A growing share of people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity to recommend a business before they ever open a search engine. If someone asks for the best option in your area or category and your business is not named, you are losing enquiries you never see. The good news is that you can check exactly what these tools say about you, and there are concrete steps to improve it. Here is how.
People increasingly ask an assistant, or a search box, for a local recommendation, and the demand is enormous. These are real monthly US search volumes from DataForSEO.
| Query | Monthly US searches |
|---|---|
| best roofers near me | 9,900 |
| best roofing company near me | 8,100 |
| roofers austin | 2,900 |
When the assistant answers, it builds its short list from the wider web, not from your website. Those sources are concentrated, and community content leads.
Share of AI citations
Most-cited domains in AI answers
Why this matters now
When a person asks an AI assistant for a recommendation, they usually get a short list of a few names, not a page of ten links. You are either in that short list or you are invisible, and there is no scrolling to page two. For local and service businesses especially, being one of the handful the assistant names is close to the whole game.
How to check what ChatGPT says about your business
You can do this yourself in a few minutes. Ask each assistant the way a customer would: a request for the best provider in your category and city, a question about who to hire for a specific job, a comparison of local options. Note whether your business is named, how it is described, and who appears instead. Repeat across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, since they differ, and run each question more than once because answers vary. The free AI visibility check runs this across every model for you.
Why your business might be missing
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The assistants build recommendations from what the wider web says about you: reviews, directories, local roundups and community discussion, not from your own website alone. If your business has thin or inconsistent presence in those places, the model has little to work with. A newer or under-reviewed business is often simply absent from the sources the assistant reads. The fuller version of this is in why your brand isn't showing up in ChatGPT.
What actually helps
For a local or service business, the useful moves are concrete. Keep your name, category and location described consistently everywhere, across your listings, directories and profiles. Earn genuine reviews on the platforms that matter in your category. Get included in local or category roundups and comparisons. And make sure your own site answers, in plain language, the specific questions customers ask. These are the signals the assistants read before they name anyone.
What does not help
Do not waste effort on tricks. Stuffing keywords into your site, spinning up thin pages, or trying to game the assistant with fake reviews does not work and can backfire. The assistants reward a genuine, consistent footprint, not manipulation, and review platforms and search engines are increasingly good at catching the fakes.
Track it over time
Check once and you have a snapshot. Check on a schedule and you can see whether your efforts are moving the needle. Expect the answers to vary between sessions and to shift as models update, so judge the trend rather than a single reply. What AI visibility is explains how to read it.
Start with a check
You cannot improve what you have not measured. Run your business through the free AI visibility check, see which assistants name you and which do not, and use that as your baseline.
