How Do I Check Whether ChatGPT Mentions My Company? A Free Self-Audit

You can check this yourself in about an hour, for free. Pick the questions a buyer would ask, run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, and write down whether your company is named, who else is, and which pages get cited. That's the whole method. Here it is step by step.

Why a single search isn't enough

AI answers change from one run to the next, and they differ by engine and by wording. Asking once and seeing your name (or not) tells you very little. Asking the same questions a couple of times on each engine, and logging the results, gives you a baseline you can compare against later.

Step 1: Write 20 to 30 buyer questions

Think about what a customer types or says before hiring a business like yours. Mix three kinds:

Category questions: "best [your service] in [your city]", "who can help with [problem]".
Comparison and cost questions: "how much does [service] cost", "[option A] vs [option B]".
Educational questions: "what is [your topic]", "how do I choose a [your service] provider".

Use the words customers use, not your internal jargon.

Step 2: Run each question on three engines

Use ChatGPT (with search on), Perplexity, and Google (look at the AI Overview if one appears). Start a fresh chat for each run so earlier answers don't influence the next one. Run each question at least twice per engine.

Step 3: Log what you see

For every run, record:

Date	Engine	Question	Run	Named?	How (named, linked, or both)	Who else appeared	Sources cited

"Named" means your company appears in the answer text. "Cited" means one of your pages is linked as a source. They are not the same thing, and both matter.

Step 4: Read the pattern, not the single result

Look for these:

Questions where nobody relevant is named. Open ground. A clear, direct page on that question is a good place to start.
Questions where competitors are named. Open the pages being cited and see what they do that yours doesn't: a clearer answer, more detail, an independent mention.
Sources that keep repeating. If the same directory, publication or review site keeps getting cited, being listed or mentioned there is worth considering.
Engines that ignore you entirely. Check that your site isn't blocking their crawlers (for ChatGPT search, that's OAI-SearchBot) and that your pages show their text without JavaScript.

Step 5: Fix the basics, then re-check

The usual first fixes are free: allow the AI crawlers in robots.txt, put a plain answer in the first two sentences of key pages, keep your name, location and services identical everywhere you appear, and get mentioned by sources other than your own site. Then run the same questions again and compare against your first log. Results move at different speeds, so treat it as a trend rather than a one-time score.

What this won't tell you

A manual check is a sample, not a measurement of everything. Answers vary by account, location and the day. Use it to find direction, not to claim a precise number.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free way to see if ChatGPT recommends my business? Yes. Run your buyer questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google yourself, more than once each, and log the results as above.

How often should I re-check? Regularly, for example monthly, using the same questions so the results are comparable.

What if my company never appears? That's common and it's useful information. It shows which questions to write answer pages for and which outside sources to target.

Can someone do this for me? Yes. We run a free AI visibility check that does this for your category and emails you the results.