How to Check If AI Recommends Your Business (Free)

A few days ago I asked ChatGPT to recommend a provider in a category I work in every day. It gave me three names, each with a tidy one-line reason. The business that's held the #1 spot on Google for that search for years? Not one of them. As far as ChatGPT was concerned, it didn't exist.

That's the part that should worry you. When someone asks AI for a recommendation, they don't get ten blue links to weigh up. They get a short list, usually three names, and they pick from it. Miss the list and there's no second chance. The customer never even learns you were an option.

So here's the question worth answering today: does AI recommend your business, or is it quietly handing your customers to competitors? You can find out in a few minutes. Below I'll walk through how to check by hand, what a real check actually measures, and which fixes move the needle.

The short answer: to check if AI recommends your business, ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity the questions your customers ask, like "recommend a [category] in [city]," and note whether you get named or a competitor does. For a scored version you can repeat, run a free AI visibility scan that runs the check across all seven AI engines in about three minutes.

Why ranking #1 on Google doesn't mean AI recommends you

You'd think years of SEO work would carry over. It mostly doesn't, and the reason is structural.

Google is a directory. It ranks your page and sends the visitor to your site to make up their own mind. AI is an answer. It doesn't forward anyone anywhere. It names a couple of businesses it feels sure about and moves on. To be one of those names you need things Google never cared much about: a clear sense of what your business is, content that's easy to quote, structured data, and mentions on the sources the model already trusts. A page can own position one and still be invisible to ChatGPT, because none of the signals that got it there are the ones AI reads.

I went deep on the mechanism in Why Your Google Rankings Don't Transfer to AI Search. If "GEO" is a new term for you, What is GEO? covers the groundwork.

How to check your AI visibility by hand (5 prompts)

You can run a rough check yourself right now, free, in any AI tool. Open ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and run the five prompts below in each one. One rule: never mention your own business name. The whole point is to see who the model brings up on its own.

1. "Recommend a [category] in [city]"

This is the prompt that matters most, because it's almost word for word how a real customer asks. "Recommend a wedding photographer in Austin." "Recommend a tax accountant in Leeds." Are you anywhere in the answer?

2. "What's the best [product/service] for [audience]?"

The category test, with no location attached. "What's the best project management tool for small agencies?" If you show up locally but disappear here, your visibility is thinner than it looks.

3. "[Your business] vs [a competitor]"

The recognition test. "Acme Studio vs Bright Photography, which is better?" If the model shrugs and says it doesn't know your business, that's an entity problem: it can't pin down what you are, so it won't put its name on recommending you.

4. "Who are the top [category] providers?"

The competitor test. Whoever the AI lists here is who it's recommending instead of you. Save that list. It's your real competitive set in AI search, and I'd bet at least one name on it surprises you.

5. Write down what you find

For every prompt on every platform, note three things: whether you were mentioned, how the AI described you, and which competitors came up. A plain grid in a notes app does the job.

Now the honest part. This works as a gut check, but it isn't a measurement. AI answers wobble. Ask the identical question an hour later and the names move around. To get anything reliable you'd run all five prompts across three platforms, a few times each, and at the end you'd still have a stack of notes and no score, no priority, no real sense of what to fix first.

That gap is exactly what a scan closes. Run a free scan and it fires these prompts across all seven major AI engines for you (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and Mistral), folds the results into one score out of 100, and lists the exact competitors AI names in your place. Three minutes, no signup, nothing to install.

What a real AI-visibility check measures

Testing by hand tells you whether you show up. A proper check tells you why, and what to do about it. Here's everything a free scan pulls together for your site:

• Mentioned, yes or no. A straight answer for each engine, led by the three that drive roughly 95% of AI search (ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity) and extended to Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and Mistral.
• Your GEO Score, out of 100. One weighted number you can track month to month, instead of squinting at a folder of screenshots.
• Who AI recommends instead. The competitors the model names in your place. Wondering why them and not you? That's how ChatGPT decides what to recommend.
• Every issue, ranked by severity. Critical down to low, so you spend your time on what's actually costing you mentions, not the cosmetic stuff.
• Citability. How easy your pages are to quote, scored on five things: answer quality, self-containment, structure, fact density, and uniqueness. Models lift the content that already reads like an answer.

How to read your GEO Score

Got a number back? Here's what it's telling you.

• Under 40, you're invisible. AI doesn't reliably name you. Everyone asking it for a recommendation in your category is hearing about someone else.
• 40 to 69, you're partway there. You turn up on some platforms or some queries and miss on others. There's a gap, and a competitor is sitting in it.
• 70 and up, you're in good shape. AI knows you and recommends you with some confidence. The work now is holding that spot as the models keep getting retrained.

A low number isn't bad news so much as a starting point. So let's talk about fixes.

What to fix first

You don't have to do everything at once, and you shouldn't try. Work top to bottom. These are in rough order of payoff.

1. Become a clear entity. Pick one canonical business name and use it everywhere, paired with a one-line description built around the term your customers actually search. "AI visibility tool for small businesses" beats "next-generation growth partner" every time. If the model can't say plainly what you are, it won't risk recommending you. The full treatment is in How to Get Mentioned by ChatGPT.

2. Add the structured data AI reads. Organization, Service, and FAQ schema hand the crawlers a clean, machine-readable version of your business. While you're in there, add an llms.txt file. It's half a day of work that gives AI a guided map of your best pages.

3. Get cited where AI looks. Directories, "best of" roundups, and the review sites in your niche are the sources these models lean on. Breadth wins: the more credible places that mention you, the more often you get recommended. It's the single strongest predictor I've watched play out.

Run a local business? There's a tighter playbook for that in How ChatGPT recommends local businesses.

Your free scan already flags every one of these issues by severity and shows you who's beating you. When you're ready to act on it, the full report ($99, one-time) opens up every fix with step-by-step instructions, the complete competitor breakdown, your five-dimension citability scoring, and a PDF you can hand straight to a developer. Prefer to run it monthly and watch the trend as you ship changes? Pro ($49/mo) gets you unlimited re-scans. Both are right here, though plenty of people get what they need from the free action plan and stop there.

Check it monthly, not once

AI visibility is a moving target. Models get retrained, competitors raise their game, new platforms launch. What's true this quarter can quietly shift by the next. Say you drop off ChatGPT but hold your spot in Perplexity. That one fact tells you exactly where to look.

So treat it like a habit, not a one-off audit. Re-check on a schedule and watch the direction of travel, not just the snapshot. If you want continuous monitoring rather than a periodic scan, I lined up the major tools, pricing and all, in Best GEO tools 2026. Wherever you land, the easiest place to start is the same.

Run your free scan now and see your GEO score, plus the competitors AI is recommending instead of you, across every engine it checks. Save your results with your email to unlock the full report. Check my AI visibility →

Frequently asked questions

How do I check if ChatGPT recommends my business?

Ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, like "recommend a [category] in [city]" or "what's the best [service] for [audience]," and note whether your name appears and which competitors show up instead. Repeat across Gemini and Perplexity, since each pulls from different data. For a scored, repeatable version, AskMention's free scan runs these prompts across all seven major AI engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and Mistral) and returns a GEO score out of 100 in about three minutes.

Is the AI visibility scan really free?

Yes. The scan checks all seven major AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and Mistral), returns your GEO score, the AI platforms that mention you, the competitors AI recommends instead, and your top issues, with no signup required. Saving your results and unlocking every fix with step-by-step instructions is the paid report.

Which AI platforms should I check for my business?

ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity cover roughly 95% of AI search today, so start there. Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, and Mistral make up most of the rest. Visibility varies by platform because each draws from different sources, so check across all of them rather than assuming one result speaks for the rest. AskMention's free scan covers all seven.

Why does my business rank on Google but not show up in AI answers?

Google rewards keywords and backlinks; AI engines reward entity clarity, citability, structured data, and mentions on the sources they trust. A page can rank #1 and still be invisible to ChatGPT because those signals are different. A scan shows which of them you're missing.

Related reading

• Why your Google rankings don't transfer to AI search. Why SEO wins don't carry over, and what AI actually values instead.
• How to get mentioned by ChatGPT: 7-step GEO playbook. The full step-by-step once your scan shows where the gaps are.
• How ChatGPT decides which businesses to recommend. The factors behind which names AI hands the customer.
• What is GEO? A guide to Generative Engine Optimization. The fundamentals behind everything above.
• Best GEO tools 2026: 15 AI visibility tools compared. Pricing, coverage, and features for ongoing monitoring.