing pages with keywords, an old search engine trick, didn't help. Clear, specific, sourced facts are what get picked up.

Step 6

Make it a monthly habit

About an hour a month. Assistants change often, and so do the sources they read, so one check isn't enough.

  1. Week 1AskThe same ten questions, in each assistant, in clean chats.
  2. Same dayScoreFill in the score sheet and save the screenshots.
  3. Same dayCompareWhat changed since last month? New wrong facts come first.
  4. That weekFixCorrect the one or two sources behind the worst answers.
  5. Next monthRepeatChanges can take weeks to show. Keep the same questions.
What you can and can't control

Right facts, not guaranteed rankings

You can't decide what an assistant recommends, and the feedback buttons in each assistant won't fix a wrong fact on their own. Use them anyway, but put your time into the sources: your website, your listings and the places that write about you.

Start with the answers that are wrong rather than the ones where you're missing. A customer who gets the wrong price or thinks you only take phone bookings is a customer you've already lost.

Checked everything? The next step is making sure an assistant can do more than name you: find your prices, see when you're free, and book. That's what agent readiness is about.

DL
Written byDirk LaudonFounder, SproutMedia

AI specialist with a master's degree in Business Informatics, studied in Germany and Sweden with a focus on artificial intelligence. Dirk has spent years building software and apps, and has worked hands-on in e-commerce, affiliate marketing and social media, so he knows how customers find and choose a business online. At SproutMedia he helps businesses get ready for their customers' AI assistants and agents.

LinkedIn

SproutMedia writes about AI agents and agent readiness for service businesses in Ireland, Europe, the United States and beyond.

Sources

  1. OpenAI: overview of OpenAI crawlers
  2. OpenAI Help Center: searching the web with ChatGPT
  3. Anthropic: does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?
  4. Google Search Central: Google's common crawlers, including Google-Extended
  5. Microsoft Learn: web search in Microsoft Copilot, grounded in Bing
  6. Aggarwal et al., “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, KDD 2024

Checked on 29 September 2026. Assistants and their crawlers change often, so check the current documentation before changing your robots.txt. The examples use a fictional clinic, and assistant names are used only to identify the products.