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Home/Learn/How to test if ChatGPT cites your business (5-minute test).

Learn · DIY tutorial

How to test if ChatGPT cites your business (5-minute test).

The single most important AI-search test you can run on your own business. Five minutes. No tools. No subscription. The result tells you whether AI is naming your business when buyers ask.

Open ChatGPT in any browser.

Free account is enough. Logged-in or not works the same for this test. You are testing how ChatGPT responds to a real buyer query in your category.

Type the exact buyer query for your category.

Use the phrasing a real buyer would type at 11pm. Not your marketing category language. Examples: "best plumber in [your city] for emergency leak." "dental practice accepting new patients in [your city] with sedation." "AI marketing consultant for B2B SaaS at $5M ARR."

Read the response carefully.

ChatGPT typically returns 3-5 named businesses with one-line reasons for each. Note which businesses appear. Note in what order. Note whether your business is named.

Run the same test 5-10 times with different buyer queries.

Single tests can produce variance. Five to ten different queries in your category give you a citation share read. Are you named in 0%, 30%, 70% of queries? That is your baseline citation share.

Compare against your top 3 competitors.

Are they named more often than you? In the same queries or different queries? Their citation share is what you are competing against in the AI search layer.

Common mistakes.

Using your marketing category language instead of real buyer language. The test only works with the queries buyers actually type.
Running the test once and concluding from a single result. AI responses vary; the citation share is what matters.
Testing only branded queries ("is [my business] good"). Branded queries are not the test; category queries are.

Still not resolved? Stan Consulting reads the structural pattern.

If your business is named in 0-20% of queries and your competitors are named in 50%+, the AI Visibility BUILD installs the structural signals that close the gap in 30 days.

Order the Second Opinion →

The structural concept underneath this tutorial

AI Citation

Open the Atlas concept →