How to check whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude recommend your business
· 4 min read · MAALI team
When someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best bookkeeping service for small cafés?" or asks Perplexity "where can I buy linen bedding that lasts?", the answer names a handful of businesses. If yours isn't one of them, that customer may never visit your website at all.
You can find out where you stand in an afternoon. Here's a method that gives you results you can trust and compare over time.
1. Write down the questions your customers ask
Don't start with your own name. People who already know you don't need an assistant to find you. Write the questions a customer asks before they know you exist:
- "Best" questions: "best invoicing app for freelance designers", "best running shoes for flat feet".
- "Where" and "who" questions: "where to buy organic baby clothes online", "who does same-day boiler repair in Larkfield".
- Comparisons and alternatives: "Linen Lane vs Flax & Co", "alternatives to [the competitor everyone knows]".
- Problem-first questions: "how do I stop my shop's website from being slow", where your product is one good answer.
Ten questions is enough to start. Keep them specific and in your customers' words. Write them down: you'll ask the same ones every time, so changes mean something.
2. Ask them the way a stranger would
AI answers change with who's asking. To see what a new customer sees:
- Start a fresh chat for each question, without earlier messages about your business.
- Turn on web search where the assistant offers it, so the answer uses current pages.
- Don't add hints. Just the question. "Best linen bedding, I like Juniper & Pine" tells you nothing.
- Use the location your customers are in, especially for local questions. Results for "plumber near me" depend on where the assistant thinks you are.
Ask the same questions in each assistant your customers use. Today that usually means ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, plus Google's AI Overviews in normal search.
3. Record the same things every time
A simple spreadsheet works. For every question and every assistant, note:
| Column | What to write |
|---|---|
| Named? | Yes or no |
| Position | Your place in its list of recommendations (1st, 3rd, or "mentioned in passing") |
| Your site cited? | Did it link to your website? |
| Competitors named | Who it recommended instead, or as well |
| Sources | The websites it linked to |
| Accurate? | Is what it says about you right (prices, location, what you offer)? |
Two numbers then tell you most of what you need:
- Visibility: the share of answers that name you. Named in 6 of 40 answers is 15%.
- Share of voice: how often you're named compared with each competitor.
4. Read the sources
The sources column is the most useful part. They're the pages the assistant trusted for that question, which makes them your to-do list:
- Directories and review sites that list your competitors and not you: get listed, with complete and accurate details.
- "Best of" articles and gift guides that keep coming up: those writers might include you if you're a genuine fit.
- Competitors' own pages: look at what those pages say clearly that yours don't (prices, delivery, sizes, who it's for).
Our guide on why AI assistants recommend your competitors goes through how to read answers like a checklist.
5. Don't over-read one result
Ask the same question twice and you may get two different answers. That's normal. Treat one check as a snapshot:
- Look at patterns: being missing from every assistant on one question matters more than one missed answer.
- Check again monthly, with the same questions, and watch the trend.
- Note what you changed in between (a new comparison page, three new directory listings), so you can see what moved the numbers.
6. Check that assistants can read your site
If your site blocks AI crawlers, the assistants can't read your pages to recommend you, however good they are. Check your robots.txt for crawlers like OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot. Our guide to robots.txt and AI crawlers explains which to allow and which you can safely block. Schema markup also helps assistants get your name, address and offer right.
Where MAALI fits
Doing this by hand takes a few hours each time. MAALI's AI Visibility check does it for you: it suggests the questions from your MAALI Brain, asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude with web search on, records every column above, compares you with your competitors, lists the sites the assistants rely on, and turns it all into a short action plan. It also checks your robots.txt, structured data and llms.txt for free each time.
(The businesses in the examples are made up.)
Keep reading
AI assistants recommend businesses they find on directories, review sites and roundups. How to find the ones that matter, get listed honestly and stay accurate.
The seven most common reasons ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude name a competitor instead of you, how to spot each one, and the fix.
What generative engine optimization (GEO) means for a small business, how AI assistants decide what to recommend, and the practical steps that help.
People searching "X vs Y" are close to buying. How to write comparison pages that are fair, useful and rank, without trashing competitors.