A customer in Bradenton whose AC just died, or an owner in Tampa looking for a new CPA, may never open a list of ten blue links. They ask ChatGPT, or read the AI summary Google puts above the results, and call whoever is named. If that answer doesn't include you, you never hear about the call you lost.
Checking costs nothing. The honest part: nobody, including us, can guarantee an AI tool will name your business. This guide shows you where you stand and which fixes are in your control.
Step 1: Ask the question your customer would ask
Don't search for your own business name. A tool that has seen your website knows who you are; that tells you very little. Ask what a stranger would ask, in their words. Write down five questions first. For a Sarasota plumbing company:
- “Best plumber in Sarasota for a water heater replacement”
- “Emergency plumber near Lakewood Ranch”
- “Who can fix a slab leak in Bradenton”
- “Plumber in Venice FL with good reviews”
- “How much does it cost to repipe a house in Florida”
Mix the kinds of question: “best X in town”, “emergency X near [neighborhood]”, a specific job, and one price question. Different questions pull in different sources.
Step 2: Check ChatGPT
- Open ChatGPT in a private or logged-out window, so your own history doesn't shape the answer.
- Ask your first question. If it doesn't search on its own, add “search the web for this”.
- Write down which businesses are named, in what order, and which websites or directories are cited.
- Ask again in a new chat. Answers vary between runs, so one result is a snapshot, not a verdict.
You're looking for more than “am I in the answer”: who is, and where the tool learned it. The cited sources show which sites it reads in your market. For local trades that's often directories and review sites as well as company websites.
ChatGPT's search uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, and OpenAI states that “sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”. That's one of the few things in this area a vendor states plainly, and it's a robots.txt setting on your own site.
Step 3: Check Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode
- Search each question on Google in a private window.
- Look for the AI Overview at the top. It doesn't appear for every search, so note when it doesn't.
- Try AI Mode, if you have it, with the same question.
- Scroll the map pack and regular results. Note whether you appear, and what the top three businesses have that you don't: more reviews, owner replies, photos, services listed.
Google's documentation is direct: “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.” A page has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, indexing and serving aren't guaranteed, and there's no special schema.org markup you must add. Anyone selling a secret formula for AI Overviews is guessing.
For local businesses, the Google Business Profile does much of the work. Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking.” It also says: “There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”
Step 4: Check Perplexity
Perplexity needs no account. Ask the same questions and read the sources listed beside each answer. Its search crawler, PerplexityBot, is “designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity”, and you can allow or block it in robots.txt. Anthropic documents a similar set for Claude, and notes that blocking its search crawler may reduce a site's visibility in Claude's search results.
Step 5: Put the results in a table
Five questions down the side; ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Google map pack and Perplexity across the top. In each cell write “named”, “not named” or “n/a”, and date it. Repeat 30 days after any changes. That table is your baseline, and it's more useful than any score a tool gives you, because it uses your customers' questions.
How to read what you find
Named in some, not others. Normal. Look at which sources are cited where you are named: those pages and directories carry your reputation.
Not named anywhere, but competitors are. Compare their websites with yours. Do they have a page for the specific service and town? Hours, services and license information as plain text? More reviews, with replies?
Named, but with wrong information. Old phone number, wrong hours, a closed location. Engines repeat what your website and directories disagree about. Fix the source, then wait: OpenAI and Perplexity both say robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to take effect, and re-reading your content takes longer.
What you can fix yourself
In the order we'd do them:
- Make sure you aren't blocking the crawlers. Open yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. “Disallow: /” under OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot asks those engines to stay out. Old templates sometimes do this without anyone knowing.
- Give each service and town its own page, in plain sentences: what you do, who it's for, where you work, what a first visit involves.
- Make your business details match everywhere. Same name, address and phone on your website, Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp and the BBB. schema.org business markup helps engines read those details; it isn't required for Google's AI features, so treat it as housekeeping, not a trick.
- Answer buyer questions on the page as short questions and answers: how much, how long, what to bring, do you serve my area.
- Keep your Google Business Profile complete and reply to reviews. Services, hours, photos, the right category, an owner reply to each review. If this is where you're weakest, our Google Profile Fix is $299 one time, about five business days. For healthcare and law-firm replies, never confirm someone is a client or patient.
- Consider an llms.txt file, but don't count on it. It's a plain-text summary of your business for AI tools, proposed by Jeremy Howard in September 2024. The proposal names no AI engine that formally supports it, and Google says you don't need AI text files for its features. We publish one because it costs little, and we don't claim it helps anyone rank.
Where a scanner fits
Everything above checks what the AI tools say. The mechanical part, easy to miss by eye, is whether your own website makes their job easy: crawler rules, business markup, title and description, sitemap, mobile layout, plain-language content and a consistent name, address and phone. Our free AI visibility scan checks these in a few seconds, with no signup, and gives each a pass, warning or fail with a one-line fix.
What it isn't: it reads your website, not ChatGPT or Google, so it doesn't tell you who the tools will name. Use the manual check above for that, or ask for our free full check, which looks at the live AI answers for your town and arrives by email within two business days.
If the scan or your own check turns up a lot of work, the AI Search Visibility Fix is $595 one time, done in 10 business days, with the same searches re-run 30 days later. It doesn't guarantee an AI mention or a ranking. Nobody honestly can.
Visibility checks by trade: dentists, medical practices, law firms, insurance agencies, CPA firms and home service companies.
Questions
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
Not in the answers described here. For Google's local results, Google states there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. We know of no honest way to buy a place in organic AI answers, and we don't sell one.
Is my business on ChatGPT if it knows my name?
Not necessarily. A tool that has read your website can describe you when asked by name. What matters is whether it names you when a stranger asks for a service in your town, so test with the customer's question.
Do I need to block or allow AI crawlers?
If you want to appear in ChatGPT search, Perplexity or Claude's search results, don't block their search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot). Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot is a separate choice about whether your content is used for training.
Does schema markup get me into AI Overviews?
Google says no special schema.org markup is needed. Markup helps engines read your business details and is worth doing correctly, but it isn't an on-switch.
What does a free check from Advance AI include?
The instant website scan, and on request a written full check by email within two business days, from public information only: the live AI answers for your service and town, your Google profile, your listings and the three fixes we'd make first. No logins, no obligation.
Next step
Scan your website free, or book a free audit and Pankaj will run the AI questions for your town with you.