AI visibility, explained one question at a time.
The questions local business owners are actually asking about AI recommendations — answered directly, with the reasoning behind each answer.
Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses, and how does it decide?
Yes — when someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation ("best plumber near me," "who should I use for X in [city]"), it draws on a mix of its training data, live web search results (when browsing is on)…
Why isn't my business showing up when someone asks AI for a recommendation?
Usually one of three things: your business doesn't appear consistently enough across the sources the AI is drawing from, a competitor is mentioned more often or more clearly in those same sources, or…
AI Overviews vs. Google Maps: which one actually drives customers to you?
Right now, both — but they work differently and can disagree with each other. Google Maps still runs on its own local ranking signals (proximity, reviews, categories, citations). Google's AI Overviews…
How to check if Perplexity, Gemini, or ChatGPT are recommending your competitors instead of you
Ask each assistant the exact question a customer would ask — not "tell me about [my business]," but "who's the best [service] in [city]" — and read the answer closely for who gets named, in what order…
What "AI visibility" means and why traditional SEO doesn't cover it
AI visibility is whether AI assistants — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — actually name your business when someone asks for a recommendation in your category. Traditional SEO measures whether you…
Do online reviews affect whether AI recommends a business?
Yes, meaningfully. AI assistants weigh review volume, recency, and sentiment as one of the clearer signals of whether a business is worth recommending — a business with a handful of old reviews reads…
How often do ChatGPT and Perplexity actually change their answers about local businesses?
More often than most people expect. Perplexity in particular re-indexes fresh web content within about a day, so a new review, a new blog mention, or a competitor's fresh content can shift its answers…
A simple monthly checklist for tracking your business's AI visibility
At minimum, once a month: ask each of the four major AI assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) the core question a customer would ask about your category and city, note whether you're mentio…
What happens when AI gets your business info wrong — and how to fix it
When an AI assistant states incorrect hours, an old address, a disconnected phone number, or services you no longer offer, it usually means the model is pulling from an outdated or inconsistent source…
Reddit and AI answers: why threads about your industry might be shaping what AI recommends
AI assistants — Perplexity especially — pull a large share of their citations from Reddit, because threads with real people answering real questions read as more trustworthy than marketing copy. If th…
Is AI visibility monitoring worth it for a small business?
It depends on how much of your customer acquisition already runs through search and recommendations, and how competitive your category is. If people in your market are the type to ask ChatGPT or searc…