You can check whether AI tools recommend your business right now. It takes about five minutes, it costs nothing, and you don't need any technical knowledge. All you need is a browser and a few specific prompts.
Here's why this matters. 64% of consumers now use AI tools to find local businesses and services. If you're not showing up when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation in your trade and area, you're invisible to a huge chunk of potential customers. The good news is you can find out where you stand in the next few minutes.
Below is the exact process I use when auditing a business for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Same prompts, same tools, same order. Let's go through them one by one.
Step 1: Check ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the biggest AI tool by far, so start here.
Open chat.openai.com and type something like: "Can you recommend a [your trade] in [your town]?" For example: "Can you recommend a good plumber in Sheffield?" or "Who's the best accountant in Bristol?"
Try a few variations. Ask "Who would you recommend for [your service] in [your area]?" and "What are the top rated [your trade] companies near [your location]?" Different wording can trigger different results.
Look at what comes back. Does your business name appear? If ChatGPT mentions you by name with a description of what you do, brilliant. If it lists three competitors but not you, that tells you something important. If it says it can't recommend specific businesses in your area, that's a sign there isn't enough data about any local provider in your trade, which is actually an opportunity.
Step 2: Check Perplexity
Perplexity works differently from ChatGPT, and that's exactly why you need to check it separately.
Go to perplexity.ai and ask the same questions you used for ChatGPT. The key difference is that Perplexity searches the live web in real time. It pulls from current pages, reviews, and directories rather than relying solely on training data.
This means Perplexity results often include sources. You'll see footnotes linking to the websites and pages it pulled information from. If your business shows up here, check what source it's citing. Is it your website? A review site? A directory listing? That tells you which of your online presences is doing the heavy lifting.
If you're not appearing on Perplexity but your competitors are, look at their sources. That's a roadmap showing you exactly where you need to be listed.
Step 3: Check Google AI Overviews
Google's AI Overviews appear at the top of regular search results. They're the AI generated summary boxes that answer your question before you even click a link.
To trigger one, go to Google and search for something conversational. Try "who is the best [your trade] in [your area]" or "which [your trade] should I use in [your town]." Not every search triggers an AI Overview, but question style queries are more likely to.
If an AI Overview appears, read through it. Does it mention your business? Does it pull from your website? Google's AI Overviews draw heavily from pages that already rank well in traditional search, so if your SEO is decent, you've got a head start here. But 49% of AI Overview citations come from sources outside the top 10 organic results, so strong SEO alone isn't enough.
Step 4: Check Claude
Claude is Anthropic's AI assistant, and it's growing fast. Worth checking.
Head to claude.ai and run the same prompts. "Can you recommend a [trade] in [area]?" Claude tends to be more cautious than ChatGPT about making specific recommendations, so don't be surprised if it hedges a bit. What you're looking for is whether it knows your business exists at all.
If Claude can describe what your business does and where you're based, that's a positive signal. It means you have enough of an online presence for AI training data to have picked you up. If it draws a complete blank, you've got work to do.
What your results mean
Now you've checked all four. Here's how to read what you found.
You show up on all four. That's rare and excellent. Your online presence is strong enough that AI tools are confident recommending you. Focus on maintaining and expanding your coverage.
You show up on some but not others. This is the most common result. Perplexity might find you because it searches the live web, but ChatGPT might miss you because its training data hasn't caught up. This means your current web presence is working but you need more third party coverage to get into AI training data.
You don't show up on any. Don't panic. Most small businesses don't right now. It just means AI tools don't have enough data to feel confident recommending you. The fix isn't complicated, but it does require a plan. More on that below.
Common reasons you're not showing up
If you drew blanks across the board, it's almost always one or more of these issues.
No third party mentions
This is the biggest one. 68% of AI citations come from third party sources like review sites, directories, news articles, and press releases. If the only place your business is mentioned online is your own website, AI tools don't have enough independent evidence to recommend you. They need other people vouching for you. We've written more about what information AI tools actually use to recommend businesses.
You're blocking AI crawlers
AI tools send bots to read your website, just like Google does. Many website platforms block these bots by default through the robots.txt file. If GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot are blocked, those AI tools literally cannot read your site. Check your robots.txt file (just add /robots.txt to the end of your website address) and see if any AI bots are disallowed.
Thin website content
A five page brochure site with a paragraph on each page doesn't give AI much to work with. AI tools need detailed, specific content to understand what you do, where you do it, and why someone should choose you. Service pages, location pages, case studies, and FAQs all help. We cover this in detail in our guide on things on your website that stop AI from citing you.
No schema markup
Schema markup is code that tells AI tools exactly what your business is. Your name, address, phone number, services, opening hours, review ratings. Without it, AI tools have to guess. With it, they know for certain. Most small business websites don't have schema markup, and adding it is one of the quickest wins in GEO.
What to do next
If you've followed the steps above, you now know exactly where you stand. That puts you ahead of most business owners who haven't even thought about this yet.
The manual checks above work, but they only give you a snapshot. If you want a more thorough picture, our free AI visibility scanner runs these checks automatically across all major AI platforms and gives you a clear report on where you stand and what to fix first.
If the results aren't what you hoped for, that's actually a good thing. It means there's a clear gap between you and your competitors that you can close. If you want to understand why this keeps happening, we've written a full breakdown of why your business doesn't show up on AI search.
And if you'd rather have someone sort it for you, get in touch. We'll run a full audit, show you exactly what's holding you back, and put together a plan to get you showing up where it matters.