Does ChatGPT mention your business? A ten-question check

Open ChatGPT and type the question a stranger would type if they needed what you sell. Then look at the answer. Is your business in it?

Either way, you'd rather know than guess. This is a rough check, and that's all it is. It isn't a ranking report. It won't give you a score, and it can't tell you why you appeared or didn't. What it gives you is a picture of how your business shows up when people ask questions in plain words. An hour is enough to get one.

Not your words. Theirs. The way someone types when they've got a problem and no idea what you'd call the solution.

Think about what customers actually say on the phone or in the first email. Then sort your ten into four types:

1. "Who is the best X in town?" The local, comparison-minded question. Use your real town or area.
2. "How much does X cost?" Price is a common first question, so check whether your own site answers it.
3. "How do I choose X?" The person is still deciding what kind of thing they need.
4. "What should I ask before hiring X?" The cautious buyer. They want to avoid being stung.

Aim for two or three of each. Write them down exactly as you'd type them, and don't tidy them up afterwards. The whole point is that you'll ask the same ten again next month.

Put every question into ChatGPT, then into Google. Same wording both times.

Google matters here for a reason. Google says the best practices for SEO remain relevant for its generative AI features, meaning AI Overviews and AI Mode. To be eligible as a supporting link, a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, and Google is clear that indexing and serving aren't guaranteed. My reading is that a page Google can't index has no route into those answers at all. That's a reading, not a promise.

For each question, note what you see. Don't judge yet. Just record it.

Make four columns. A plain spreadsheet or a sheet of paper both work.

Here's how to fill it in.

Question: the exact words you typed.

Did we appear? Yes, no, or sort of. "Sort of" is fine, and it happens. Maybe you were named but with the wrong detail, or linked but not described.

Who did? List the businesses or sites that were named. Competitors, directories, a local newspaper, a trade body. Whoever turned up.

What did they say that we don't? This is the column that earns its keep. Look at the answer and ask what it contained that your own website doesn't. A price range. A checklist. A plain explanation of how the job works. Write it down.

The last column is where the real work comes from. The first three just tell you where you stand.

Don't assume one answer is the answer. Run a question a second time and compare, and treat a single run as a single data point.

So look for patterns instead. If a competitor shows up in six of your ten questions, that's worth noticing. If you appear once, in one wording, on one day, treat it as a nice surprise and not a result. And if a certain kind of source keeps appearing, say comparison sites or local guides, that is worth noting as a place customers may be meeting your competitors.

It's untidy, but untidy and repeated beats tidy and guessed.

Before you blame your content, check something simpler. It's quick, and it's the sort of thing that goes wrong without anyone noticing.

OpenAI documents a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, which is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. Sites that opt out of it, in OpenAI's words, "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links." OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt file.

GPTBot is a separate setting. Allowing one doesn't decide the other, so check them as two different things.

If you change your robots.txt, expect to wait. Changes can take about 24 hours to be picked up. So don't rerun your test an hour later and conclude nothing happened.

If you don't touch your own website's files, send this to whoever does. It's a ten-minute question for them.

You'll find gaps. Everyone does. A question where you're absent, and a rival's answer that is clearly more useful than anything on your site.

The fix is dull and sensible: write the page that answers it. And fill it with specifics only you know. Your actual prices or price ranges, if you can share them. How long a job really takes. What goes wrong and how you handle it. What you'd want a customer to ask you before they hire you.

A page that could sit on any competitor's website adds little. A page that could only be yours is the better bet.

Then wait, and run the same ten questions next month. Same words, same order, same table. Add a new row of notes, not a new set of questions. Over a few months you'll see whether anything's moved. It may not have, and that's useful to know too.

One more thing. If you use Search Console, Google points site owners to its Generative AI performance report, which it says can give you an idea of how people are discovering your content through generative AI features on Google Search. It only covers Google, not ChatGPT, so it complements the table rather than replacing it.

1. Write your ten questions in customers' own words, covering all four types.
2. Run each in ChatGPT and in Google, and fill in the table as you go.
3. Check your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, and note GPTBot is a separate setting.
4. Pick the single biggest gap and start the page that answers it, with details only you can give.

It takes an hour, and you'll know more at the end of it than you did at the start.