How to Check If ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Recommend Your Business (Free 5-Minute Test)

Want to know if AI recommends your business? Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Google, ask each one to recommend a business like yours in your town, and see whether your name comes up. That five-minute test tells you exactly where you stand in the new world of AI search – and most South African businesses have never run it.

More than half of all search now happens through AI assistants. When someone asks ChatGPT “who’s a good plumber in Cape Town?” or Google shows an AI Overview before the blue links, your business is either named or invisible. Here is how to check, for free, in five minutes.

Step 1 – Ask ChatGPT to recommend a business like yours

Open ChatGPT and type a real buyer’s question: “Can you recommend a [your service] in [your town]?” – for example, “recommend an affordable SEO agency in Cape Town.” Note whether you appear, who does appear, and how the AI describes them. Those competitors are the ones currently winning the AI recommendation.

Step 2 – Repeat in Google Gemini

Gemini pulls heavily from Google’s live index and Business Profiles, so results often differ from ChatGPT. Ask the same question. If you show up in one engine but not the other, you have a visibility gap to close.

Step 3 – Check Google’s AI Overview

Search your main service plus your town on Google itself. If an AI Overview appears at the top, read which businesses and sources it cites. Being named here matters more than ever – AI Overviews convert transactional searches markedly better than ordinary results.

Step 4 – Ask the AI “why”

Follow up with: “Why did you recommend those businesses?” The answer usually reveals what the AI rewards – clear service pages, reviews, a complete Google Business Profile, and content that directly answers questions. That is your to-do list.

What to do if you’re invisible

If your name never came up, you are not alone – and it is fixable. The fixes are the core of AI Search Visibility (GEO/AEO): structured data, an llms.txt file, FAQ content, a fully built-out Google Business Profile, and genuinely useful pages that answer buyer questions. If you’d rather have it done for you, our AI Visibility Audit runs this test properly across every engine and hands you a fix list. Strong traditional SEO feeds AI visibility too, because these engines read the live web.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I run this test?

Once a month. AI answers change as the engines re-crawl the web, so visibility you earn needs to be monitored, not set once.

Does paying for ads make AI recommend me?

No. AI recommendations are organic – they come from your content, reviews and structured data, not your ad spend. That’s why getting found in AI is a different discipline from Google Ads.

I’m a small business – can I really compete here?

Yes. AI engines favour clear, specific, locally relevant answers, which is exactly where a focused small business can beat a vague big one. The field is still wide open in South Africa.