Short answer. Open ChatGPT in a Temporary Chat or a signed-out private window, make sure it searches the web, and ask the questions your customers would ask. Ask each one three to five times. Record whether you were named, whether your web address was given, who else was recommended, and which pages it cited.
More people now ask an AI assistant for a recommendation before they search. So it is reasonable to want to know: when someone asks ChatGPT for what you sell, does it mention you?
You can find out by hand in an hour or two. The catch is that a single answer tells you very little, and the way most people check (one question, in their own logged-in account) is the way most likely to mislead them. Here is a method that holds up.
Write the questions your customers would ask
Start with the question, not the keyword. People type to an AI the way they would talk to a well-informed friend: long, specific, and starting from their problem.
Compare these:
| Keyword-style | How people actually ask |
|---|---|
| bookkeeper Shopify | I sell on Shopify and my books are a mess. Who can do bookkeeping for a small online store? |
| running club Johannesburg | I've just moved to Johannesburg and want a friendly running club for beginners. Where should I start? |
| race tracking software | I organise a small trail race. How can people follow runners live without paying for timing chips? |
Write five to ten questions like the right-hand column. Include at least one that names a competitor ("What are good alternatives to X?") and one that asks for a comparison. Write them down, because you will ask exactly the same wording every time.
Use a clean session
Your own ChatGPT account knows things about you. It may remember your business, your past chats and your preferences, and that can shape what it recommends to you. That is not what a stranger sees.
Use one of these instead:
- Temporary Chat. OpenAI's Temporary Chat doesn't appear in your history, and ChatGPT won't remember it afterwards.
- Signed out, in a private window. ChatGPT search has been available without an account since early 2025.
Do the same on the other assistants: a private window, signed out where the product allows it.
Make sure the answer used the web
ChatGPT can answer from what it learned in training, or it can search the web first. According to OpenAI's help page on ChatGPT search, it searches automatically when a question might benefit from current information, and you can also choose search yourself before you ask. When it searches, the answer carries inline citations and a list of sources.
This matters for your check. If the answer shows no sources, it came from the model's memory, which may be months old. A business that launched or changed recently can be missing from memory but findable through search. For a "who should I use" question, you want the searched answer, because that is the one you can influence with your own pages.
The other assistants work the same way:
- Claude gained web search in 2025. Anthropic says Claude searches when it judges a search relevant, and attaches citations to what it found.
- Gemini decides for each prompt whether a Google search would improve the answer. Google's developer documentation notes that it doesn't search for every prompt.
- Perplexity shows numbered footnotes in its answers, each linking to a source.
- Google's AI Mode runs several related searches at once, which Google calls query fan-out, then combines the results.
Ask each question more than once
This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the one that matters most. AI answers are not fixed. Ask the same question twice and you will often get a different list.
When SparkToro and Gumshoe ran 12 recommendation prompts 2,961 times across ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI, ChatGPT and Google's AI gave the same list of brands in under 1% of repeated runs (Search Engine Journal, January 2026). A single answer that names you, or doesn't, is close to a coin toss on its own.
So ask each question at least three times, in a fresh temporary chat each time. Five is better. What you are measuring is how often you appear, not where you appeared once.
Record four things for every answer
For each run, write down:
- Named. Did the answer mention your business by name? Yes or no.
- Address given. Did it give your web address, as a link or written out? Being named without an address means the person still has to go and find you.
- Who else. The other businesses named, in the order they appeared.
- Sources. The pages the answer cited. Copy the URLs.
A simple spreadsheet works: one row per run, with columns for the question, the engine, the date, named, address given, who else, and sources. Paste the full answer into a last column. You will want it later, when an answer says something wrong about you.
After a round, your summary for one question might read: ChatGPT named us in 3 of 5 runs and gave our address in 2; Perplexity named us in 5 of 5; Gemini didn't name us at all, and recommended two competitors every time.
That summary is honest. "We're number one on ChatGPT" based on one screenshot is not.
Read the sources, not just the names
The sources column is where the useful work is. When an assistant recommends a competitor, look at the pages it read. Often it is a comparison article, a directory listing, a review site or the competitor's own page that answers the question directly.
That tells you what to do next. If every answer cites the same "best tools for X" article and you aren't in it, that article is your target. If the assistant cites your competitor's pricing page because yours doesn't state a price, publish your price. Each cited page is a clue about what the engine needed and couldn't find on your site.
Check you aren't blocking the search crawlers
If ChatGPT never cites any page from your site, check your robots.txt. OpenAI's search crawler is called OAI-SearchBot, and OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites that block it won't appear in ChatGPT search answers. Some security plugins and hosting defaults block AI crawlers without telling you.
The other engines have their own crawlers too. Unless you have a reason to block them, allow them.
Repeat on a schedule
One round gives you a baseline. The value comes from repeating the same questions, worded the same way, in the same clean setup, every week or so. Then a change in the numbers means the answers changed, not your method.
Be ready for the time it takes. Ten questions, four assistants and three runs each is 120 answers per round, each one read and logged by hand. Many people do this for a few weeks, learn a lot, and then either cut down to their three most important questions or hand it to a tool.
A short checklist
- Five to ten questions, written the way customers talk, saved word for word.
- Temporary Chat or a signed-out private window, never your own account.
- Check that the answer searched the web and shows sources.
- Three to five runs per question per assistant, each in a fresh chat.
- Log named, address given, who else, and sources, plus the full answer.
- Read the cited pages to see what the engine needed.
- Make sure OAI-SearchBot and the other search crawlers can reach your site.
- Repeat on a fixed schedule with the same wording.
Frequently asked questions
Can I check whether ChatGPT recommends my business for free?
Yes. You can ask ChatGPT by hand on a free plan, and ChatGPT search also works without an account. The cost is your time: ten questions asked three times each is thirty answers to read and log.
Why should I use a Temporary Chat instead of my own account?
Your own account may remember your business, your past chats and your preferences, which can shape what ChatGPT recommends to you. A Temporary Chat is not saved to your history and ChatGPT won't remember it afterwards, so it is closer to what a stranger sees.
How many times should I ask each question?
At least three times, and five is better, each in a fresh chat. In a SparkToro and Gumshoe study, ChatGPT returned the same list of brands in under 1% of repeated runs, so one answer on its own tells you very little.
What if ChatGPT never cites any page from my site?
Check your robots.txt. OpenAI's search crawler is OAI-SearchBot, and OpenAI says sites that block it won't appear in ChatGPT search answers. Some security plugins and hosting defaults block AI crawlers without telling you.