Does AI Recommend Your Business? How to Check in Your Own Town
The quickest way to answer "does AI recommend my business" is to ask an AI engine what one of your customers would ask: your service plus your town. If your business is in the answer, AI recommended you for that question on that day. If it isn't, it named somebody else, and now you know who.
You can run this check yourself in one sitting. Ask the same four questions on each of the five AI engines a customer can ask, which are ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. That's 20 checks, and you write down who each one named.
What should you ask?
Ask the question a customer would type, with your service and your town in it. Leave your business name out. Someone looking for a groomer doesn't know your name yet, so a question that includes it can't tell you whether AI would send them to you.
Say you run a dog grooming shop in Manchester. Questions like these work:
- Who's the best dog groomer in Manchester?
- Can you recommend a dog groomer in Manchester who's open on Saturdays?
- I need an affordable dog groomer in Manchester for a nervous dog. Who should I try?
- Which dog groomers in Manchester do hand stripping?
Put the town into every question and skip "near me". You want the answer a customer anywhere in town would get, not the one for the street you're standing on.
What AI says when someone already knows your name is a separate check. That one's covered in how to track AI mentions of your brand.
Does ChatGPT recommend local businesses?
Yes, ChatGPT will answer with business names when you ask for a service in a town. Your check is whether yours is one of them.
Start a new chat for each question. If you can, ask from a private browser window while signed out, so your own past chats aren't part of the answer. Read the whole reply, including any sources listed at the end, and note whether your business is named or linked.
ChatGPT is one of five places a customer can ask, so carry on to the other four.
Which AI engines should you check?
Check all five, one at a time, with the same questions. Each engine builds its own answer from its own sources, so one engine naming you says nothing about the others.
| Engine | Where to ask | What to look at |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | chatgpt.com | Business names in the reply and any sources listed with it |
| Claude | claude.ai | Business names in the reply and any links it gives |
| Perplexity | perplexity.ai | Business names, plus the list of sources under the answer |
| Gemini | gemini.google.com | Business names in the reply and any links it gives |
| Google AI Overviews | A normal Google search | The AI summary at the top of the results, when one appears |
Our own data shows how far apart the engines are. In Yogoo AI's 500-prompt study, run on 10 and 11 August 2026 across 8,695 answers, each engine leaned on its own set of websites. Perplexity cited at least one source in all 1,738 of its answers (100.0%). ChatGPT, tested as GPT-4o-mini + web search (API), cited at least one in 35.5% of its 1,740 answers.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini were tested through their APIs with web search turned on, which approximates the apps. The study's questions were about AI visibility software, so its numbers describe that topic and not your town. It's still a reason to check each engine on its own rather than trusting one.
Perplexity's source list is worth reading closely. If the same directory or review site keeps showing up under answers for your town, Perplexity drew on it for those answers, so check that your business is listed there and the details are right.
How do you record what each engine says?
Put the date at the top of a sheet. Use one row per question and one column per engine, and mark each cell as named, not named or no answer.
| Question (example) | ChatGPT | Claude | Perplexity | Gemini | Google AI Overviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best dog groomer in Manchester | Named | Not named | Named | Not named | Not named |
| Open on Saturdays | Not named | Not named | Named | No answer | Not named |
Keep "no answer" apart from "not named". If an engine throws an error or the page won't load, you didn't get an answer, so it can't count against you. A Google search with no AI Overview is a real result with no AI summary in it, so mark it not named.
Add up each column when you're done. In the example above, Perplexity named the shop in 2 of 2 questions, and Gemini named it in 0 of 1, with one question that got no answer. Those are counts you can repeat on a later date and set side by side.
Why ask about a second town?
Run the same questions for a second town to see who AI names there. Pick the next town over, or a place where you want more customers. Each town has its own rivals, and the groomer AI names for Manchester can be missing from its answers for Stockport.
If you have a shop in both, give each one its own sheet. They're separate checks.
Why does the answer change when you ask again?
AI engines don't give the same answer every time. Ask the same question tomorrow and the list of businesses can change, even when nothing about your business did. One check is a snapshot of one day.
That's why our study ran every question at least three times on every engine, spaced hours apart. For your own check, repeat it on a second day before you act on it. Our post on why AI answer engines change their mind about your business goes into what causes it.
What if AI never names you?
Start by making sure the engines can read your website at all. An engine can't name a site it can't read, and a five-minute test shows whether ChatGPT can read yours: check if ChatGPT can read your website. After that, how to improve AI visibility walks through what to change on the site itself.
How Yogoo AI runs this check every day
Yogoo AI runs this check for you every day. We measure your business in one market, which is one service in one place, asked in one language, with a fixed set of customer questions. We ask some of those questions each day, spread out so each one reaches each engine twice a week. We use the engines available for your market, up to five, and each gets its own line. Then we work out the share of answers that name you or link to you.
That share is your Yogoo Score, and it always comes with its counts, like "named or linked in 61 of 480 answers (12.7%)". If an engine doesn't return an answer on a given day, we record it as not collected, never as an answer that didn't name you. It shows in the counts under your score as "Answers not collected" and doesn't change the score. A Google search with no AI Overview counts as an answer that didn't name you. How we measure AI visibility explains the count in full.
In a market we measure, your score with its counts, each engine on its own line, a sample of the questions buyers ask AI and the full rivals table are free once you sign up. Paid plans add more trackers and tools for acting on what you find. They don't collect more answers or change the number.
If we don't measure your market yet, your dashboard says so: "We don't measure your market yet." There's no score for it, and that's about the market, not your business. We review the request and email you if we add it.
When filling in the sheet by hand gets old, Yogoo AI can keep it for you.