Does ChatGPT Recommend Your Business? A 20-Minute Check for NZ Women Business Owners
Short answer: you can find out in about 20 minutes. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google five set questions about your business, ask each one twice, and write down whether you are named, whether the details are right, and who gets recommended instead. You end up with a plain-English list of what to fix first.
If you have ever wondered what happens when a potential client asks AI for a recommendation in your area, this is how you stop wondering. You do not need to buy a tool or know anything technical. You need a notebook or a Google Doc, three browser tabs and a cuppa.
This post takes the "test what AI says about you" step from our guide to getting your business found by AI and walks through it properly. You can run the check before you read the guide, then decide what to fix.
Why check what AI says about your business?
Most of us think we look better online than our customers find us. A Thryv report suggests this is true in New Zealand. Thryv's 2025 Business Index and Consumer Report, covered by IT Brief New Zealand in July 2026, found that 75 per cent of the NZ businesses surveyed believed they had a strong digital profile, while 52 per cent of NZ consumers agreed that businesses did. The same report found 56 per cent of NZ small and medium businesses use AI. IT Brief does not give the sample size or method, so I would treat these as a direction, not a precise measure.
AI tools are now one more reader of your online presence, and they say what they found out loud. Thryv's Rob Hayden puts it this way: "In the AI era, uncertainty is expensive." If your details disagree from one place to the next, an AI tool has less reason to name you.
You do not have to guess how you look to it. You can ask.
What do you need before you start?
Set aside 20 minutes and have these ready:
- Three tools: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google. The free versions are enough to start. On Google, look for the AI Overview at the top of the results.
- A private or logged-out window: tools can tailor answers to your history, and you want the view a stranger gets.
- A simple log: one row per question, one column per tool. Write down what was said, not what you hoped it would say.
- A second go at every question: answers can change from one ask to the next, so ask each one twice.
What are the five questions to ask?
Swap the brackets for your own details and use NZ place names. As an example, a bookkeeper in Hamilton might ask "Who are the best bookkeepers for small service businesses in Hamilton?"
| Check | Example question | What you are looking for |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Name check | "Who is [your business name] in [your city] and what do they do?" | Does it know you exist? Are your services, location and customers described correctly? |
| 2. Category check | "Who are the best [what you do] for [your type of customer] in New Zealand?" | Are you named at all? Who is named instead? |
| 3. Problem check | "How do I [a problem your customer has] and who can help in NZ?" | When a customer does not know your name yet, do you appear? |
| 4. Comparison check | "[Your business] vs [a competitor you are often compared with]: which suits [customer type]?" | How are you described next to them? |
| 5. Trust check | "Is [your business] any good? What do clients say?" | What it says about reviews, and anything out of date or wrong. |
Question 3 matters most. Most new customers do not search for you by name. They search for the problem you solve.
How do you score what you find?
For each question and each tool, mark one of three results:
- Named and right: it mentions you and the details are correct.
- Named but wrong or thin: it mentions you, but the details are old, mixed up or vague.
- Not named: you are missing from the answer.
Count up the marks at the end. The total is not the point. The pattern is. Being named on question 1 but missing on questions 2 and 3 tells you something very different from being missing everywhere.
What should you fix first?
Match your result to the fix.
If you are named but the details are wrong. Fix consistency first. Pick one exact version of your business name, address, services and service area, and make your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Facebook and any directories match it. Perplexity shows the sources behind its answers, and ChatGPT and Google often do too, so open them and find where the wrong detail came from.
If question 1 works but questions 2 and 3 do not. You are known by name but not linked to the problem you solve. Write a page or an FAQ answer that responds to question 3 in plain language, with the answer near the top. Use the words a customer would type, not your industry's words.
If you are not named anywhere. Start with the basics. Make sure one page says exactly what you do, who for and where. Complete your Google Business Profile. Then ask a few of your best clients for a Google review this month. The full guide covers all six steps.
If a competitor is named and you are not. Open the page the AI cited and read what it says. Do not copy it. Look for what they state clearly that you leave implied, and say yours more plainly.
If the trust check comes back thin. Look at your reviews. Hayden advises asking for specific feedback instead of generic reviews, and I agree. A review that says what you did, for whom, and what changed gives an AI tool far more to work with than "great service, thanks".
How often should you repeat the check?
Once a month, with the same questions and the same log. Answers move around, so a trend over a few months tells you more than any single result. If you make a fix, give it a few weeks before you judge it.
What can this check not tell you?
It is not a ranking report. Five questions are a small sample, answers vary, and it will not tell you how many customers found you through AI. What it does tell you is whether you appear, and whether you are described accurately, on the questions your customers are likely to ask. For most businesses, that is the information that has been missing.
Where re:ampd fits
At re:ampd we help established New Zealand women business owners use AI with confidence, without the hype. re:ampd is a Claude Partner, and our job is to make AI practical for capable people who are busy running a business.
If you run the check and find you are missing, that is common and fixable. If you would rather work through it with someone beside you, have a look at our AI implementation support or the AI Masterclass series.
Sources
- IT Brief New Zealand, article on AI search and how small businesses are found online, 17 July 2026 (itbrief.co.nz/story/ai-search-shift-forces-smbs-to-rethink-online-discovery), reporting Thryv's 2025 Business Index and Consumer Report
How do I check if ChatGPT recommends my business?
Ask ChatGPT five questions: who your business is, who the best providers in your category are, how to solve a problem your customer has, how you compare with a competitor, and whether you are any good. Ask each twice, note whether you are named and whether the details are right, then repeat on Perplexity and Google.
Why does AI give different answers when I ask the same question twice?
Answers can change from one ask to the next. That is why this check asks every question twice and repeats monthly, so you are looking at a pattern, not a single result.
Do I need to pay for ChatGPT or Perplexity to run this check?
No. The free versions are enough to start. What matters is that you ask the same questions in the same way each month and keep a record of the answers.
What if AI says something wrong about my business?
Find where the wrong detail came from. Perplexity shows its sources, and ChatGPT and Google often do too. Then correct your own website and profiles so they all say the same thing, and check again in a few weeks.
How is this different from checking my Google ranking?
A Google ranking shows where your page sits in a list of links. This check shows whether you are named inside the written answer an AI tool gives, and whether that answer is accurate.
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