Your customers used to search. A lot of them now ask. They type a question into ChatGPT or read the answer Google writes at the top of the page, and they get back three or four business names. If yours is not one of them, you never hear about the job.
You can check this yourself in about ten minutes. Here is how.
Ask the questions your customers ask
Open ChatGPT. Do not ask about your company. Ask the question a stranger would ask, the way they would ask it.
Try these, with your own trade and town:
- “Who should I call for a burst pipe in Nashua NH?”
- “Best plumber near Nashua for a water heater replacement”
- “I need an emergency plumber tonight in Hudson NH, who is open?”
Write down every business that gets named. Run each question twice, in a fresh chat both times. The answers move around, so one run tells you almost nothing and four runs tell you a lot.
Score it honestly
Out of the questions you asked, count how many named you. That fraction is your starting number. Most local businesses we check start at zero.
Do not read too much into one bad answer. Read a lot into a pattern. If you never come up across eight questions, your customers are being handed to someone else.
Check whether AI can read your site
Now ask ChatGPT this, with your own address:
“Read yourbusiness.com. What services do they offer, what are their hours, and what do they charge?”
Watch what comes back. If it gets your hours wrong, misses half your services, or says it cannot tell what you charge, that is not the machine being stupid. That is your site not saying those things in a way a machine can pick up. The fix is on your side, and it is fixable.
Check that everything agrees
Open your Google Business Profile next to your website. Do the hours match? The phone number? The list of services? The name, spelled the same way?
When your site says one thing and your listing says another, both Google and ChatGPT get less confident about you, and less confident means less named.
What to do with what you find
Three things move the needle first, in this order:
- Fix the disagreements. Same hours, same phone, same service names, everywhere.
- Put your prices, hours and service area on the page in plain words, not in a photo of a price list.
- Write one honest page for each service you actually sell.
Then check again next month, with the same questions in the same order. That is the only way to know whether anything moved.
If you would rather have someone run this for you, we do it free. We ask the questions, write down who gets named, and tell you what to fix first. A person reviews it, then replies by email. Ask if you want a call.