How to Check What AI Search Tools Say About Your Business

You can check what AI engines say about your business right now, for free, in about fifteen minutes. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot in separate tabs, ask each one a set of specific questions about your business and your industry, and read the answers closely for accuracy, omission and outdated detail. There’s no tool to buy and no account needed. The value is in asking the right questions and knowing what to look for in the responses.

This matters because AI tools are increasingly where people start their search, particularly for local services like tradies, clinics and restaurants. Someone asking ChatGPT to recommend a plumber in Richmond gets an answer generated from whatever the AI can verify and trust about businesses in that area. If it can’t find or trust your business, you simply don’t exist in that answer, regardless of how good your work is.

Table of Contents

• What should you actually ask each AI tool?
• Which AI platforms are worth checking?
• How do you read the answers you get back?
• What does it mean if the AI gets something wrong or outdated?
• What should you do with what you find?

What should you actually ask each AI tool?

Vague prompts get vague results. Use specific, real-world phrasing that mirrors how a customer would actually ask.

Start with direct identity questions:

• “What can you tell me about [business name] in [suburb/city]?”
• “What services does [business name] offer?”
• “What are [business name]‘s opening hours and contact details?”

Then move to the questions that matter more, the ones where you’re competing for a mention rather than being asked about by name:

• “Who are the best [your trade/service] in [your suburb]?”
• “Recommend a [plumber/dentist/cafe] near [landmark or suburb].”
• “What should I look for when choosing a [your service type] in [your city]?”

Finally, test for accuracy and currency:

• “What are [business name]‘s reviews like?”
• “Has [business name] won any awards or certifications?”
• “Is [business name] still operating?”

This last set catches the most damaging problems: AI tools working from stale data, a defunct competitor, or a business that’s moved locations two years ago.

Which AI platforms are worth checking?

Not all AI tools pull information the same way, so testing across a few is more revealing than relying on one.

ChatGPT (with browsing enabled, using GPT-4 or later) blends its training data with live web results. It’s worth checking because it’s currently the most widely used conversational AI, and answers can vary depending on whether a plan has real-time search switched on.

Google Gemini draws heavily on Google’s existing index, including Google Business Profile data, reviews and structured data on your site. If your Google Business Profile is inconsistent or thin, it tends to show here first.

Perplexity is built around citing live sources and often shows you exactly which web pages it pulled an answer from. This makes it the most useful tool for diagnosing why an answer is wrong, because you can click through and see the source.

Microsoft Copilot runs on Bing’s index, which behaves differently to Google’s. Businesses that rank well in Google but poorly in Bing sometimes get a nastier surprise here.

If you only have time for two, ChatGPT and Perplexity currently give the broadest picture, since one shows conversational output and the other shows sourcing.

How do you read the answers you get back?

This is where most people stop too early. Getting an answer isn’t the same as getting a correct one. Work through each response against three checks.

Is it accurate? Compare every detail (address, phone number, hours, services, pricing) against what’s actually true today. AI tools frequently repeat outdated information from old directory listings, a previous business name, or a superseded website.

Is it complete? Note what’s missing as much as what’s wrong. If an AI tool can describe your main competitor in detail but only gives a one-line, generic answer about you, that’s a visibility gap, not necessarily a factual error.

Are you mentioned at all in the category questions? This is the real test. Being findable when someone searches your exact business name is table stakes. Being recommended when someone asks a generic question about your trade or suburb is what actually drives new enquiries. If you never appear in the “who’s the best” style questions, that’s the gap worth solving first.

What does it mean if the AI gets something wrong or outdated?

An incorrect or outdated AI answer usually points to a specific, fixable cause rather than bad luck. In our audit work, three signals repeatedly explain this: inconsistent name, address and phone details across your website and directories (NAP consistency), missing or invalid structured data (schema markup) on your website that would otherwise tell AI systems clearly what you do and where, and a lack of content on your own site that directly answers the questions customers are asking. Without these, AI tools have little reliable material to draw from, so they either fall back on old data, misattribute details from a similarly named business, or omit you altogether. It’s rarely about the quality of your work; it’s about whether the AI has anything trustworthy and current to cite.

What should you do with what you find?

Write down what each tool got right, wrong, and left out. Patterns matter more than single mistakes. If every platform has your old address, that’s a directory consistency problem. If you’re absent from every “best of” style question but competitors appear repeatedly, that points to weak entity signals and thin answer-focused content rather than a technical error.

From there, you can fix the obvious errors yourself, such as updating your Google Business Profile and correcting directory listings, since those are usually within your control. For the structural issues, like schema markup and answer-first content, a proper audit (RankMeFirst.ai’s free GEO audit checks six of these signals, including AI citation readiness and entity strength) can show you exactly what’s missing before you spend money fixing it.

This DIY check won’t solve the problem, but it will tell you, with certainty, whether you have one worth solving.