Here’s the whole check: open a logged-out or temporary ChatGPT session, ask it the questions your customers actually ask — “best your industry near your town,” “is your business legit” — and see whether it names you. Screenshot what you find. That’s it. Five minutes, no tools, no signup.
This is the same first step we run in every AI Visibility Report we build. We publish our method on purpose: if you can check it yourself, you should.
Why the logged-out part matters
If you check while signed in, ChatGPT remembers your history — including every time you’ve mentioned your own business. It will happily name you because it knows you, not because it would name you to a stranger.
Your customers are strangers. Test as one: use a temporary chat, a logged-out window, or a browser profile you don’t use for work.
The four questions to ask
Ask these, substituting your real industry and town:
- The recommendation question: “Who’s the best your industry in your town?” This is the money query — the one a customer with no referral asks.
- The trust question: “Is your business name good? What do their reviews say?” This is what a referred customer asks before calling you.
- The problem question: “How do I the problem you solve in your region?” Customers who don’t know your category ask this way.
- The comparison question: “Your business vs. alternatives — who should I go with?”
Read the answers the way a customer would. Being named is good. Being named first, with reasons is the goal. Not appearing at all means the job is going to whoever does appear.
Don’t stop at ChatGPT
ChatGPT is one engine. Your customers also hit Google’s AI Overviews (the answer box above the search results), Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot — and they don’t all agree, because they pull from different sources. Run at least the recommendation question and the trust question on Google and one other engine. Five extra minutes, much fuller picture.
How to read what you find
The engines didn’t form an opinion about you from nowhere. They assembled it from sources: your Google Business Profile, your reviews (count, recency, and whether you reply), directories, local mentions, and whether your own website actually answers the questions people ask. If you’re invisible, one or more of those sources is thin — and each one is fixable. We wrote up the three fixes that cost nothing as the follow-up to this check.
Two honest caveats. First, answers vary run to run — look for the pattern, not a single result. Second, whatever you find is a snapshot: engines re-weigh their sources constantly, which is why we re-check monthly for clients, with screenshots, so progress is provable rather than vibes.
If you’d rather we run it
The full version of this check is our free AI Visibility Report: twelve buyer-intent queries across every major engine, screenshots, a source analysis explaining why the answers look the way they do, and the three fastest fixes for your specific situation. Built by hand, delivered in 48 hours, yours whether we ever work together or not.
Why does ChatGPT give different answers each time I ask?
AI answers are generated fresh each time, and small wording changes shift the result. That's normal. What you're looking for is the pattern across several askings — if you're named in most of them, you have visibility; if you never appear, you don't. One lucky mention isn't visibility, and one absence isn't a verdict.
Do I need the paid version of ChatGPT to check?
No. The free version answers the same kinds of buyer questions your customers ask. What matters more is using a logged-out or temporary chat, so your own history doesn't contaminate the answer.
What if the AI describes my business incorrectly?
That's worth knowing — it means the sources the engines rely on (your Google Business Profile, directories, reviews, your own site) are thin, stale, or inconsistent. The fix is correcting the sources, not arguing with the chatbot. Engines re-read their sources continually, so corrected information does propagate.
How often should I re-check?
Monthly is enough. AI answers shift as engines re-weigh sources and as your competitors publish. We re-run the full check with screenshots every month for clients for exactly that reason — a single snapshot goes stale.