Can AI find your business? Try this

By Victoria Barton · Updated 11 November 2026

Want to find out whether ChatGPT suggests your business when someone asks who to hire? This guide takes you through a starting check, using the ChatGPT website on a computer. You do not need to know any technical terms.

Why use a Temporary Chat for this check?

If you have told ChatGPT about your business before, it may use those details when it answers you. For example, you might have asked it to write your website or a social media post. That does not mean a new customer would get the same answer.

A Temporary Chat is a separate conversation. Choose its Unpersonalized option for this check. It does not use saved memories (details kept from earlier chats), custom instructions (preferences you set for replies), or plugins (extra connected tools). We want to see whether your business comes up without those extra clues. We are not assuming ChatGPT already knows your business.

Before the check: open a Temporary Chat

1. Go to chatgpt.com in your web browser and sign in to your ChatGPT account. A browser is the app you use to open websites, such as Chrome or Safari.

2. Choose New chat to open an empty conversation. Do this before typing anything about your business.

3. Select Temporary. Look for the button labelled Temporary, shown with a dotted speech-bubble symbol in OpenAI’s guide linked below.

4. Choose Unpersonalized before sending any message. Personalized can still use saved information about you, so it is not the option for this check.

5. Check that you chose Unpersonalized, then leave the message box empty until step 1 below. If you already sent a message, start another Temporary Chat; you cannot switch this choice after the conversation begins.

If your screen looks different or you cannot find these options, select the OpenAI help link below to see its illustrated instructions. These steps describe the website; buttons can look different in the phone app. Do not assume a new regular chat has the same settings.

OpenAI’s current Temporary Chat guidance

This reduces the influence of information saved about you. It cannot recreate every customer’s answer. People ask different questions, live in different places and may use different settings. The picture above is a reminder of the process; follow the detailed steps here.

1. Ask for the service a customer needs

In the empty message box, type “Can you recommend a mobile massage therapist in the Algarve?” Replace the service and place with your own. Leave your business name out: a new customer would not know it yet. Do not send the question until you have chosen the search option below.

For an online service, you could ask “Who offers online bookkeeping for UK sole traders?” A sole trader is someone running a business as an individual. Change the service and customer type to match your work. Do not paste your website address into this test either; that would also identify you.

To use current web information, select View all tools beside the message box, then Search. This asks ChatGPT to look for information on web pages. Now select the send arrow beside the message box. If Search is missing, use OpenAI’s guide below before continuing. Record whether search was on when you save the answer in step 3.

How to turn on web search in ChatGPT

2. Check what the answer actually says

Read the answer and look for your business name. A mention means the name appears. A recommendation means ChatGPT suggests your business as an option to use. A website link is a clickable address that takes the reader to a page. Look for each separately.

If the answer shows links or a Sources button, select them to open the pages it refers to. Read the relevant details on those pages. Check the service, location and price against what the answer says. A link can help you check a claim; it does not explain every reason the business was chosen.

3. Keep the answer before leaving the chat

A temporary conversation will not be in your chat history unless you save it as a regular chat. Keep a copy before leaving. You can use the Copy button under the answer, if shown, or highlight the text and choose Copy. Open a separate regular chat, select its message box and choose Paste. Add the question you asked and today’s date.

Use the ready-to-copy request below in that separate chat. It asks AI to do the organising for you. Replace each item in square brackets with your own details. Only name your business here, after the recommendation check is finished.

“Make a table from the answer pasted below. The test question was [question], the date was [date], the tool was ChatGPT, and web search was [on / not selected / unknown]. My business is [name] and my website is [address]. Show whether my business was named, recommended or linked to. Keep the wording and source links. Use ‘not recorded’ for anything missing. Do not run a new search or invent results.”

Read the table beside the original answer to check it is correct. Keep this regular chat for later comparisons. Do not use it for your next recommendation test: you have now told it your business name.

4. Repeat the check and look for errors

On another day, start a new Temporary Chat, choose Unpersonalized and ask exactly the same customer question. Use the same place name and search setting. Save that answer too. Repeating the check helps you see whether your business appears more than once, rather than judging it from 1 answer.

If an answer gets your details wrong, open your home page, service page and contact page. Check the name, service, area, prices and booking details. Correct any errors you find, or ask the person who manages your website to do it. Being left out of 1 answer does not by itself mean your website is broken.

My business appears when I type its name. Does that mean new customers can find it?

No. If you type your business name, you have told ChatGPT which business to look at. That checks what it says about you when asked. It does not show that it would suggest you to someone who has never heard of you.

For example, “What services does [business name] offer?” checks information about a named business. “Can you recommend a mobile massage therapist in the Algarve?” checks which businesses it suggests. Use separate new chats for these questions so the named-business question does not influence the other test.

What this tells you

You have checked a few answers to specific questions. You have not tested every customer, place or AI tool. ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot can give different answers. Check each separately, and use that tool’s own instructions for its settings. A ChatGPT setting does not change the others.

If you want help understanding the results, I can review your website and show you what I’d tackle next.

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