Free tools, properly used · 2 min
Does ChatGPT recommend your business?
A growing share of 'where should I go for X' questions are asked to AI assistants instead of search engines. The answers come from what the models know — and for most small businesses, nobody has ever checked.
Free tools, properly used · Updated 24 September 2026
The new gatekeeper
For two decades, being findable meant Google. That hasn't stopped mattering, but now there's another gatekeeper. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or their phone's assistant for 'a good accountant near Guildford' or 'who makes wedding cakes locally', the assistant answers based on what it knows about businesses. It can't recommend what it hasn't heard of and sometimes describes businesses wrongly with confidence.
The unsettling part isn't that this is happening—it's that it's invisible. A business loses these referrals silently. There's no analytics dashboard for 'times an AI didn't mention you'. The only way to know where you stand is to ask the models, which is exactly what our checker does.
What actually moves AI visibility
Clear, factual text on your own site
Models learn from the readable web. A site that says in plain words what you do, where, and for whom is legible to machines for the same reason it's persuasive to humans. Image-only sites and vague slogans are invisible twice.
Consistency across the public record
Your name, location and trade appearing the same way across your site, directories, review platforms and the public registers gives models corroboration. Contradictions produce either silence or confident errors.
Reviews and being written about. Third-party text about you
Local press, supplier pages, genuine reviews — is exactly the material models weigh. This was always worth having; now it has a second audience.
Time and repetition, honestly stated
Models retrain on schedules you don't control. Fixes propagate over months, not days — a reason to start, not to wait.
What's snake oil
If someone promises to place you in AI answers, they're offering something impossible. There are no paid slots in a model's memory, no submission forms, and no secret tags. Industry terms like GEO and AEO are about honest website work for new readers, not tricks. The check is free, and the fixes improve your site for people, not slogans. If a vendor relies on mystery, that's their product.
Run the checker below. If models know you and describe you well, you've only spent a minute. If they don't, you've found a gap. Fixes are straightforward and easy to list. Members on the Radar tier get this checked monthly, as answers change with model updates.
Free tool · runs right here
AI-visibility check
Find out whether ChatGPT and the other AI models know your business exists — asked cold, with no hints.
No sign-up · instant · it’s me that runs it — the same tool, live on this site.
We ask real AI models about your business, cold — no hints — and show you exactly what came back: known, unknown, or wrong.
Check my AI visibility free →Prefer to just ask? Chat with Katalis · More from the blog