How to check if ChatGPT recommends your company (and why it does or doesn't)

More and more customers ask an AI assistant before choosing a provider: "which invoicing software would you recommend for a small business?", "which online school has a good marketing master's?". If your company isn't in that answer, there is no second result to click.

The good news is that you can check it yourself. This guide explains how to do it properly, how to read what you see, and what usually explains why AI doesn't name you.

First, the right question

The most common mistake is to ask "what is [my company]?". That measures whether AI knows you, not whether it recommends you. Almost any assistant will describe you reasonably well if you give it your name.

What matters is what happens when the customer doesn't know you exist and describes their problem. So you need to separate two kinds of questions:

• Questions without your name ("which tool helps me…?"): they measure whether you are found. This is what actually affects sales.
• Questions with your name ("what do you think of [my company]?"): they measure whether you are understood.

Mixing them inflates the result. In our measurements, most companies do far better on the second kind than on the first.

How to check it yourself, step by step

1. Write 10 questions the way a customer would ask them, without your name. Mix different moments of the purchase: discovering ("how can I automate my company's invoices?"), comparing ("how do invoicing tools differ?") and deciding ("what would you recommend for a 20-person company in Spain?").
2. Use a chat with no history. Your personal account remembers conversations and preferences, and that changes the answers. In ChatGPT use a temporary chat or log out; in Perplexity, ask without signing in.
3. Ask each question at least 3 times, on at least two assistants. In our data, ChatGPT and Perplexity agree on less than half of the questions where a company appears. Measuring only one can mislead you.
4. Write down four things for each answer: whether it names you, who it names, which websites it cites as sources and whether yours is among them.
5. Work out one simple number: the share of answers that name you. With 10 questions, 3 repetitions and 2 assistants you'll have 60 answers: enough to see a pattern.

It takes an hour or two. It isn't perfect, but it is much better than a hunch.

How to read what you see

Counting whether you appear isn't enough. Each situation means something different:

• It names you. Good, but look at which questions: appearing when customers discover is not the same as appearing when they decide.
• It names your competitors and not you. Look at the sources it cites in those answers: that's where much of the explanation is.
• It cites your website but doesn't name your company. AI uses your content but doesn't connect it to your brand. It's more common than it seems: it happened 41 times in our first 2,196 measured answers.
• It relies on guides and lists from other websites. Very common: when we asked about AI visibility tools, the most cited sources were guides from marketing and SEO companies, not product websites.
• It confuses you with another company. It happened to us: asked about YOVARA's pricing, ChatGPT answered with the prices of Yuvara, a tool for real-estate agencies. If your name looks like another company's, check this.

Why AI doesn't name you: the most common causes

• It can't read your website. Some websites block automated visits or only show their text after running JavaScript. In a single day we saw several, from large media sites to small-business websites.
• No page of yours answers the question. If nothing on your website clearly explains what you sell, for whom and how it's different, AI has little to work with.
• Others have more presence outside their website. AI relies heavily on outside sources: guides, comparisons, directories, press and reviews.
• Your name gets confused with another. See the previous section.
• You're new. A newly launched brand struggles to appear. Our own measurement of YOVARA started at 0 % on the questions that don't name us.

How often to measure, and how to know if your changes work

Measure once to get your starting point, make your changes and measure again with the same questions a few weeks later. If you change the questions, you can't compare.

And don't trust small movements. AI answers move on their own: in our experience, changes under 5 points are within normal variation. We tell a real case in our article on what GEO actually means in 2026: we fixed dozens of technical problems on the Futboleras website and visibility went from 61 % to 64 %, which we can't yet attribute to the fixes.

Common mistakes

• Asking with your company's name and calling that visibility.
• Asking each question only once.
• Looking at only one assistant.
• Using your personal account, with its history and preferences.
• Confusing a citation with a recommendation: AI citing your website doesn't mean it recommends you.
• Changing the questions between one measurement and the next.

When to automate it

Doing it by hand is fine to start. When you want more questions, more repetitions and to know why you see what you see, a tool makes sense. If you are comparing tools, here is what to demand from an AI visibility tool. That's what YOVARA does: about 30 questions drafted from your website, each asked 3 times on ChatGPT and on Perplexity, with the sources of every answer, who appears instead of you and recommendations linked to that evidence. The preview is free, and our methodology explains how we measure.

Frequently asked questions

How do I know if ChatGPT recommends my company?

Ask it questions the way a customer would, without saying your name, several times and in a chat with no history, and write down whether it names you, who it names and which sources it cites. Do the same on Perplexity: the two assistants often answer differently.

Why doesn't ChatGPT mention my company?

The most common causes are that it can't read your website, that no page of yours clearly answers the question, that other companies have more presence in outside sources, or that it confuses your name with another company's. To know which applies to you, look at the sources it cites.

How often should I measure my AI visibility?

Once to get your starting point and again a few weeks after making changes, always with the same questions. Movements under 5 points are usually within normal variation.

Can I make ChatGPT recommend my company?

No one can guarantee it. What you can do is give AI clear, reliable sources about what you do, on and off your website, and measure whether that changes anything.