How to check what AI assistants say about your business

Updated September 26, 2026

You want to know whether AI assistants describe your business correctly and whether they mention you when someone needs your services. A few searches can reveal useful problems, but random prompts quickly become a time sink. Use a small, repeatable check that ends with a correction list.

Prepare the facts you will check against

Before opening an assistant, write down your current business name, town, phone number, public location or service area, hours, and main services. Include important limits, such as no commercial work or appointments required. Check those details with the person actually handling bookings.

This gives you something reliable to compare with the answer. If your website and office team already disagree about Saturday appointments, resolve that first. An AI audit cannot settle an internal business decision.

Keep customer records out of your prompts. You can ask about an electrical panel replacement without including a homeowner's name, address, invoice, or private messages. You only need enough information to resemble a realistic inquiry.

If your public details are scattered, start with keeping business information consistent before running the full check.

Test facts separately from recommendations

Use one group of questions that names your business and another that asks for a local service. Those groups test different things. An assistant can describe your company accurately when asked directly and still leave it out of a recommendation.

For the named-business check, adapt questions like these:

What services does Oak Street Electric in Springfield offer?
What is Oak Street Electric's phone number?
Does Oak Street Electric take weekend appointments?
Does Oak Street Electric install home EV chargers?

Treat that company name as an example and substitute your own. Include the state when the town name is ambiguous.

For the discovery check, leave your business name out. Ask a real hiring question, such as "Which electricians install home EV chargers in Springfield, Illinois?" Then try a different service you actually want to book, such as electrical panel replacement.

Avoid asking the assistant why your business is the best. That wording supplies a conclusion rather than testing an ordinary customer question. Choose prompts using the language of your inquiries; our guide to how local customers search can help.

Record enough context to repeat the check

Use a simple note or spreadsheet. You do not need a paid monitoring package to discover a disconnected number or an invented service. Keep each result separate instead of pasting everything into one long document.

For each check, record:

The assistant or search feature used and the date.
The exact question, including the town and state.
Whether it was a new conversation or a follow-up.
Whether the answer showed web sources.
The relevant statement and its linked source, if present.
Your assessment: correct, incorrect, uncertain, or not mentioned.

Start a fresh conversation for independent questions. If you first tell an assistant that you own a business, a later recommendation in that conversation is a poor comparison with a stranger's first question.

Separate an ordinary chat response from one that shows current web evidence. Do not label an answer "verified" merely because it sounds confident. Google itself warns that AI Overviews can make mistakes and recommends checking their information against other sources in its AI Overview help guidance.

Open the sources and match them to each claim

Click the source next to the statement you are checking. Confirm that it is your business, in your city, and that the page actually supports the claim. A similarly named electrician in another state can be easy to overlook.

Read the relevant passage yourself. A link to your homepage does not support a claim about round-the-clock emergency dispatch unless the page actually says that. A source list also does not prove which source supplied every sentence.

For example, suppose the answer says your electrical company repairs portable generators. Your site says you install standby generators. Those are different services, so mark the answer incorrect even though both contain the word "generator."

If no source is shown, ask for one. Check whatever link comes back rather than accepting the assistant's explanation of its own answer as proof. When you cannot establish support, label the claim unsupported and move on to checking public pages yourself.

Fix the underlying error before rewriting everything

Sort the findings by what could waste a customer's time or send a lead elsewhere. A wrong phone number, closed-business claim, or incorrect service area needs attention first. A missing mention in one recommendation requires a different response.

If the source is your website, correct the specific page and look for the same mistake in the footer, contact page, and service descriptions. If it is a listing you manage, edit it there. If another publisher controls it, submit a clear correction with the public page that supports the right information.

When the source is correct but the generated answer is wrong, save both and report the answer through the product's available feedback option. Do not distort accurate website copy to match the mistake.

For missing recommendations, check whether the site clearly explains the requested service and location. Improving a service page is a useful business task; adding a long list of unserved towns is not a sound correction.

Repeat the same questions and watch customer outcomes

After a correction is publicly visible, save that page and the date. Recheck later using the original question and a fresh conversation. Keeping the wording stable makes changes easier to assess, although it still does not turn the result into a controlled experiment.

Record whether the fact improved, stayed wrong, or disappeared. If the answer changes after your edit, describe that as an observation. You have not proved the edit caused the change or that every customer now receives the same answer.

Run another check after a move, a name change, new hours, or a major service change. Between those events, choose a manageable recurring review rather than checking every morning.

Compare what you see with actual inquiries. Ask callers how they found you and whether anything online caused confusion. Our guide to measuring whether your website brings customers helps connect online observations to work you can actually book.

Frequently asked questions

Does being left out mean my business has a penalty?

One missing recommendation does not establish a penalty. Record the result and check your business facts, service coverage, and source pages before drawing a broader conclusion.

Should I test every assistant available?

Start with the ones your customers mention and any search feature where you have noticed errors. A careful check of a few relevant questions is more useful than a large pile of results nobody reviews.

Can I correct the assistant by telling it the right answer?

You can provide a correction within that conversation, but that does not establish that future customers will get the corrected fact. Update the public source when needed and use the product's feedback process for a wrong generated answer.

No provider controls every answer an independent assistant produces. Ask for concrete work and evidence, such as corrected listings and useful pages, instead of accepting a universal recommendation promise.

The short version

Check named-business facts and local recommendations separately. Save the exact questions, inspect supporting pages, and fix customer-impacting errors first. Repeated observations are useful, but one answer is not a permanent ranking.

If your checks uncover website details that need updating, Front Step Sites lets customers request changes through their account.