Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?

No. AI assistants build their answers from what they find and were trained on. What you can change is what's out there to find: clear pages that answer your buyers' questions, and mentions on the sites the assistants already cite.

Should I ask about my brand by name?

Not to measure visibility. Buyers who don't know you yet ask about their problem, not about you. Ask the questions they ask, without your name, and see whether you come up.

How often should I check?

Answers change as the assistants and the web change, so a single check is a snapshot. Checking the same questions on a regular schedule shows whether you're gaining ground or losing it.

Does ChatGPT recommend your business? How to check, and what to do about the answer

Buyers now ask AI assistants which tool or firm to use. Here's how to see whether they name you, who they name instead, and what you can change.

A buyer who used to type "best proposal software for small agencies" into Google now often asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Mode the same question. The assistant doesn't hand back ten blue links. It names a few options, says why, and sometimes cites where it got that from.

If your business isn't one of the names, that buyer may never reach your website. And unlike a search ranking, you can't see it happen: there's no position report for "what ChatGPT said to someone last Tuesday".

This guide shows how to check where you stand, what the answer is actually telling you, and what you can change.

Why this is easy to miss

Most small businesses measure marketing through their own analytics: visits, sign-ups, inquiries. AI answers sit upstream of all of that. A buyer who was steered elsewhere never shows up in your numbers, so nothing looks wrong.

Asking an assistant about your own brand doesn't help either. "What is [your company]?" tells you whether the assistant knows you exist. It doesn't tell you whether it would suggest you to someone who has never heard of you, which is the question that matters for new business.

How to check by hand

You can do a first check in about an hour.

Write down the questions your buyers ask before they know you. Use their words, not yours: "How do I stop chasing clients for documents?", "What's a good booking tool for a coaching practice?", "Which accounting firms work with construction subcontractors?" Aim for ten to fifteen questions that span the problems you solve.
Leave your name out. You're measuring whether you come up unprompted.
Ask more than one assistant. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Mode and Gemini don't always agree, and your buyers don't all use the same one.
Record three things for each answer: whether you're mentioned, whether you're actually recommended (named as a good choice, not just listed), and who is named instead.
Note the sources. When an assistant cites pages, write down which ones. These are the sites shaping the answer.

Use a fresh chat for each question so earlier answers don't steer the next one, and keep the wording identical when you check again later.

Reading the results

Patterns matter more than any single answer.

You're never mentioned. The assistants either don't know you or don't connect you with the problem. Usually your own site doesn't describe the problem in the buyer's words, or nothing else on the web links you to it.
You're mentioned but not recommended. They know you exist but have no reason to prefer you. Look at what they say about the businesses they do recommend: that's the bar.
The same competitors keep coming up. Open the sources cited next to them. Comparison articles, directories, review sites and community threads are often doing more work than the competitor's own website.
Answers differ between assistants. That's normal. It usually means each one leans on different sources, which tells you where to focus.

What you can change

You can't edit an AI's answer. You can change what it finds.

Answer the questions on your own site. For each buyer question, there should be a page that answers it plainly: what causes the problem, what the options are, and when your approach is the right one. Write for the buyer, not for the algorithm. A page that genuinely helps a reader is also the kind of page an assistant can quote.

Name the problem the way buyers do. If buyers say "chasing clients for documents" and your site says "streamlined client data acquisition", nothing connects the two.

Show up where the cited sources are. If a comparison article or directory keeps appearing in the citations, find out how businesses get included, and make sure your listing is accurate and complete.

Keep checking the same questions. One check is a snapshot. The same questions, asked on a schedule, show whether new pages and listings are moving the answers.

None of this guarantees a recommendation. Anyone who promises one is guessing. What you can do is make sure that when an assistant looks, there's something clear and useful about you to find.

Doing it every week without the spreadsheet

Checking by hand works, but it's tedious to repeat, and it's the repetition that tells you whether anything is changing.

This is one of the things Kleos, our content marketing tool, does on every plan. Each week it asks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity (plus Gemini on the Growth and Pro plans) the questions your buyers ask, without your name. It shows whether each assistant mentions or recommends you, who it names instead and which sources it relies on, and turns the gaps into suggestions for what to write next. It shows where you stand; it doesn't promise you'll be recommended.

Whether you use a tool or a spreadsheet, start with the questions. Write down the ten your buyers ask most, and ask them this week.

Step 1 of the client journey: Get found. Kleos is the New Odyssey product for this step. See every step.