How to check if AI recommends your business

First, why one prompt is not enough

The instinct is to open ChatGPT, type "best [your service] near me", and see whether you are mentioned. That is a start, but it is unreliable. AI responses are non-deterministic: ask the same question twice and you can get two different shortlists. Judging your AI visibility from a single answer is like calling a coin biased after one flip. To get a trustworthy read, you need to measure a rate across many samples.

The step-by-step check

Step 1  List the real questions your customers ask

Write down the actual prompts a buyer would type, in their words, not yours. Think "best corporate services firm in Singapore", "who should I hire to set up a company in Dubai", or "top project management tools for startups". Avoid searching your own brand name, since that is not how a new customer discovers you.

Step 2  Ask each AI engine, many times

Run each question in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and repeat each one several times. Because the answers vary, a handful of runs per question is the minimum to see a pattern rather than a fluke.

Step 3  Count how often you are named

Track how many of the responses mention your business. If you appear in 6 of 8 answers, your mention rate is 75%. That rate is a far more honest signal than one yes or no, and it is something you can improve and track.

Step 4  Note the competitors named instead

Record which businesses the AI recommends ahead of you, and how often. This is your competitive gap in AI answers, and it tells you exactly who is winning the recommendation you want.

Step 5  Check the sources the AI cited

When the assistant browses the web, note the sites it links to. Those are the sources the AI trusts for these questions, and the places you need to appear on to get recommended. Often it is review sites, comparison articles, and "best of" lists rather than your own homepage.

Step 6  Track it over time

AI models change constantly, and so do their recommendations. A rate that looks fine today can move next month without you changing anything. Re-check regularly rather than once.

Want a quick technical starting point? Our free AI-Readiness Checker grades whether AI can even find and read your site in seconds, no signup.

The fast way

Doing this by hand across three engines, many prompts, and many samples is slow and hard to keep consistent. OTW Signal automates the whole thing: it crawls your site, generates the real prompts your customers would ask, queries each engine 8 times per prompt, and returns an evidence-linked report with your mention rate and a 95% confidence interval, the competitors named ahead of you, the sources the AI cited, and the specific fixes. You can see a free preview before paying, and there is a fuller explanation in our guide to what AI visibility is.

How to read your result

A mention rate on its own can mislead at a small sample size, so pair it with a confidence interval. "Mentioned in 6 of 8 answers, 95% CI 36 to 96%" honestly says you are probably doing well but the margin is wide. And a gap versus a competitor is only real if it is statistically significant, not just a difference in raw counts. Treating the numbers this way is what turns "are we being recommended by AI?" from anxiety into an actionable metric.

Frequently asked questions

How many times should I ask each question?

Enough to turn a noisy yes or no into a stable rate. OTW Signal uses 8 samples per prompt and reports a 95% confidence interval so you know the margin of error.

Which engines should I check?

At least ChatGPT, and ideally Gemini and Claude too, since they can give different answers. Checking several shows where you are strong and where you are missing.

What if I am not mentioned at all?

That is common, and it is the opportunity. It usually means your positioning is unclear to AI or you are absent from the sources it cites. Both are fixable with generative engine optimization.