Check ChatGPT by hand
- List the questions your customers ask. Five to ten questions someone asks before choosing a business like yours, in their words. For example "best plumber in Utrecht" or "accounting software for freelancers".
- Open a temporary chat. Memory and earlier chats change what ChatGPT tells you. A temporary chat starts clean, closer to what a new customer sees.
- Make sure it searches the web. An answer with sources underneath comes from a live search. Without sources, ChatGPT answered from memory, so ask again with web search on.
- Ask in your customers' language and country. A Dutch question asked from the Netherlands gets other businesses and other sources than the same question in English.
- Write down what you see. Whether you are named, which competitors are named, and which pages the answer cites.
Check Google AI Overviews and AI Mode
Search the same questions on Google in a private window. Not every search shows an AI Overview, so note which questions trigger one. AI Mode has its own tab in Google Search. Both list the pages they draw from, so record those too.
What to record for every answer
| Named or not | Does the answer mention your business by name? |
|---|---|
| Competitors | Which other businesses are named, especially when you are not. |
| Cited pages | The pages listed as sources. Directories, review sites and articles that name your competitors are the pages you want to be on. |
| Context | Date, engine, question, country and language, so you compare like with like. |
Why one check is not enough
AI answers change from one run to the next. The same question can name you today and skip you tomorrow. What counts is how often you are named across many answers, and whether that goes up or down. Ten questions on three engines, every day, is 30 answers to read and log. That is where a spreadsheet stops being fun.
Automate it with FoundByChat
FoundByChat asks your questions in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and AI Overviews every morning and keeps every answer.
| AI engines | ChatGPT with web search, as your customers see it, plus an estimate through the OpenAI API. Google AI Mode. Google AI Overviews. |
|---|---|
| How often | Every day, every question on every engine. |
| Questions | Up to 10 per brand. We read your website and suggest them. You can edit, add or remove them before you start. |
| Markets | United States in English, the Netherlands in Dutch. A Dutch brand is checked from the Netherlands, in Dutch. |
| Per answer | The full answer text, whether you and your competitors are named, and every page it cites. |
| Dashboard | Your mention rate with 7, 14 and 28-day trends, the competitors named when you are not, and cited sources grouped by site. |
| Team | Invite teammates with a link, as analyst or viewer. |
| Sign-up | Google or an email link. No password, no credit card. |
| Price | Free to start. |
| First results | Within a day of setup. Checks run every morning. |
Questions
Does ChatGPT give everyone the same answer?
No. Answers vary between runs, and memory, language and location change them further. That is why you check in a fresh chat and repeat it over several days.
Why does ChatGPT name a competitor instead of me?
With web search on, ChatGPT builds its answer from the pages it finds for that question. Look at the pages it cites: if they name your competitors and not you, that is where to start.
Can I see how often ChatGPT mentions my business?
Not inside ChatGPT. You find out by asking the questions yourself and counting, or with a tracker like FoundByChat that asks them every day and shows how often you were named.