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AI Visibility: What AI Assistants Say About Your Business

Your AI visibility starts with one question. Open ChatGPT or Claude and ask what a customer would ask — “best [your service] in [your suburb]”. Then check three things: whether you appear at all, who appears instead of you, and whether the details it gives about your business are correct. UK research published in July 2026 found most businesses tested had at least one basic fact wrong.

Quick summary

  • The exercise: ask an AI assistant what it tells people about your business, in the words a customer would use.
  • Why it matters: testing by UK firm Searchable found 64% of high street retailers had at least one false fact returned about them across 72,000+ questions.
  • The Australian context: Roy Morgan measured 13.6 million Australians — 58% of those aged 14+ — using AI tools in an average four-week period.
  • The honest caveat: there is no Australian survey on consumers using AI to find local businesses. The consumer data below is US and UK, and we’ve flagged it as such throughout.
  • Time required: five minutes.

Why does AI visibility matter for a local business?

Because the answer is being given to other people whether you’ve checked it or not, and because there’s decent evidence those answers are frequently wrong.

Most AI visibility advice leads with adoption statistics — how many people are using AI to find businesses. That’s the weaker argument. The stronger one is accuracy: if an assistant is describing your business at all, it may well be describing it incorrectly, and wrong details are something you can actually fix today.

How do you run an AI visibility check?

Five minutes, no tools, no spend.

  1. Open ChatGPT and Claude — run it in both, because they don’t source information the same way and they don’t give the same answers.
  2. Ask the customer’s question, not yours. “Best [your service] in [your suburb].” Not your business name.
  3. Try three or four variations — cheapest, open now, best reviewed, open on Sunday. These pull different answers.
  4. Then ask about yourself directly — “Tell me about [your business name] in [your suburb]” — and read what comes back line by line.
  5. Write down what’s wrong. Hours, address, suburb, services, phone number, whether you’re still trading.

Three things to look for, in order of how fixable they are:

  • Wrong details about you. Most fixable, and most damaging. A wrong phone number or address sends a ready-to-buy customer somewhere else.
  • You don’t appear at all. Worth knowing, harder to fix quickly, and the fix is ordinary SEO rather than anything AI-specific.
  • Who appears instead. Free competitor research. Look at what those businesses have that you don’t.

How often do AI assistants get business details wrong?

Often enough to justify the five minutes. The most substantial testing we’ve found comes from Searchable, a UK AI-visibility firm. Two caveats before the numbers: this is vendor research by a company that sells tooling in this space, and it’s UK data, not Australian. Weigh it accordingly.

Their July 2026 study put more than 72,000 questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity about UK high street retailers and graded the answers against verified information:

  • 64% of businesses had at least one false fact returned about them
  • 1 in 16 answers overall was false
  • 1 in 10 answers placed a retailer in the wrong postcode — and 15% of those errors put the shop more than 20 miles away
  • 1 in 15 website answers pointed to a dead link, a lookalike site, or a different business entirely
  • By assistant: Perplexity 10% inaccuracy, Gemini 5%, ChatGPT 4%

An earlier test of 165 London businesses across 13,365 questions found 93% had at least one basic fact wrong or missing — and notably, smaller businesses fared worse than larger ones (50% returned false facts, versus 32% for larger companies).

That last finding is the one that should concern a local business owner. The less written about you online, the more the model fills gaps with guesses.

How many people are actually using AI to find businesses?

Here’s where we have to be careful, because the honest answer for Australia is: nobody has measured it.

What we know about Australians and AI generally

Roy Morgan, publishing in June 2026 from its Single Source survey of 14,646 Australians, found 13.6 million Australians aged 14+ — 58% — used AI tools in an average four-week period. ChatGPT led at 10.5 million users (45%), followed by Gemini at 5 million (21%) and Copilot at 4 million (17%).

That’s a large, methodologically solid Australian sample. What it does not tell us is what those people are using AI for.

What US research suggests about AI visibility

BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, published 11 February 2026, surveyed 1,002 US adults via a SurveyMonkey panel. Among the findings:

  • 45% had used generative AI tools for local business recommendations in the past 12 months, up from 6% the previous year
  • AI now sits third for local business recommendations, behind Google and Facebook and ahead of Yelp and TripAdvisor
  • Google’s share fell from 83% to 71% over the same period
  • Among the 455 respondents who used AI tools, 63% said they trust AI recommendations and 10% expressed distrust

Three caveats that matter. This is US data on a non-probability online panel, so no margin of error applies. “45%” measures having used AI this way at least once in a year — not habitual behaviour. And BrightLocal’s own separate study of 1,227 US consumers in July 2026 found AI was the first channel in a search for just 8% of people. Both numbers are real; they answer different questions.

The most useful figure in the whole survey is a quieter one: 42% of AI users said they always check reviews on native review platforms before deciding. AI surfacing your business doesn’t replace your reputation. It sends more people to look at it.

What Australian businesses say about AI visibility

The ABS reported in June 2026 that “almost one in eight (12%) businesses indicated they used Artificial Intelligence (AI) in 2024–25, compared to 1% in 2021–22”. Broken down: 11% of small and micro businesses, 22% of medium, 35% of large.

Read that with care. The ABS question is a tick box in a list of technologies, and the ABS states explicitly that it isn’t designed to measure intensity or extent of use. One staff member using ChatGPT occasionally counts. It’s also 2024–25 data collected between October 2025 and February 2026, so it describes a period already well behind us.

Do AI assistants read my Google Business Profile?

You’ll see this stated confidently all over the place. It isn’t documented, and at least one part of it appears to be wrong.

OpenAI’s documentation for ChatGPT search names its third-party partners: Bing and Shopify for search, and for restaurants specifically OpenTable, Resy and Yelp. Google Business Profile is not mentioned. ChatGPT’s maps are powered by Mapbox, not Google Maps.

Anthropic’s documentation for Claude’s web search describes the mechanics and citation structure but names no search provider and no business or location data source at all.

Google doesn’t explicitly document Business Profile as a source for its AI features either, though it’s the same company and the inference is reasonable.

The defensible version: what an AI assistant says about your business reflects what’s publicly available and consistent about you across the web. Where those sources disagree, or where there’s little written about you, the assistant fills the gaps badly. That’s why consistency across your website, your Business Profile, directories and review platforms still matters — not because any one of them is a documented input.

Is there a way to optimise for Google’s AI Mode?

Not according to Google. Its Search Central documentation on AI features is unusually blunt:

There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.

Google Search Central, AI features and your website

Google’s stated eligibility requirement is that a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. That’s it. The controls it offers are the existing nosnippet and noindex directives.

Which is worth holding onto if someone is selling you “AI Mode optimisation” as a distinct product. Google publishes no local-specific guidance for AI Mode, and no documented explanation of how local businesses are selected. Every guide claiming otherwise is inference.

The practical implication is reassuring rather than alarming: the work that makes you visible in AI answers is the work that already makes you visible in search. Clear, accurate, well-structured content, consistent business information, and genuine reviews.

How do you improve your AI visibility?

Work in this order, because it runs from most fixable to least.

  1. Anything factually wrong. Wrong hours, address, phone or services. Correct them at source — your website first, then your Business Profile, then every directory you’re listed in. Consistency is what eventually corrects the record.
  2. Anything missing. If the assistant doesn’t know you offer a service, check whether that service has a proper page on your own site.
  3. Your reviews. Given that 42% of AI users say they always check reviews before deciding, being recommended by an assistant is only worth something if what they find next holds up.
  4. The gaps against competitors. If the same three businesses keep appearing instead of you, look at what’s published about them that isn’t published about you.

Re-run the check in a month. Answers change as sources change, and it’s the cheapest tracking available.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check my AI visibility?

Open ChatGPT and Claude, ask “best [your service] in [your suburb]” plus a few variations, then ask directly about your business by name. Check whether you appear, who appears instead, and whether your details are correct.

Do AI assistants use my Google Business Profile?

Not documented. OpenAI names Bing, Shopify, OpenTable, Resy and Yelp as ChatGPT search partners — not Google Business Profile. Anthropic names no source at all. Keeping your information consistent everywhere still matters, but no single platform is a confirmed input.

Can I pay to appear in AI answers?

Not in organic AI answers. Google states there are no additional requirements or special optimisations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

Is there Australian data on people using AI to find local businesses?

No. We looked. Roy Morgan measures Australian AI usage overall, but no Australian survey measures using AI specifically for local business discovery. Anyone quoting an Australian figure for this is almost certainly recycling US data.

What if the AI has my business details wrong?

Correct the information at source and make it consistent — your own website, your Google Business Profile, and every directory listing. There’s no mechanism to edit an AI’s answer directly; you change what it reads.

AI visibility: the short version

Adoption statistics are the weakest reason to do this. The accuracy research is the strongest. If most tested businesses had at least one basic fact wrong, the odds that yours is described perfectly are not good — and unlike ranking, wrong details are something you can fix this afternoon.

If you’d rather have it done properly, our AI Visibility Check runs this across the assistants and across your category, and reports what’s being said, what’s wrong, and who’s appearing instead of you. It works alongside our SEO services on the Gold Coast, because the fixes are largely the same fundamentals — and it starts with your own site, which is where our performance-driven websites come in. More on how we work at DMKT Performance.

Sources

Want us to run your AI visibility check?

We’ll ask the assistants what they say about your business across the questions your customers actually use, document what’s wrong, and give you a prioritised list of what to fix and where. No jargon, and we’ll tell you plainly if the answer is that you’re already in good shape.

Get in touch and we’ll show you what AI is telling your customers.

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