Published September 17, 2026 · Last updated September 17, 2026 · Reviewed quarterly.

How do I check if my business shows up in AI search?

You can't fix what you can't see. Most contractors still have no idea what ChatGPT tells a homeowner who asks "who should I call for water damage repair in Tacoma." That answer is your new storefront — and you wouldn't leave your storefront unlit for a year without checking whether the lights work. This page gives you the exact procedure: which engines to check, what to type, how to record it, and how to read the results. Do it once a month. It takes about 30 minutes.

Why this matters now

BrightLocal reported in 2026 (via contractormag) that 45% of consumers now use AI tools to find local services, up from 6% a year earlier. That's your customers asking AI, not Google, who to call. SOCi looked at 350,000 locations in January 2026 (via Search Engine Land) and found only 1.2% of locations got recommended by ChatGPT — 11% by Gemini, 7.4% by Perplexity. The field is wide open. The contractors who check where they stand, then work the basics, are the ones who'll get named.

Which engines to check

Check four. They're the ones your customers actually use, and each one builds answers differently:

• ChatGPT (free account, fresh session) — the biggest one in the room. Yext found it leans on listings for about 49% of its citations.
• Gemini (the Google account most people have anyway) — named the most businesses in the SOCi data at 11%, and it favors websites (52% of citations per Yext).
• Copilot — reaches people who never switched defaults on Windows or Edge.
• Perplexity — smaller crowd, but they show sources prominently, so it's great for seeing why a competitor got picked.

Two rules before you start: use a fresh session or incognito window each time so your own browsing history doesn't flatter the results, and don't use your logged-in ChatGPT Plus account for the "do I show up in ChatGPT" check if you can avoid it — Bella Vasta's take is that paying for Plus does not help your business show up in answers, so a paid account's results aren't what your customers see.

The exact prompts to paste in

Type these word-for-word, swapping in your trade and your city. Run all five prompts in each engine — that's 20 answers per audit.

1. "Who should I call for [your trade] in [your city]?" — e.g. "Who should I call for water damage repair in Tacoma?" This is the money prompt. It mirrors exactly how homeowners ask.
2. "Best emergency plumber near me for a burst pipe" — adapt the emergency to your trade: burst pipe, sewage backup, roof leak. Emergency phrasing is how AI filters for responsiveness and reviews.
3. "What is the best-reviewed [your trade] company in [your city]?" — tests whether your review profile carries weight.
4. "[Your exact business name]" — just the name. You're checking whether the engine even knows you exist. If it can't describe you from your name, your site and listings aren't feeding it anything.
5. "Who does [your specific service] in [your city]?" — e.g. "Who does crawl space drying in Puyallup?" Narrow services reveal whether your individual service pages are doing their job.

Record it in a simple tracking table

Don't keep this in your head. One row per engine-per-prompt, every month. Copy this table into a spreadsheet:

Fill in all five columns honestly. "Sources cited" is where the real intelligence lives — write down which sites the answer linked or footnoted. That's the competition map.

How to read the results

Three signals, in order of importance:

1. Named vs. not named. Binary and brutal. If you're not named on prompt 1, you're invisible in the exact moment a customer asks who to call. If prompt 4 (your own name) fails, your foundational presence is broken — start there. See why your business doesn't show up.
2. Who got cited instead of you. If ChatGPT keeps pulling from Angi and Yelp, that tells you the engine is leaning on listing data — strengthen your profiles there and on your own site. If Perplexity cites a competitor's blog post answering the exact question, that's your blueprint: they wrote the answer and you didn't.
3. Drift over time. This is why you track monthly. One month's result is a snapshot; three months is a trend. If you were named on Gemini in September, gone in October, back in November — something changed each time (a site update, new reviews, a competitor's new page). Drift is the signal. Flat zeros for six months is also a signal: you're not in the game at all.

First audit walkthrough: a worked example

Say you run Tacoma water damage repair. Month one, September:

• ChatGPT, prompt 1: Not named. Sources cited: Angi's ChatGPT app integration, Yelp, a competitor's "24/7 water damage Tacoma" page. Read: ChatGPT is leaning on listings and one competitor's service page. Action: beef up your listings and publish your own emergency service page.
• Gemini, prompt 1: Named, second. Cited your "Water Damage Repair Tacoma" service page and your Google Business Profile. Read: your site content is feeding Gemini — it favors websites. Action: add proof to that page (before/after photos, reviews) so it climbs from second to first.
• Copilot, prompt 3: Not named. Cited three competitors' Google review counts. Read: review volume gap. Action: ask every happy customer for a Google review for 30 days.
• Perplexity, prompt 4 (your name): Gave a vague, half-wrong description with no sources. Read: thin brand footprint. Action: check your About page actually says what you do and where — see how AI engines choose which contractor to recommend.

Now you have a punch list, not a mystery. Repeat monthly. When a competitor disappears from answers, check what changed on their end — sometimes you can see their site update before they know it mattered.

How often, and when to go weekly

Monthly is the cadence — same prompts, same engines, same table. Set a recurring reminder; the value is in the streak. Go weekly for 4 weeks after any big change: a site rebuild, new service pages, a Google Business Profile overhaul, or a review push. That's when you're measuring cause and effect, and monthly is too slow to catch it.

What to do this week

1. Open an incognito window and run the five prompts in ChatGPT and Gemini. That's 10 answers — 15 minutes.
2. Record them in the table above. Be honest on the "Named?" column.
3. If you're not named on prompt 1, read why your business doesn't show up when customers ask AI who to call and why ChatGPT recommends your competitor.
4. Put a monthly reminder on your calendar. Next audit, same prompts — and watch the drift.