Check what AI says about your business

You can see what ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI answers say about your business in under an hour, for free. This guide gives the method AI SEO Vancouver uses, simplified for one person.

Why check AI answers yourself

Checking AI answers yourself shows what a customer sees when they ask an AI tool about your kind of business, in your area. Website analytics only record the people who click through, so they can't show you what the answer itself said.

You need a laptop or phone, a spreadsheet, and access to each tool you want to check. ChatGPT search works without signing in, according to OpenAI. Nothing here needs technical skill.

The free snapshot from AI SEO Vancouver runs the same kind of check for you. This guide exists so you can do it without us.

Six steps to check AI answers

Six steps take most owners under an hour the first time. The order matters, because the list of questions from step 1 is what makes later checks comparable.

1. Write your questions

   Write 5 to 10 questions a customer would really ask, in their words. Mix "best plumber in Burnaby" types with questions about your business by name.

2. Pick your tools

   Choose the AI tools to check. We suggest ChatGPT, Gemini, and a normal Google search to catch both of Google's AI formats.

3. Start clean

   Use a private browser window or log out, and turn off chat memory, so your past chats don't shape the answer you get.

4. Ask each question once

   Paste each question as written, word for word. Don't add follow-ups yet. A customer usually reads the first answer and stops.

5. Save the whole answer

   Copy the full answer text and every link or source it shows into your sheet. A screenshot helps too, but text is easier to compare.

6. Note the details

   Write the date, the tool, whether you were signed in, and the city you searched from. Answers change with each of these.

Why your location changes answers

AI tools change local answers based on where they think you are. OpenAI says ChatGPT estimates a rough location from the user's IP address and can add a city to the search it runs, and Google says its results depend on time, place and device.

So if you test from your shop in Langley, you'll see Langley answers. To see what a customer in Vancouver sees, put the city in the question itself, for example "best roofer in Vancouver", rather than "near me".

OpenAI Help Center, "Searching the web with ChatGPT" (page carries no date). Google Search Console Help, "Performance report (Search results): Overview and basic setup" (no date). Both read 2026-10-08.

What to record for each answer

A simple sheet with one row per question per tool is enough to spot a change next month. These are the columns AI SEO Vancouver's own tracker keeps, simplified.

Date, tool, question

When you asked, which tool, and the exact question text. Without these, next month's row can't be compared.

Named?

Yes or no: does the answer mention your business, including short forms of your name?

Cited?

Yes or no: does it link to your website or a page about you? Being named and being linked are different results.

Who else

Every competitor named, in order. This shows who currently holds the answers you want.

Sources used

Each website the answer cites. If the same directory or review site keeps appearing, check that your listing there is right.

Facts it got wrong

Any wrong phone number, address, hours or service. These are the most fixable problems you'll find.

How to read what you found

One answer on its own means little, because AI tools can give a different answer to the same question minutes later. Look for patterns across questions and tools rather than reacting to one reply.

Wrong facts are the first thing to fix. They usually come from an old page, a listing you forgot about, or a Google Business Profile that doesn't match your site. OpenAI's help page warns that its search results "can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect", so check the cited source before assuming the tool made it up.

If competitors are named and you aren't, look at the sites the answers cite. Those pages are what the tool read, and they show what kind of content gets used for your questions.

How Google AI Overviews choose which sites to link. How ChatGPT search finds local businesses.

OpenAI Help Center, "Searching the web with ChatGPT" (page carries no date), read 2026-10-08.

What we do about it

AI SEO Vancouver runs this same check every month for clients, across five AI tools, with a fixed question list and every answer stored. Then we fix what the check finds: wrong facts, missing pages and technical gaps.

How answer engine optimization works.

What we won't promise

Doing this check, or paying AI SEO Vancouver to do it, doesn't change what the AI tools say by itself. It shows you where you stand.

• That your results will match ours. The same question can get a different answer for a different person, place or day.
• That a fix shows up at a set time. Google says it can take days or months before it recrawls a changed page.
• That any tool can see inside the AI systems. Google says no outside tool can see its internal ranking, and that includes ours.

Google Search Central, "AI features and your website", last updated 2025-12-10, and "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search", last updated 2026-07-10. Both read 2026-10-08.

How we check, as of October 2026

AI SEO Vancouver's tracker puts each agreed question to five AI tools: ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini and Claude. It saves the full answer and each cited link with its position, detects common variants of the business name, and lists competitors and the most-cited sites.

The difference from this guide is scale and consistency: the same questions, asked identically each month, so changes can be dated. How we measure.